Free Republic

Our offspring and culture is the most successful feature of the History of Mankind. Ancient Rome and Greece have nothing on Scandinavia of today, nor what we did some centuries after Rome came down. No, I'm not a Racist - and I furthermore am more than a true friend of Italy and Greece. But I do not believe there's a point in denying the fact that Viking Culture has played a major role in shaping the World of today. Have a look at it. Britain, North America, Scandinavia, Germany, etc. in one way or another, all were formed by the...

GLOBAL TRAVELERS BEWARE: Another Icelandic Volcano Is Rumbling Nick Jardine Jan. 3, 2012, 11:54 AM Katla, yet another huge Icelandic volcano, is showing signs that it may soon erupt and cause chaos to world air transport. Al Jazeera reports that earth tremors around the immense volcano are leading to concerns that an eruption could have both profound effects on Iceland's landscape, as well as disrupting travel worldwide. The volcano last erupted in 1918, making it well overdue for a blast, and it's lava chamber is thought to be some 10 times the size of Eyjafjallajökull, which erupted in 2010. (By...

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Iceland’s unique fireworks display, made by the people, for the people, will be shared with the world on New Year’s Eve and into the New Year online live at: http://www.inspiredbyiceland.com New Year’s Eve in Iceland is a spectacular celebration. Festivities traditionally start with a family dinner, followed by bonfires (brenna), where family, friends and neighbors gather to enjoy the warm fire and celebrate with music. According to Icelandic folklore, there are several magical traditions that are supposed to happen on New Year’s Eve: cows are thought to be able to talk, seals take on human form, the...

THE OFFICE OF PROPHET IS ABOUT TO RETURN TO THE CHURCH BODY WORLDWIDE ! The Office of Prophet is about to return , This is not from a person but from a yearn , From the calling of many for my voice to speak out , True guidance directly into My House , For many confusion has been the stage , But now I will speak both in grace and in rage , For judgement is here in My house , Holiness received and strange fire cast out , The true and faithful shall remain and be renewed , But...

Eruption 'long overdue' Even that caused significant flooding, washing away a bridge across the country's main highway and blocking the only link to other parts of the island for several days. "The July 9 event seems to mark the beginning of a new period of unrest for Katla, the fourth we know in the last half century," says Professor Pall Einarsson, who has been studying volcanoes for 40 years and works at the Iceland University Institute of Earth Sciences. "The possibility that it may include a larger eruption cannot be excluded," he continues. "Katla is a very active and versatile...

Explanation: The longer you look at this image, the more you see. Perhaps your eye is first drawn to the picturesque waterfall called Skogarfoss visible on the image right. Just as prevalent, however, in this Icelandic visual extravaganza, is the colorful arc of light on the left. This chromatic bow is not a rainbow, since the water drops did not originate in rainfall nor are they reflecting light from the Sun. Rather, the drops have drifted off from the waterfall and are now illuminated by the nearly full Moon. High above are the faint green streaks of aurora. The scene,...

What Iceland Teaches Us: “Let Banks Fail” Agence France-Presse notes: Three years after Iceland’s banks collapsed and the country teetered on the brink, its economy is recovering, proof that governments should let failing lenders go bust and protect taxpayers, analysts say.***“The lesson that could be learned from Iceland’s way of handling its crisis is that it is important to shield taxpayers and government finances from bearing the cost of a financial crisis to the extent possible,” Islandsbanki analyst Jon Bjarki Bentsson told AFP.“Even if our way of dealing with the crisis was not by choice but due to the inability...

Vikings used rocks from Iceland to navigate the high seas, suggests a new study. In Norse legends, sunstones are said to have guided seafarers to North America. Now an international team of scientists report in the journal the Proceedings of the Royal Society A that the Icelandic spars behave like mythical sunstones and polarise light. By holding the stones aloft, voyaging Vikings could have used them to find the sun in the sky. The Vikings were skilled navigators and travelled thousand of kilometres between Northern Europe and North America. But without a magnetic compass, which was not invented until the...

The Viking farm under the sand in Greenland By Terese Brasen In 1991, two caribou hunters stumbled over a log on a snowy Greenland riverbank, an unusual event because Greenland is above the tree line. Closer investigation uncovered rock-hard sheep droppings. The hunters had stumbled on a 500-year-old Viking farm that lay hidden beneath the sand, gift-wrapped and preserved by nature for future archaeologists. Gården under Sandet or GUS, Danish for 'the farm under the sand,' would become the first major Viking find in Greenland since the 1920s. "GUS is beautifully preserved because, once it was buried, it was frozen,"...

Newfoundland Viking site remarkableL'Anse aux Meadows likely marks the first European contact with New World -- 500 years before Columbus Jeff Lukovich , Special to The Sun More than 1,200 years ago, Vikings from Norway set out on a series of daring voyages that would eventually result in their being the first Europeans to explore the east coast of North America. In stages they established settlements in the Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and finally Newfoundland and Labrador. Though we passed through an area around the capital of Nuuk, that would have been near the former Viking "Western Settlement,"...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - The latest scientific analysis of a disputed map of the medieval New World supports the theory that it was made 50 years before Christopher Columbus set sail. The study examined the ink used to draw the Vinland Map, which belongs to Yale University. The map is valued at $20 million — if it is real and not a clever, modern-day forgery. A study last summer said the ink on the parchment map was made in the 20th century. But chemist Jacqueline Olin, a retired researcher with the Smithsonian Institution (news - web sites) in Washington, said...

Iceland’s Katla Volcano Eruption Imminent: Could Surpass Last Year’s Eruption October 14, 2011 2:16 PM EST Iceland's Katla Volcano, which has a magma chamber that is ten times the size of Eyjafjallajokull, is showing signs of an imminent eruption. Experts are saying that should Katla erupt, the consequences could be disastrous for Europe as it could spew an ash cloud that will turn day into night. In comparison to last year's Eyjafjallajokull's eruption which grounded planes last year and cost the aviation industry nearly $2 billion dollars, Katla's could wreak havoc across Europe. The last time Katla erupted in 1918...

Not sure on excerpt policy, but recall something about Guardian being bad, so no excerpt.

1. kafli Óleifur hét herkonungur er kallaður var Óleifur hvíti. Hann var son Ingjalds konungs Helgasonar, Ólafssonar, Guðröðarsonar, Hálfdanarsonar hvítbeins Upplendingakonungs.

Iceland says it was "bullied" over bank debt Sun, Sep 4 2011 REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Iceland's president accused European countries on Sunday of having bullied it into agreeing to guarantee repayment of the debts of a failed bank, reviving a dispute with Britain and the Netherlands whose citizens are owed billions.

Archeologists and university students recently discovered an ancient gold necklace during an excavation project in Vatnsfjördur in Ísafjardardjúp in the West Fjords, which has been ongoing for the past eight summers. Scientists from different fields participate in the project, along with international university students, ruv.is reports. Vatnsfjördur was settled early in the Settlement Era, which sources state began in the 9th century AD, and later became the site of a manor and a chieftain's residence. Many beautiful objects have been excavated in the course of the project.

A Chinese business tycoon is hoping to buy a large area of north-east Iceland to build a luxury hotel and eco-resort. Huang Nubo is reported to have offered a billion krona (£5.4m: $8.8m) for the 300sq km (155 sq mile) Grimsstadir a Fjollum region. Critics of the plan fear it could be used by China to gain a strategic foothold in Iceland. But Icelandic officials have welcomed the purchase and the further 20bn krona Mr Huang says he intends to invest. Mr Huang is the chairman of the Zhongkun investment group, and is also reported to have worked as a...

To anyone sane of mind, it's pretty obvious that something, basically, is wrong about the way large parts of European and American economy is run today. Scandinavia is an exception - and a bigger one than most people are aware of. Our German neighbors are beginning to realize this and lately Chancellor Merkel have been very successful in restoring economic growth on German soil. Presently, the German economy, after 20 years of a sad standstill, is growing at a pace nearing that of Sweden. Scandinavia (including Finland) taken as a whole is today the World's 10th largest economy despite it's...

A glacial flood from volcano Katla, in Mýrdalsjökull, has disrupted highway no.1 (the ring road), by river Múlakvísl on Mýrdalssandur, in the South of Iceland. The road is closed between Höfðabrekka, east of Vík, and river Skálm, near Álftaver. The flood is thought be the result of a small eruption underneath the icecap of Mýrdalsjökull, probably in the Katla crater. The Civil Protection and Emergency Management has sent out a warning to people in the area, to beware of sulphurate smell near the river, as it might be poisonous sulphurate gas.

> The Canadian town of Gimli is known as "New Iceland" because the area was settled by Icelandic immigrants in the late 1870s and has kept its Icelandic heritage, customs and language. Now, with their homeland suffering economic troubles, a fresh wave of Icelanders is arriving in the area seeking work. >

(AP) -- How do you write a new constitution in the 21st century? You go where the people are - online. That was the decision of tiny but tech-savvy Iceland, which is overhauling its constitution in the wake of an economic catastrophe, and has turned to the Internet to get input from citizens. The 25-member council drafting the new constitution is reaching out to Icelanders online, especially through social media sites Facebook and Twitter, video-sharing site YouTube and photo site Flickr. Iceland's population of 320,000 is among the world's most computer-literate. Two-thirds of Icelanders are on Facebook, so the constitutional...

Barack Obama has been forced to leave Ireland early due to fears Airforce One could be grounded by a new volcanic ash cloud blowing down from Iceland. - A White House spokesman confirmed that concerns over the ash cloud from the Grimsvötn volcano forced the presidential entourage to make a swifter than expected exit from the Republic. He had been expected to stop off Tuesday morning at Glasnevin cemetery en route to the airport to pay homage at the crypt of Daniel O'Connell, in an acknowledgement of the 19th century Irish nationalist leader's role in opposing the slave trade.

- Perhaps, but Northern Europe didn't get rich by adopting policies resembling what Obama today is doing to the US.

[Credit: Stephane Vetter (Nuits sacrees)] Explanation: On some nights, the sky is the best show in town. On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky won an international competition for landscape astrophotography. The above winning image was taken two months ago over Jökulsárlón, the largest glacial lake in Iceland. The photographer combined six exposures to capture not only two green auroral rings, but their reflections off the serene lake. Visible in the distant background sky is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy, the Pleiades open clusters of...

As Iceland became part of the Norwegian kingship 1262, a new power structure in the shape of an Icelandic aristocracy appointed by the king of Norway was established. This development is discussed in a doctoral thesis in History from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, that sheds light on a period in the Icelandic history that previously has not received its due attention. 'The 14th century has never received a great deal of attention in Icelandic history writing. This is surprising since this period is at least as important as the considerably more frequently discussed so-called Free State period (around 930�/64)...

Did you know that the EU has ensured that there has been no war between its members for last 60 years?

While countries elsewhere in Europe have responded to the debt crisis with unpopular austerity plans, Iceland, which allowed its banks to fail, has now embarked on a slow journey towards recovery. In a referendum scheduled for 9 April, the citizens of the country may refuse to reimburse the international creditors of the collapsed Icesave savings scheme. Walk through the streets of Reykjavik and you cannot fail to notice the vast cathedral of black concrete and multi-faceted reflective glass rising from its enormous seafront construction site — a monumental building which seems strangely out of place in such a predominantly low-rise...

Ancient Icelandic sagas may be full of treachery, death and destruction, but the real villain behind all the foment could well have been climate change. According to a Canadian scientist, there's a direct link between changes in regional temperatures and the thematic content of the sagas. The research is based on newly reconstructed temperature records gained from ocean sediment cores collected off the coast of Vestfirdir, the northwest peninsula of Iceland by scientists from the University of Colorado. Analysis of mollusc shells within these cores has provided an astounding, almost weekly, record of temperature changes in the region. "The difficult...

The representatives of the petition on kjosum.is, where President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson is urged not to sign the new Icesave legislation and send it to a national referendum, delivered almost 37,600 signatures to Bessastadir, the presidential residence, today at 11 am. One of the petition’s organizers, Hallur Hallsson, told ruv.is that the signatures were run against the National Registry database by the company Creditinfo, which resulted in 186 names being crossed off the list. Hallsson said the methodology of the collection and the processing of the data would be explained to the president. The petition was closed to...

Bárdarbunga dwarves the Eyjafjallajökull volcano,  which shut-down most of Europe's airspace in May 2010 Local experts have observed all the signs that another -much larger- Icelandic volcano is ready to blow, an event that could dwarf last year's series of eruptions that shut down air travel throughout Europe and changed weather patterns for months... Geologists detected the high risk of a new eruption after evaluating an increased swarm of earthquakes around the island's second largest volcano.  Pall Einarsson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, says the area around Bárdarbunga is showing signs of increased activity, which provides...

Icelandic Volcano 'Set To Erupt' Scientists in Iceland are warning that another volcano looks set to erupt and threatening to spew-out a pall of dust that would dwarf last year's event. Lava and ash explode out of the caldera of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano Photo: REUTERS 6:38PM GMT 08 Feb 2011 Geologists detected the high risk of a new eruption after evaluating an increased swarm of earthquakes around the island's second largest volcano. Pall Einarsson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, says the area around Bárdarbunga is showing signs of increased activity, which provides "good reason to worry"....

Scientists in Iceland are warning that another volcano looks set to erupt and threatening to spew-out a pall of dust that would dwarf last year's event.... Geologists detected the high risk of a new eruption after evaluating an increased swarm of earthquakes around the island's second largest volcano. Pall Einarsson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, says the area around Bárdarbunga is showing signs of increased activity, which provides "good reason to worry". He told the country's national TV station that a low number of seismometer measuring devices in the area is making it more difficult to...

On his second day as head of Iceland's third-largest bank, Arni Tomasson faced a crisis: The bank was out of cash. "Everybody was panicked -- depositors, creditors, banks around the world." Unlike other nations, including the U.S. and Ireland, which injected billions of dollars of capital into their financial institutions to keep them afloat, Iceland placed its biggest lenders in receivership. It chose not to protect creditors of the country's banks, whose assets had ballooned to $209 billion, 11 times gross domestic product.With the economy projected to grow 3 percent this year, Iceland's decision to let the banks fail is...

To the United States, Julian Assange may now be Public Enemy Number One. Some American politicians have even called for his execution. But less than a year ago, the founder of WikiLeaks was officially entertained at a US Embassy cocktail party by one of the very diplomats whose secrets he would soon spill to the world. Mr Assange's site had already published dozens of leaks embarrassing to the US, including secret Guantanamo Bay detainee handling manuals and the full emails of Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate. The US State Department condemned the manuals' publication as "a criminal act."

Decision to force bondholders to pay for banking system's collapse appears to pay off as economy grows 1.2% in third quarter celand's decision two years ago to force bondholders to pay for the banking system's collapse appeared to pay off after official figures showed the country exited recession in the third quarter. The Icelandic economy, which contracted for seven consecutive quarters until the summer, grew by 1.2% in the three months to the end of September. Iceland famously agreed in a referendum to reject a scheme to repay most of its debts that were once worth 11 times its total...

Iceland has finally emerged from deep recession after allowing its currency to plunge and washing its hands of private bank debt, prompting an intense the debate over whether Ireland might suffer less damage if adopted the same strategy. Winter Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland The Nordic economy grew at 1.2pc in the third quarter and looks poised to rebound next year. It ends a gruelling slump caused largely by the "New Viking" antics of Landsbanki, Glitnir and Kaupthing, the trio of lenders that brought down Iceland's financial system in September 2008. The economies of the two "over-banked" countries have both contracted...

Iceland, after making a big push toward hydrogen-powered cars just a few years ago, is now turning its focus to electric vehicles (EVs), and an Ohio company is a big beneficiary of the shift. AMP Holdings, based in suburban Cincinnati, has announced a five-year deal to sell 1,000 of its SUV electric conversions to Northern Lights Energy (NLE) of Reykjavik. As AMP CEO Steve Burns explained in a press release, Iceland, with its vast geothermal resources, is perfect for EVs. “Everything is present — a low cost of electricity coupled with the high cost of gasoline, the inherent short commutes...

Iceland's getting a new constitution _ and it's really going to be the voice of the people. The sparsely-populated volcanic island is holding an unusual election Saturday to select ordinary citizens to cobble together a new charter, an exercise in direct democracy born out of the outrage and soul-searching that followed the nation's economic meltdown. Hundreds of people are vying for the chance to be among up to 31 people who will form the Constitutional Assembly slated to convene early next year _ a source of huge pride for Icelanders who have seen their egos take a beating in recent...

Headline Only: United plane makes emergency landing in Iceland.

A New York couple have been charged with defrauding a wealthy musician to the tune of $20 million (£12.3 million) after he innocently visited their computer servicing company to have a virus removed from his laptop. The hard-to-believe story started started in 2004 when moneyed pianist Roger Davidson asked Mount Kisco computer store owners Vickram Bedi, 36, and his Icelandic girlfriend Helga Invarsdottir, 39, to rid his computer of a virus. On learning of Davidson's wealth, the pair are alleged to have concocted an elaborate social engineering scam that defrauded him of somewhere between the $6 million the police have...

I'm Swedish and I admit my nation has made a lot of mistakes throughout the centuries. But, in resemblence to the other Nordic nations (Scandinavia + Finland), we know how to run an economy. From people who live in other parts of the World pretending to understand macro economics I often hear remarks like "Norway is rich because of oil" and "Sweden is a small country with a homogenous population that therefore is easily governed". A nation like Libya too houses a homogenous population and has even more oil and gas reserves than Norway, but can't exactly compete with Scandinavia...

Iceland is among five nations which are considered to be at the lowest risk of suffering consequences of climate change due to global warming, according to a new report by the British consulting company Maplecroft. Mapecroft believes in fact that the Nordic countries will benefit from global warming, especially in regard to grain farming as a warmer climate creates a longer cultivating season in these countries. The report took factors such as draught, flooding, landslides, poverty, number of inhabitants and ability to adapt to new circumstances into account in its ranking.

Wealthy foreigners have bought a house in Reykjavik and intend to turn it into a mosque. The chairman of the Icelandic Muslim Association says he has nothing to do with the investors and has reported the men to the police, saying he fears they may be extremists trying to gain a foothold in Iceland. The house is in the Skogahlid area of the city and is earmarked to become a mosque and Muslim community centre. The purchase of the house was backed by wealthy individuals from overseas. Salmann Tamimi, chairman of the Association of Muslims in Iceland, says that the...

Iceland... riots rocked the capital city of Reykjavik again as more than 3,000 people ( 1.5% of the country's population) showed up protesting the austerity measures the government is now considering. Protests began again in earnest in this troubled country when the governments 6 month moratorium on home mortgage payments expired. Meaning that homeowners, who had enjoyed the mortgage payment suspension, found themselves once again faced with having to make mortgage payments they cannot afford. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) has included Iceland together with Spain, Portugal, and Greece as countries who are at the greatest risk of failure. Iceland...

Eyjafjallajökull began erupting on March 20, but few people other than volcanologists and Icelanders took notice at first. For weeks, all it did was spurt lava gently out of an exposed ridge. On April 14, though, the eruption suddenly shifted a few kilometers west -- no longer on open land, but beneath an ice cap. Just as happened at Sveifluháls, magma met ice and turned it to steam, throwing ash into the stratosphere. European airline flights shut down for days over worries about how the ash might affect jet engines. What a difference a little ice makes. Had the second...

It was only when the coin was later identified as Viking that the game heated up. By then poor Mellegren -- who, Beachcombing must say was someone with a reputation for integrity -- had passed away. Beachcombing has no illusions about much of the nonsense written about pre-Columbian visits to North America. But in this case he would give a thumb and a half followed by two cheers and three quarters. There is a good chance that this really is what it seems: A European coin that found its way to North America in the twelfth century. Minted in Norway,...

Friday September 10, 2010 Legislator Refuses to Dine with Iceland’s Lesbian Prime Minister and her "Wife" By Matthew Cullinan HoffmanCOPENHAGEN, September 10, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The leader of a Faroe Islands political party took a stand in favor of sexual morality on Tuesday when he refused to dine with Iceland Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir and her lesbian partner during a state visit to his country.Sigurdardóttir, who has lead Iceland since 2009, is a practicing lesbian who "married" her partner Jónina Leósdóttir in a highly publicized ceremony in June of this year.  Calling the presence of Leósdóttir a "provocation," Member...

Iceland set to embrace war-game fliers By Andrew Ward in Stockholm Gudmundur Petursson worked for years as a contractor for the US military at Keflavik airbase on the Reykjanes peninsula, south-west Iceland. Now, he is waiting for a green light from the Icelandic government to start building a 15,000 sq metre hangar for a fleet of Russian-made fighter jets. Mr Petursson, chief executive of FM Service, an Icelandic facility management company, is a cheerleader for plans by a private military training company to base up to 33 Sukhoi “flanker” jets at Keflavik for use by air forces worldwide as mock...

National Geographic is still the best place for nature (and I will also add, social/cultural) photography. There are many other good and great photographic sources, but NatGeo maintains a level of excellence like no other. I will now provide a couple of examples. Don't forget that they have new desktop wallpapers every month. The Brazil coastal dunes were in the July issue of National Geographic. Click on each for desktop-wallpaper sized original. And as a bonus:

9 Jul 10 - Fourteen earthquakes have occurred below Iceland's Mýrdalsjökull glacier during the past 48 hours - one within the last 4 hours. Katla Volcano lies beneath the Mýrdalsjökull glacier. Katla Volcano usually erupts every century, says Iceland's President Olafur Grimsson. and the last eruption was in 1918. "The time for Katla to erupt is coming close." "I don't say if, but I say when Katla will erupt," Grimsson says. "We have been waiting for that eruption for several years." "It can create, for a long period, extraordinary damage to modern advanced society."