At the edge of the Arctic Circle, about 20 million years ago, the North Atlantic gave birth to Iceland. In a cataclysm of molten fire, volcanoes on the sea floor began spewing out hot lava, laying the foundations of a land that would be embraced by the ocean.

This watery embrace insured Iceland's isolation. Ice Ages came and went; thick glaciers sculpted her face, honing mountain peaks to knife-edged sharpness; volcanoes erupted in mile-high plumes of steam, gas, and ash; in more southern latitudes civilizations flourished; the Parthenon crowned the Acropolis -- while Iceland remained hidden, shrouded by the vast ocean and the mists of the frozen North.

Until about 300 B.C., when a Greek explorer, Pytheas of Massalia (modern Marseilles) speaks of Ultima Thule -- an island on the edge of the known world, six days¹ voyage from the British Isles, bordering the³frozen sea." It may have been Pytheas' account, found in medieval manuscripts, that caused 8th century Irish monks to head north in search of uninhabited land -- and solitude. Setting out to sea in flimsy currachs made of animal skins stretched over twigs to a destination unknown was, above all, an act of faith. They were the first human settlers.

A century later these hermits were displaced by Iceland's first true settlers, the Norwegian Vikings. In about 870 A.D., The First Settler, Norwegian Ingólfur Arnarson, reached Iceland's shores. Ingólfur, a Viking chieftain, escaping the tyrannical rule of Harald Fairhair was searching for a new land for his family and kinsmen.

It is said that when Ingólfur's ship sighted land he threw overboard the posts of his chair. Then he waited to see where the gods would cause them to drift ashore. There he would settle. It took four years for the gods to make up their minds. When Ingólfur tracked down his posts, he found them washed ashore in the southwest corner of Iceland, in a bay blanketed with billowing clouds of what he thought was smoke. So he called his settlement Reykjavík, "Smoky Bay."

In Krísuvik, just outside Reykjavík, Ingólfur's "smoke² can still be seen: like nostrils of a buried earth-monster, geothermal geysers breathe clouds of hot vapor. These living reminders of Iceland's volcanic origins, and others slumbering under glacial ice, come to life from time to time, bearing witness that Iceland was forged by fire (as I write, just such a volcano is exploding).

A shifting seam on the earth's mantle called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge runs diagonally across Iceland and has created a landscape of jagged peaks, lava fields, fissures, rocks, majestic waterfalls, raging rivers, and sand. Add to this real estate the world's largest glaciers, and it's no wonder that only two percent of Iceland's land can be farmed.

So Icelanders have turned to the sea which has provided Iceland's bounty. Today, fishing accounts for three-quarters of the country's economy. But while fish has been food staple and cash crop, Lopi, in the words of President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, "Šhas been Iceland's gift and goodwill ambassador to the world...