Iceland
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This Iceland trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers the whole country: the geology that put it on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Viking settlement of 874 and the world's oldest parliament, the Cod Wars, the Reykjavík Summit and the Fischer-Spassky match, and the culture that makes Iceland odd and wonderful, from patronymic surnames and the Naming Committee to the thirteen Yule Lads, fermented shark, brennivín and the Viking Thunder Clap. The first questions are easy enough for anyone planning a first trip; the last ones will test people who have driven the whole Ring Road. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Icelandic town is nicknamed the 'Capital of the North'?
Akureyri
Akureyri carries the grand nickname with only about 20,000 people, in a country where roughly two in three people live around the capital.
Q 02Iceland's capital holds what distinction among the capitals of sovereign states?
Northernmost
Northernmost of all sovereign-state capitals, Reykjavík sits at about 64°08′ N on Faxaflói bay; Nuuk lies farther north but is not the capital of a sovereign state.
Q 03The name Reykjavík translates roughly as what?
Smoky bay
Reykjavík means 'Smoky bay', from Old Norse reykr, 'smoke', and vík, 'bay'; by tradition the smoke was steam rising from the area's hot springs.
Q 04According to the Landnámabók, who became Iceland's first permanent settler in 874?
Ingólfr Arnarson
Ingólfr Arnarson is named in the Landnámabók as the first permanent settler; he reportedly cast his high-seat pillars overboard and settled where they came ashore, at Reykjavík, in 874.
Q 05Which Norseman gave Iceland its name after climbing a mountain and seeing an ice-filled fjord?
Flóki Vilgerðarson
Flóki Vilgerðarson found the island by releasing three ravens at sea and following the one that flew ahead and never returned, which earned him the nickname Hrafna-Flóki, or Raven-Flóki.
Q 06Iceland's Althing, founded around 930, originally met in what setting?
Outdoors on a plain
Outdoors on a plain it met, for about two weeks each summer, while those attending camped in booths of turf and stone; it counts among the world's oldest parliaments.
Q 07Which drink remained banned in Iceland until 1 March 1989?
Beer
Beer stayed illegal for 74 years: wine came back within a decade of the 1915 ban and spirits in the 1930s, but campaigners argued cheap beer would do more harm, and its return is still toasted as Beer Day.
Q 08Iceland became a republic in 1944 by ending its union with which country?
Denmark
Denmark had shared its king with Iceland under a 1918 act of union; Icelanders voted to end it while Denmark was under German occupation, and King Christian X still sent his congratulations.
Q 09Iceland's 'Cod Wars' of the 1950s-70s were fishing disputes with which country?
United Kingdom
The Cod Wars pitted Iceland against the United Kingdom, whose Royal Navy escorted its trawlers; Iceland still won each round, helped by threats to quit NATO and deny it vital North Atlantic bases.
Q 10What new weapon did Iceland's coast guard turn on foreign trawlers in the Cod Wars?
Net cutters
Net cutters, towed behind a patrol ship, severed a trawler's nets and sent gear and catch to the seabed; Iceland used them as its fishing limit jumped to 50 and then 200 miles.
Q 11Which two leaders held a 1986 summit at Höfði House in Reykjavík that helped end the Cold War?
Reagan and Gorbachev
Reagan and Gorbachev met at Höfði House in October 1986; the talks broke down over SDI testing, yet the ground they covered led to the 1987 INF Treaty.
Q 12Reykjavík hosted the 1972 'Match of the Century' in which game?
Chess
Chess was the game: Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky 12½–8½ in Reykjavík in 1972, ending 24 years of Soviet hold on the world title.
Q 13In 1980, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland became the world's first woman to do what?
Win a national presidential election
Q 21Which source generates about 70% of Iceland's electricity?
Hydropower
Hydropower from glacial rivers makes about 70% of Iceland's electricity; the famous geothermal steam supplies most of the rest, and its hot water heats the great majority of homes.
Q 22Which is Europe's largest island, ahead of second-placed Iceland?
Great Britain
Great Britain is roughly twice the size of Iceland yet holds well over a hundred times as many people, more than 60 million against about 400,000.
Q 23The Arctic Circle does not cross mainland Iceland, but it does pass through which small Icelandic island?
Grímsey
Grímsey, about 40 km off the north coast, straddles the Arctic Circle, marked there by an eight-tonne stone sphere that has to be rolled to a new spot as the line creeps north off the island.
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, a theatre director and divorced single mother, was the first woman to win a national presidential election, edging out three men with about a third of the vote; she served until 1996.
Q 14Iceland is the only NATO member with no what?
Standing army
Iceland alone among NATO members keeps no standing army; its Coast Guard handles defence, and the US-run Iceland Defense Force left Keflavík in 2006.
Q 15Iceland straddles the boundary between which two tectonic plates?
Eurasian and North American
Eurasian and North American plates pull apart beneath Iceland along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which widens by roughly 2 cm a year and surfaces above sea level at Þingvellir.
Q 16What does the Icelandic verb 'geysa', root of 'geyser', mean?
To gush or rush forward
'To gush or rush forward' is the sense of geysa, the verb behind Geysir, a single hot spring in Haukadalur whose name foreign writers borrowed as the word for every spouting spring.
Q 17Which volcano's 2010 eruption grounded air travel across northern and western Europe for a week?
Eyjafjallajökull
Eyjafjallajökull erupted in April 2010; meltwater from its ice cap entering the vent made the eruption explosive, and the fine ash carried into the jet stream closed much of Europe's airspace for about a week.
Q 18The 1783 eruption of which volcano triggered a famine that killed about a fifth of Icelanders?
Laki
Laki's fissure erupted for eight months from June 1783; its poisonous haze drifted over Europe, and about eight in ten of Iceland's sheep died in what Icelanders call the 'Mist Hardships'.
Q 19Surtsey, an island that rose from the sea off Iceland's south coast in 1963, is named after what?
A Norse fire giant
A Norse fire giant, Surtr, gives Surtsey its name; the island broke the surface in November 1963, and only scientists studying how life colonises new land may set foot on it.
Q 20What gives the Blue Lagoon spa's geothermal water its milky-blue colour?
Silica
Silica particles suspended in the water scatter light and give the Blue Lagoon its milky-blue colour; the man-made lagoon is fed by runoff from the Svartsengi geothermal power plant.
Q 24How do most Icelanders get their last name?
From a parent's first name
From a parent's first name: Jón's son is Jónsson and his daughter Jónsdóttir, so a married couple and their two children can carry four different last names.
Q 25Iceland's Naming Committee has the power to reject what?
A baby's given name
A baby's given name must be on the approved register or clear the Icelandic Naming Committee, which refused Blær as a masculine noun; she was 'Girl' on official papers until a court overruled it in 2013.
Q 26Icelandic is the only living language whose alphabet keeps which runic letter?
Þ
Þ, called thorn, began as a rune and spells the 'th' of 'thing'; English dropped it when early printers' imported type lacked the letter and used 'y' instead, which is how 'the' became 'ye olde'.
Q 27What is the closest living relative of the Icelandic language?
Faroese
Faroese, spoken in the Faroe Islands, is Icelandic's closest living relative; both descend from Old West Norse, and written Faroese is largely readable to Icelanders though the spoken languages differ.
Q 28What do Icelandic children leave on the windowsill for the 13 Yule Lads to fill?
Shoe
A shoe goes on the windowsill for each of the 13 nights before Christmas; well-behaved children wake to a small treat in it, and those who misbehaved find a rotting potato.
Q 29In Icelandic folklore, the Yule Cat eats people who have failed to do what before the holiday?
Receive new clothes
Those who fail to receive new clothes before Christmas are prey for the Jólakötturinn, the giant Yule Cat of the ogress Grýla; the threat spurred households to finish the autumn wool work before Yule.
Q 30'Jólabókaflóð', literally 'book flood', names what Icelandic habit?
Buying most of the year's books before Christmas
Buying most of the year's books before Christmas is the Jólabókaflóð: Icelandic publishers release the bulk of new titles in autumn, a catalogue (Bókatíðindi) goes to every home, and books are the classic Christmas Eve gift.