Summary of Egill Bjarnason's How Iceland Changed the World

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 The Vikings had discovered Greenland in the search for more land, and turned its stock of walrus and narwhals into a global enterprise.

They had then launched even farther west, and discovered sailing routes from Europe to North America five hundred years before Columbus.#2 The story of Iceland begins with exile.

Like many people, I used to romanticize stormy ocean crossings.

But during my own sea crossing, I found storms considerably less romantic.#3 The first settlers in Iceland, Greenland, and North America were blown off course.

They invented sailing centuries before the art of navigation was anything more than an educated guess.#4 The first settlers to Iceland were Norwegian farmers Inglfur Arnarson and his family in AD 874.

The country was visited by three explorers who had come to Iceland mostly out of curiosity and the desire to verify one another's boasts about finding a vast empty island.