The Alternative History of Iceland: What If Iceland Had Been Wiped Out By a Volcano?

For almost a thousand years, nature had been torturing the poor residents of Iceland. Then, in 1783, it decided to finish the job. A volcano erupted that was felt around the world, nowhere more so than in Iceland itself. About a third of the population perished and the Danes considered transporting the survivors to Denmark. What if they had? How would they have fared? And what would have become of the unpopulated island? 

Hosted by historians and The Reykjavík Grapevine founders Valur Gunnarsson and Jón Trausti Sigurðarson

Transcript

What If Iceland Had Been Wiped Out by a Volcano?  

The centuries following the 1262 incorporation of Iceland into the Kingdom of Norway, which was itself absorbed into the Kingdom of Denmark in 1380, have usually been seen as a dark time in Icelandic history. Traditionally it was glossed over in schoolbooks as a time when nothing much happened but despair until Iceland started to step into the light with its quest for independence. Most modern historians question this view pointing out that the 14th century was peaceful and a time when much literature was produced, and that things happened in the 15th and 16th and even 17th centuries too. Among the more notable events was the adoption of Lutheranism in 1550 and the beheading of the last Catholic priest, followed by a period of strict Puritanism. That might not have been the best of times but however you look at it, the 18th century was a period of almost uninterrupted misery. For a time, it looked as though the nation might not survive at all. 

            In Europe, the 18th century was generally seen as a period of progress, giving us the Enlightenment, the Rights of Man, followed by Mary Wollstonecraft pronouncing the rights of Women and the beginning of the industrial revolution while somewhere over the horizon the United States came into being. The era culminated in the tumultuous but still progressive French Revolution which was to sow the seeds of democracy all over Europe. 

In Scandinavia, it was also a time when things started improving somewhat for the common man. By the next century, the two Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden would cease to be Great Powers constantly at war and instead concentrated on prosperity for the people. At the beginning of this period though, one of them made a final bid for military dominance. This would result in the largest war the north has even known. 

            By the end of the 17th century, Sweden had become the leading power of the region. It came close to dominating the entire Baltic and in this pursuit had made a great deal of enemies. In 1697 King Charles XI died, leaving his 15-year-old son, crowned as Charles XII, on the throne. This seemed like an ideal time for neighbouring kingdoms to assert themselves and an alliance was formed between Denmark-Norway, Saxony-Poland and the Russian Empire to do just that. In the year 1700, they all struck at Sweden simultaneously. Unfortunately for the alliance, a now 18-year-old Charles turned out to be something of a military genius. 

            His first point of call was to the enemy that was closest, King Fredrik IV of Denmark, who was a man more given to affairs in the bedroom than affairs of state. Fredrik had positioned his navy so as to prevent Sweden coming to the aid of its only ally, the Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp south of Jutland. Charles, however, made straight for Copenhagen and managed to land a force on the island of Zealand where with only a single casualty. With his capital threatened, Fredrik sued for peace. The English and the Dutch ever mindful of the balance of power between other states, offered diplomatic support to Denmark. Charles was forced to accept peace without conquest but had knocked one adversary out of the war. It was now time to turn eastwards. 

            Their defences in the Baltic States were the weakest link in the Swedish Empire. Charles made for Narva, now in Estonia, which was besieged by the Russians. Here he won a stunning victory against a much larger force, earning fear and respect throughout the continent. Riga, capital of modern Latvia, was the second city in the Swedish domain and this was besieged by a Polish-Saxon force of 20.000. By the summer of 1701, Charles had destroyed this too with a force half that size.  The Swedish king had gone three for three against some of the strongest military powers in Europe. It would have been an opportune time to negotiate peace on his own terms, cementing Sweden’s spot as the regional superpower. 

            But Charles wanted more and for the next five years he got involved in Polish dynastic disputes. Finally, in 1706, he defeated his adversary Augustus the Strong, known as such more for his ability to bend horseshoes than statesmanship. Augustus was forced to abdicate from the Polish throne which was now tied to Sweden. Two more years passed before Charles was ready to turn his full attention to Russia, his last remaining enemy. Unfortunately for Charles, this happened to be led by Peter the Great who would soon earn his epithet. In the years after his disastrous defeat at Narva, Peter had created a new army on the European model. This managed to inflict the first serious defeat on Charles in 1708 at Lesnaya in present day Belarus. The Swedish baggage train was destroyed, winter was coming and the Russians were burning everything when they retreated, as would become their habit in succeeding centuries. 

            With few supplies left and little hope of procuring more it might have been wise to turn back and regroup, but Charles was having none of it. His march on Moscow stopped dead in its tracks, he instead decided to head south to Ukraine, long known for the quality of its farmland. Surely here he could supply his army. 

            Much of what is now Ukraine was governed at the time by the Cossack hetman Ivan Mazeppa under the protection of the Russian tsar. Mazeppa was a Polish nobleman who had previously fled Cracow, perhaps after bedding a nobleman’s wife, and joined the Cossacks on what was then the Polish side of the Dnepr. As an envoy to the Crimean Khanate, he was captured by the Zaporizhian Cossacks on the far side which was under the authority of the Russian tsar. Instead of executing him as was their custom, the Cossack hetman, or leader, made him first adviser and over a decade later he was promoted to the top position when the old hetman died. 

Being nominally subservient to Moscow, Mazeppa had a knack for picking the right team in Kremlin intrigues and was a favourite of Tsar Peter. However, when a Swedish army showed up in early 1709 he decided to switch sides. No one really knows why he opted for the Swedes. Perhaps he was tired of Peter not upholding his duty to protect Ukraine from Tatar raids in the south and Poles to the west while sending his own men to die in Russia’s wars. Perhaps he really did hope for an independent Ukraine. The latter is how modern Ukrainians like to see it, as his likeness on the ten grivna note would suggest. 

            In any case, the team he picked wound up being the wrong one. Peter, who was not so great to get on the wrong side of, had all 7000 inhabitants of the Cossack capital Baturin slaughtered when Mazeppa was away. This so horrified many of the other Cossacks that they abandoned Mazeppa. The revolt was largely over before the Swedes even arrived. And things did not go much better when they did. It had been one of the coldest winters for 500 years and a large part of Charles’ army had not survived. When summer finally came, the remainder hoped to supply themselves at the town of Poltava to the east. 

When news arrived of a Russian army approaching, King Charles decided to take them by surprise, leaving the artillery behind in order to move quietly and quickly. To make matters worse the Swedish king, who usually led from the front, had been shot in the foot and was forced to direct the battle from his bed. 

It was all over in less than an hour. The Swedish infantry was cut down by Russian cannon and with the king bedridden, the generals bickered and the cavalry failed to charge at the crucial moment. About 10.000 Swedes were killed or captured, with many of the prisoners sent to Siberia and others as labourers to the mosquito infested marches around the Neva river where Peter had decided to build a new capital named after his patron saint of the same name. St. Petersburg would rise with the aid of Swedish slaves and after the fall of the Soviet Union, people who claimed to be their descendants showed up outside the Swedish embassy in Kyiv seeking citizenship, without success.   

            When news of the Swedish defeat reached Copenhagen, Fredrik IV, despite being generally more interested in the start of masquerade ball season, declared war on his neighbour. Danish troops crossed into Scania which had been incorporated by Sweden just 50 years earlier. The Danes were beaten back and Scania remains Swedish to this day. Meanwhile, Charles had fled to the Ottoman Empire along with Mazeppa and the remnants of their army. The 70-year-old Mazeppa died soon after but Charles was to spend years as a guest of the Ottomans, sometimes on friendly, sometimes not so friendly terms, while the war raged on in the north. Finally, Charles travelled on horseback across Europe and back to Swedish territory where he proceeded to raise a new army and invade Norway. Here he was shot in the head while trying to storm the fortress of Halden. The Norwegians claim credit for this but various Swedes have occasionally suggested he was killed by one of his own battle-weary men. Despite the body being exhumed a couple of times, the matter remains a mystery. 

            By now it was 1718 and the Russians had taken over previously Swedish possessions in Latvia, Estonia and Finland. In Estonia, it is said that not a cock did crow and upwards of a third of the population perished, something Estonians today still refer to as a Russian inflicted genocide. In Finland, the episode is known as “The Great Wrath” with over 50.000 deaths resulting.  Plague had broken out in Sweden and Finland which claimed half the population of Helsinki. By now, everyone wanted a piece of the Swedish pie and Great Britain as well as Prussia also declared war.            

            With most of Northern Europe arrayed against them, Sweden was forced to sue for peace in 1721. Estonia and Latvia were handed to Russia. For their inhabitants, the “good old Swedish days” as they were sometimes called were definitely over, but Finland was returned and was to remain Swedish for the next century. Despite a couple of failed attempts to invade Russia later in the century, Sweden’s days as a great power were numbered and in 1809 they finally lost Finland to the Russians. For the next 200 years Sweden was to remain a neutral power, up until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 which prompted them to seek NATO membership. 

Making the World Swedish

What if things had gone differently at Poltava? This is unlikely, as the Swedes seem to have had little chance of success so late in the game. Perhaps if they would have avoided the disaster at Lesnaya they might have had a chance to capture Moscow and force Peter to sue for peace. However, Russia had already been at war for almost a decade by that point and was unlikely to come to terms even with the fall of Moscow, as Napoleon would later learn. And Charles would always have been vulnerable so far from home that a single defeat could destroy his army, as would prove to be the case. 

Probably his best chance to win the war was when he in fact had, in the summer of 1701. Tsar Peter had already lost an army and would have had a hard time continuing the fight on his own had Poland been compelled to come to terms with Sweden. He was just beginning his modernisation efforts which met with much resistance from church and boyars. Had the Tsar attempted to Europeanise Russia as the loser of Narva rather than the victor of Poltava, he might even have been deposed. His obvious successor would have been his conservative son Alexei, who in fact fervently opposed his father’s plans until Peter had him executed. 

            A Russia without Peter might have remained much as it long had been, something of a backwater without access to the sea except for Archangelsk in the far north. A later moderniser might have come along but without Peters grit there is no guarantee he would succeed as well. Without Russia’s rise, Poland would not have been partitioned by it, Prussia and Austria in the later 1700s. 

            The Polish Commonwealth enduring into the next century would have had considerable consequences. Though ruled by aristocrats through the parliament, or Sejm, the Poles were far more democratic than authoritarian Russian. This might have been a more appealing unifying symbol for the Pan-Slavic movement of the 19th century. By the time of its partition the Commonwealth included not West Slavic Poles but also Baltic Lithuanians and East Slavic Belarusians and Ukrainians who might have formed a common national identity. Or perhaps it  would have remained a more lose alliance of peoples, eventually also incorporating Czechs and Slovaks. 

            A strong Poland would have been a natural ally of France as a counterweight to the Germans, while distant Russia might have become an ally to the kaiser. German investment in Russia would compete with French investment in Poland, assuming modernisers belatedly came to power in Moscow. How World War I would have played out is anyone’s guess, but it would more clearly have been a battle of the autocratic emperors of Germany, Austria and Russia against the democracies of Britain, France and Poland, perhaps leading to earlier US intervention. However, Poland has rarely done well fighting against Germany and Russia at the same time, and perhaps a partition of Poland might have finally taken place in 1914… 

            And what of Sweden? It was always unlikely to remain a Great Power for long given its lack of population and resources. A century earlier, in 1611, Gustaf II Adolf had come to the throne at the age of 17 and inherited three different wars, much like his later successor. He accepted a disadvantageous peace with Denmark-Norway before intervening in the dynastic affairs of the Poles, whose king Sigismund had a claim on the throne of Sweden. This led to a protracted and inconclusive war. Gustav was more successful against the Russians, whom he beat back and kept away from the Baltic for the next hundred years. The Swedish army was reformed, giving them mobile light artillery, more muskets and smaller, manoeuvrable formations, making it the most powerful force in Europe at the time.  

In some ways, Sweden stepped into a void that was created in the 17th century when Germany was at its nadir due to the 30 Years War (1618-1648) and Russia during its Time of Troubles (1598-1613). The Swedes at their peak chose to invade the former rather than the latter in order to assist protestants in northern Germany against the Catholic Habsburgs. Some stunning victories were won, such as at Lützen in 1632 which cost Gustav Adolf his life, but actual gains for Sweden were slight. Had they instead chosen to invade Russia which was still recovering from its Time of Troubles with the Romanovs newly instated as regents, even cutting it off from the sea in Archangelsk as some proposed, Russia might have been permanently neutered and Sweden similarly strengthened.

However, this might equally have led to German Catholics dominating the southern coast of the Baltic and made Sweden into something of a protestant pariah, always open to invasion from the south. On the other hand, this might have prevented the rise of Prussia, another contender for Baltic dominance. With Russia and Prussia out of the game, perhaps Sweden enduring as a superpower would have led to a more peaceful Europe. It certainly would have led to a less peaceful Sweden. 

The Volcano Erupts

The Great Northern War may have been less catastrophic in Danish-ruled Iceland than in other Nordic countries due to its isolation. Nevertheless, it made its mark on the local culture. Halldór Laxness’ famous historical novel Iceland’s Bell begins with the titular object being broken up and sent to Denmark to help pay for the war.  While Laxness himself admitted it was a fabrication, for generations of Icelandic school children it nevertheless was the worst example of what the Danes did to us during 600 years of colonial rule. 

            But real disasters would strike and one of them is mentioned in a later volume of Laxness’ novel. In 1728, a third of Copenhagen burnt down due to a stableboy dropping a candle. One might assume this would be seen as a good thing after what they did to our bell, except that professor Árni Magnússon had diligently been sending Saga manuscripts to the Danish capital for most of his professional life. Much priceless literature was lost when the university district went up in flames, but Árni did manage to salvage many of the original calfskin manuscripts. Had he not, we might not have much of a culture at all. And because of events later in the century, we nearly did not have any inhabitants either.  

            The first ever census of a whole nation was taken in Iceland in 1703 by the same Árni and was so exact that, along with DNA research, it can to this day be used to trace the ancestry of modern Icelanders all the way back to the settlement era. 50,154 inhabitants are listed, all of whom lived in the countryside except for 204 residents of Reykjavík.  The country was not to reach such numbers again for the remainder of the century. The results were sent to Copenhagen and the idea was that Iceland, lagging behind, should be modernised, but due to the ongoing war the document was shelved and would only benefit later historians. Instead of improvement, Iceland was to endure a century of calamity. 

            The first disaster to befall was known as “Stórabóla,” or The Great Smallpox, which raged from 1707 to 1709. It probably arrived with the clothes of a man who had died enroute to Iceland, just as Black Death had 300 years previous. Around 18,000 people died, a third of the population. A previous smallpox plague had struck in 1672 and inoculated many of the survivors, with the result that those who died this time were mostly those who had been born since, that is, younger people.    

             Plagues would be a recurrent feature (as well as a bug) for the population of Iceland for the remainder of the century but the next major disaster to strike would be due to the weather. In the years 1755 to 1759, intense frost killed crops and icefloes blocked harbours, leading to famine. Grass did not grow in the summer and livestock died, leading to many farmers abandoning their fields and becoming destitute drifters. On top of everything else, Katla, one of Iceland’s biggest volcanoes, erupted which lasted for 120 days, the longest such in recorded history.  

Only one ship arrived from Denmark carrying rye and hard bread in the autumn of 1756, another in the spring of 1757, but little help was forthcoming from Copenhagen.  The reaction of local dignitaries to the disasters was more prompt. On 18th July 1757, they petitioned the king for permission to hang vagrants and petty thieves, most of them caught for stealing small amounts of food.  This would not only reduce their number but also the bureaucracy, as those sentenced to death had to be sent to Denmark, where their sentences were usually commuted to life imprisonment anyway. 

            The Danish king declined the request for capital punishment to be conducted locally. Instead, a prison was to be constructed in Reykjavík to house troublemakers. Largely built by the prospective inmates themselves, construction began in 1761 and it stood ready in 1770. By this time, the population of Iceland had dropped to 44,541, whereas in Reykjavík it had increased to 314.   

            The next disaster concerned sheep but was mainly of human making. The same year that plans were being drawn for a prison, Friedrich Wilhelm Hastfer, a Swedish-German baron in the employ of the Danish king, decided to import seven rams from England in order to improve Iceland's wool stock which by that time was becoming an export product. This turned out to have precisely the opposite effect, as the English rams carried with them English ticks. These proceeded to spread through most of the country’s sheep, destroying their wool and with it much of the export industry.

Various remedies were proposed, including smearing the livestock with strong urine or fresh human faeces, thus adding insult to injury for the poor animals, until finally it was decided that culling was the only viable option.  In 1760, Icelanders possessed a total of roughly 360,000 sheep. By 1770, there were just 140,000.  The country’s fledgeling attempts at industrialisation were thus derailed as the new factories set up in Reykjavík in order to work the wool stood empty. Eventually help was granted from Denmark to reconstitute the sheep stock, which seems to have worked reasonably well.  

            But worse was to come. Much worse. In late May 1783, earthquakes of increasing force were detected in southeast Iceland, leading many local residents to abandon their turf houses and sleep in tents farther from the source. Sailors passing the coast saw fire emanating from the mountains. On June 8th, the eruption proper began. The combined craters known as Lakagígar were around 25 kilometres long and was unlike anything seen before in the country. The amount of lava was the largest ever recorded and the ash blotted the sun from the sky. A dozen farms were overrun by the lava flow and the only thing that prevented the local church from being swallowed up was the famous “fire mass” of the reverend Jón Steingrímsson, although a glacial river passing between the two might have had something to do with it.  

            The church was saved but the rest of the country was not. The most destructive effects were due to the ashcloud that hung over most of southern Iceland, including some of the best farmland. This led to the event being known as “móðuharðindin,” or “The Foggy Hardship.” For the ashcloud turned out to be poisonous. 

            This did not affect people at first so much as livestock. Up to 75 percent of all sheep died, along with 40 percent of cows and 48 percent of horses.  The meat barely clung to the bones of the animals and even when cleaned and salted to the best of people’s ability, those who ate it rarely survived.  Enfeebled by hunger, people become more susceptible to yet another outbreak of smallpox. In addition, icefloes started to appear again, blocking the harbours. The population, which numbered 49,000 in 1783, was to drop down to 39,000 by 1786.  The eruption lasted until February 1784 but its effects were to linger for much longer. And they were felt much farther afield. 

The ash in the atmosphere resulted in an unusually cold winter on the mainland. In Britain, the changing weather led some believing the end of the world was nigh.  For roughly 23,000 Britons who keeled over on the fields by some accounts, it was. Vienna ran out of firewood in an attempt to keep warm. In Japan, the rice harvest failed, leading to the worst famine in that nation’s history. There was ice in the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska trees hardly grew. The oft repeated claim that Lakargígar caused the French Revolution is mostly unfounded as farming there had recovered before 1789, but it did contribute to the collapse of another ancient regime. Farming in Egypt was particularly badly affected, leading to its eventual breakaway from the Ottoman Empire and accelerating its decline. 

Danish Intervention

The Danes did belatedly attempt some relief. News of the disaster arrived in Copenhagen in early September 1783, almost three months after it began. A ship was outfitted with emergency provisions as well as a two-man committee to assess the situation. However, it was only possible to sail to Iceland during the summer months and that window was fast closing. As it turned out, the ship did not set out in time and had to spend the winter in Norway. Finally, in April 1784 the supplies arrived.  By this time the eruption was over but large tracts of land were becoming depopulated. Grass did not grow, either because of frost or ash, and even where it did there were few animals to graze upon it. If the population of Iceland was to survive, the livestock would have to be replenished. To this end, a collection was organised in the churches of Denmark and collectors even went door to door. Almost 9000 rigsdaler were raised, a considerable sum.  

Yet, not all the money seems to have gone to those who most needed it, some of it even winding up in the pockets of those who distributed it, including the venerable reverend Jón Steingrímsson. The Danes did not always trust Icelandic officials with funds, and perhaps rightly so as suits against both Jón Steingrímsson and the Sheriff Skúli Magnússon were to prove.  Still, in the independence struggle of the 19th century, the high mortality rate of the Foggy Hardship was blamed on the slow reaction of the Danes and the Danish trade monopoly.  

For those who subscribe to the black legend of Danish rule, the Royal Monopoly must constitute exhibit A. The monopoly begun in 1602 and allocated each district to a specific merchant, forbidding Icelanders from trading with other nations and even with other parts of their own island. This was unideal for an already impoverished, largely isolated country. But having reached its nadir, the only way to go was up.  

In August of 1786, Reykjavík, along with five other settlements, became recognised as a “kaupstaður,” a fully-fledged town with its own trading rights. Residents could now trade with any merchant of their own choosing, although these still had to have Danish citizenship, which of course also included Icelanders. This momentous event is still celebrated during the middle of August each year with an event known as Culture Night, falling on Reykjavík’s birthday as a city. Perhaps equally as important, vegetables were finally planted, particularly turnips, which did their job in combating both hunger and the endemic scurvy. It was to be the last famine in Iceland’s history (so far) and in 1852 fully free trade was finally introduced.  

The darkest hour turned out to be right before dawn and as the fog dispersed, the population began to grow again. Quite literally too, as the average height of Icelandic men in the 18th century was 167 cm but had been 5cm taller during the Viking Age. By 1950, it was 176.8 and by 2019 had cleared 180.8 while women reached 167.1. The prison where many were jailed during the Foggy Hardship for attempting to fill their bellies and many went on to die, is now the seat of government. Make of that what you will. 

In addition to ending the monopoly, the Danes made other innovations in the late 18th century. One was to introduce two pairs of hares to Iceland that were to reproduce and thus provide subsistence, the other was to import reindeer. The reindeer still exist somewhere up on the highlands in the east. The hares have not been spotted since and are assumed to have been eaten by local foxes.[1]

            But perhaps the most novel suggestion to improve the lives of Iceland’s inhabitants was the idea of moving them all somewhere else. This was pounced upon by Icelandic nationalists in the 19th century as further proof that the Danes wished to destroy Iceland but the suggestion had been real. What if it had been implemented? 

An Empty Iceland? 

In an article from 2017, renowned historian Helgi Skúli Kjartansson asks himself that very question. In order to render this scenario more plausible, he makes it rather worse. In actuality, just as the famine was reaching its peak in the spring of 1785, a good summer followed and hence ensured that people could fill the larders and survive the coming winter. In Helgi’s scenario this does not happen. Instead, a cold summer ensures that the famine continues and as the remaining livestock dies off, there is little hope that the population will recover. Large tracts of the north and east are laid waste. People abandon their farms and become drifters. As their numbers increase, wealthier farms have no choice but to share their spoils out of fear of revolution. Everything gets eaten until nothing is left. Things go slightly better in the west and south, but the situation is dire here too. 

Finally, the king makes a fateful decision. It is decreed that the remaining inhabitants will be transported to Denmark. Orphans are adopted in Copenhagen and surroundings, some young women become housemaids in the bigger cities while some of the young men join the army and navy. Those with education, usually from the University of Copenhagen, find administrative jobs in and around the capital. 

However, around 2000 of the survivors are brought to the Jutland heaths where, 15 years previously, German farmers had been settled in an attempt to make the area useful and became known as "potato Germans” after their main produce. That attempt was largely abandoned but the hardy Icelanders make more of a go at it, being used to windswept wastelands and enjoying higher living standards in Jutland than at home. The king generously donates sheep and cows and the Icelanders move into the empty German houses and even learn to grow potatoes. Soon they fan out to build separate farmsteads, as they are more accustomed to wide open spaces than towns. 

As time passes, the next generation mostly moves to more central areas of the Danish Kingdom while both Danes and Germans from the duchies to the south move into the area now made more hospitable by the new farmers. This leads to the Jutland Icelanders losing their specific language and characteristics over time, although tracing one’s lineage becomes a major pastime, even catching on among the Danes themselves. People of Icelandic descent contribute to Danish culture, one even winning a Nobel Prize for his novel about the struggles of first-generation Icelandic farmers on the Danish heaths. This is a reference to Halldór Laxness and his novel Independent People which was about farmers, but in this scenario he will likely not go on to write Iceland’s Bell which was about Danish oppression. 

But what of Iceland itself? Fishing ships would continue to visit from other parts of the Danish Empire, including Norway, the Faroes and Denmark itself, sometimes even crewed by exiled Icelanders. Mostly they sail in the summer but some elect to stay for the winter to pursue early spring fishing, though these would rarely remain for consecutive seasons. Meanwhile, survivors from the more remote parts of Iceland, including the Westfjords and the islands of Breiðafjörður, who subsisted on bird’s eggs and fish during the famine and were unaffected by smallpox, would by now have realised that Iceland would not be resettled any time soon. Some would cautiously make their way south to the better farmland once the smog began to clear. They would be joined by stragglers accused of stealing food who had hid themselves in the highlands to avoid the Danish ships when they came. Some of the fisherfolk would eventually decide to stay behind too, taking up residence on the mostly uninhabited island rather than returning back to cramped Denmark. 

Danish fishing would be brought to a sudden halt in 1807 when war would break out between Denmark and the British Empire. Cut off , this would again bring the tiny population of Iceland to the brink of starvation but perhaps the English would have intervened to stave it off. When peace would be made at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark would ask that Iceland be handed back. However, Great Britain would instead opt to give it to the reconstituted French kingdom in return for exclusive fishing rights in Newfoundland. As a French naval base, the island would go on to play a major role in both world wars. 

This is the broad outline of the setting as seen by Helgi Skúli Kjartansson, and despite the scenario relying on bad weather rather than the actions of individuals — thus rendering chaos theory mute — it has much to recommend it. He draws inspiration both from the end of the Norse colony in Greenland as well as the founding of New Iceland in Canada in the late 19th century. Perhaps the most questionable point is the British handing over their newly acquired territory to long-time adversary the French. In fact, what really did happen in Iceland in the Napoleonic Wars would seem even less plausible. It is this we will turn to next. 

Sources: 

„Elliðavatnsbærinn,“ heidmork.is. Skógræktarfélag Reykjavíkur. https://heidmork.is/heidmork/ellidavatnsbaer-og-jord/

Einarsson, Jón Kristinn. Jón Steingrímsson og Skaftáreldar. Sögufélag, Reykjavík, 2022. 

Erikson, Bo „Kampen om Östersjöen: Den store nordiske krig 1700-21. “All verdens historie, 2014: 4, p. 18-27.

Guðmundsdóttir, Jóhanna Þ. „Mannsþrekkur og önnur meðöl gegn fjárkláðanum fyrri.“ Skjalasafn.is. 2014. https://skjalasafn.is/heimild/mannsthrekkur_og_onnur_medol_gegn_fjarkladanum_fyrri

Grattan, John and Mark Brayshay, “An Amazing and Portentus Summer: Environmental and Social Response sin Britain to the 1783 Eruption of an Icelandic Volcano.“ The Geographical Journal, 1995. 161: 2, p. 125-134.

Gunnlaugsson, Gíslí Ágúst. „Viðbrögð stjórnvalda í Kaupmannahöfn við Skaftáreldum.“ Skaftáreldar 1783-1784. Ritgerðir og heimildir. Mál og menning, Reykjavík, 1984, p. 187-214. 

Gustafsson, Harald. Mellan kung och allmoge: ämbetsmän, beslutsprocess och inflytande på 1700-talets Island. Almqvist och Wiksell, Stockholm, 1985. 

Hálfdánarson, Guðmundur. „Mannfall í móðuharðindunum.“ Skaftáreldar 1783-1784. Ritgerðir og heimildir. Mál og menning, Reykjavík, 1984, p. 139-162.

Helgason, Haukur Már. Tugthúsið. Mál og menning, Reykjavík, 2022. 

Jörundsdóttir, Sigríður Hjördís. ‘Neyðarástand. Sýslumenn og sakamenn á harðindatímum 1755–1759’ (Master’s Thesis, University of Iceland, 2004).  

Kjartansson, Helgi Skúli. „Hvað ef Íslendingar hefðu verið fluttir á Jótlandsheiðar í Móðuharðindunum?“ Skírnir: tímarit Hins íslenska bókmenntafélags. 2017; 191: p. 403-431.

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[1] See. Haukur Már Helgason‘s Tugthúsið, about the history of Iceland and the prison in this period.