Geography of Iceland - Essay Example

The population of Iceland as of April 2014 was 326,300, with 7 percent of the population being foreign nationals (“QuickFacts”). The capital city of Iceland is Reykjavik and the median age of people is 37.1 years (“QuickFacts”). The size of Iceland is 103,000 sq. km which makes the country slightly smaller than Cuba but larger than Portugal and Hungary in area. Iceland has a parliamentary constitutional republic government. Iceland does not adopt daylight saving time and throughout the year, is on the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Most Icelanders are remarkably homogeneous and descend from the Celt and Norwegian settlers. Government statistics of Iceland note that 94 percent of the inhabitants of Iceland live in the urban regions whereas up to 63 percent are the residents of the Reykjavik metropolitan area ("People").

The history of Iceland can be understood to be based on survival and prosperity. Iceland was discovered by Scandinavian sailors around the mid-ninth century. The first settler arrived in Iceland in 874. Landnámabók, the book of settlements, compiled in the 12th century contains information about the initial 400 settlers in Iceland. A famous story set down there is that Floki, a Norse Viking made a voyage to Iceland but he spent all his time and energy on fishing and hunting and thus could not lay up any hay for the livestock, because of which they died during the winters, thus giving the land its name as Iceland. Icelandic history is shaped by the Norsemen settlers from the British Isles, Celts, and Scandinavia around the 9th and 10th centuries and is significantly shaped by the events occurring on the Nordic Countries' larger political stage (“History”). Christianity was adopted in Iceland around the year 1000 (“History”). Nearly 33 percent of Icelanders were wiped out during the Black Plague infection in 1402. In 1940, the British Troops occupied Iceland. The Republic of Iceland was formally established in 1944 (“History”). The Icelandic language has remained almost the same since the 12th century and it's similar to the Old Norse language. Letters of the Icelandic alphabet are not recognized in modern English. For example, Þ is an Icelandic alphabet that is pronounced as "th".

The most prominent religion in Iceland is Christianity. This is evident from the fact that the population following the Lutheran Church in Iceland is 80.7 percent, those following the Roman Catholic Church make up 2.5 percent of the total, and other populations include “Free Church 2.4%, Hafnarfjorour Free Church 1.6%, other religions 3.6%, unaffiliated 3%, other or unspecified 6.2% (2006 est.)” (“Iceland Religions”). Up to 84 percent of the population of Iceland belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the state church, or a range of other Lutheran Churches ("People"). However, there is complete freedom of practicing religion and following the belief of choice in Iceland and there are nearly 20 other congregations of religion in Iceland. With such a heavy representation of Christians in the population of Iceland, the effect of Christianity on consumer behaviors cannot be underestimated. Owing to the fact that bribery and corruption are visualized as grave social evils in Christianity and many other religions, acts of bribery, violence, and corruption are dealt with very seriously in Iceland and transparency is valued by the Icelanders in all business dealings. In spite of the fact that in the 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index, Iceland is highly ranked as the 13th least corrupt country all over the world, there has been a clear mark of the banking crisis of 2008 as Iceland was the country ranked the highest in the index in the year 2005 (“business etiquette”).