Discover Iceland

Iceland is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, located near the Arctic Circle, between Greenland and Norway. An island of 103.000 km2 (40,000 square miles), it is about the same size as Hungary and Portugal, or Kentucky and Virginia. Iceland is the second largest island in Europe, following Great Britain, and the 18th largest island in the world. The coastline is 4,970 km, and Iceland maintains a 200 nautical-miles exclusive economic zone. It takes approximately five hours to fly from New York to Reykjavík, and three hours from London.

Iceland is one of the youngest landmasses on the planet, and consequently home to some of the world’s most active volcanoes. The island owes its existence to a large volcanic fissure in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the Eurasian and American tectonic plates meet. Even today, the country is growing by about 5 cm per year, as it splits wider at the points where two tectonic plates meet.

In 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted and in 2011 Grímsvötn. The latest volcanic eruption was in Holuhraun from August 2014 to February 2015. The eruption produced a lava field of more than 85 km2 (33 sq mi) and 1.4 km3 (0.34 cu mi) – the largest in Iceland since 1783.