Iceland

The name Iceland is Old Norse Ísland, meaning ice land, and it has survived unchanged in English since medieval merchants first traded there for salted cod in the 1400s. The Norwegian seafarer Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson sailed west around 868 CE and spent a winter on the island. He climbed a mountain, saw a fjord choked with sea ice, and gave the place its name. Before Flóki arrived, the Norwegian Naddodd had called it Snæland (snow land), and the Swede Garðar Svávarsson had called it Garðarshólmur after himself.

Old Norse Ísland breaks into two ancient pieces: ís (ice) and land (land). The word ís shares a Proto-Germanic root isaz with Old English is, Gothic eis, and modern German Eis. Land reaches further back, to Proto-Indo-European lendh- (open land, heath), the ancestor of English lawn, German Land, and Dutch land. Flóki's coinage, born of one bad winter, outlasted every rival name the island had ever worn.

The name passed into Old English as Ísland and appeared in Latin chronicles as Islandia by the 12th century. Ari Thorgilsson wrote the Íslendingabók around 1122, the first written history of Iceland, using this name throughout. Medieval European cartographers copied Islandia onto maps well into the 16th century. By the time English merchants arrived to trade for fish in the 1400s, Iceland was fixed in writing and in speech.

The irony has been remarked on since at least the 18th century: Iceland, with its 130 active volcanoes, geothermal springs, and green summer valleys, is far less icy than Greenland, which Erik the Red named with deliberate optimism around 985 CE. Flóki redeemed himself eventually, returning to Iceland and settling permanently. He died on the island he named, the man whose worst winter became the country's permanent address.