The Icelandic Commonwealth, Icelandic Free State, or Republic of Iceland (Icelandic: Þjóðveldið) was the state existing in Iceland between the establishment of the Althing in 930 and the pledge of fealty to the Norwegian king with the Old Covenant in 1262. With the possible exception of Papar, Iceland was an uninhabited island until around 870, when immigrants fleeing from the unification of Norway under King Harald Fairhair began the Norse settlement in Iceland.
Read more about Icelandic Commonwealth: Goðorð System, Court System, Warfare, Decline and Fall
Famous quotes containing the word commonwealth:
“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)