Islam in Iceland

Islam in Iceland is a minority religion. The Pew Research Center estimated that roughly 0.2% of the country was Muslim in 2010.

In 2011 the Muslims of Iceland attracted the interest of Al Jazeera, which planned a documentary dealing with Muslims in Iceland and New Zealand. Al Jazeera was interested in how Ramadan is honored in the higher latitudes where the night can be of unusual length when compared to the majority-Muslim lands.

The earliest mention of Iceland in Muslim sources originates in the works of Muhammad al-Idrisi (1099–1165/66) in his famous Tabula Rogeriana, which mentions Iceland's location in the North Sea.

The long-distance trading and raiding networks of the Vikings will have meant that various Icelanders, like the Norwegians Rögnvald Kali Kolsson or Harald Hardrada, came into direct contact with the Muslim world during the Middle Ages; indirect connections are best attested by finds of Arabic coins in Iceland, as also widely in the Viking world.

Following Iceland's conversion to Christianity around 1000, some Icelanders encountered the Islamic world through pilgrimage, for example to Jerusalem, of the kind described by Abbot Nikulás Bergsson in his Leiðarvísir og borgarskipan.

From around the late thirteenth century, a fantastical version of the Islamic world is prominent in medieval Icelandic romance, partly inspired by Continental narratives influenced by the Crusades. Although this image generally characterises the Islamic world as 'heathen', and repeats the misconceptions of Islam widespread in the medieval West, it also varies substantially from text to text, sometimes, for example, associating the Islamic world with great wealth, wisdom, or chivalry. Romance continued to serve as a medium for Icelanders to contemplate Islam in the post-medieval period, for example in Jón Oddsson Hjaltalín's eighteenth-century romance Fimmbræðra saga, which combined traditional storytelling with Continental Enlightenment scholarship.

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Wikipedia