High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The settlement of Iceland is generally believed to have begun in the second half of the 9th century AD, when Norse settlers migrated across the North Atlantic. (However, the results of recent carbon dating work, published in the journal Skírnir, suggests that the country may have been settled as early as the second half of the 7th century). The reasons for the migration may be traced to a shortage of arable land in Scandinavia, and civil strife brought about by the ambitions of the Norse king Harald the Fair-haired. Unlike Britain and Ireland, Iceland was unsettled land, and could be claimed without warring on the inhabitants.