Reykjavík

According to the Landnámabók, the medieval book of settlements, Iceland's settlement began here in 874, when Ingólfur Arnarson arrived from Norway. For more than 900 years afterwards there was no town, only a farm. In 1752 King Frederik V of Denmark gave the Reykjavík estate to the Innréttingar, a company led by Skúli Magnússon, which set up wool workshops and tried its hand at fisheries, sulphur mining, agriculture and shipbuilding. When the Danish Crown abolished its trade monopoly in 1786 and granted six communities trading charters, Reykjavík was one of them, and 1786 is regarded as the city's founding date.

The town became the national capital step by step. The Althing, which had met at Þingvellir until it was suspended, was re-established in Reykjavík in 1845 and gained limited legislative powers with the constitution of 1874. The post of mayor was created in 1907. By the 1920s and 1930s most of Iceland's growing trawler fleet sailed from Reykjavík and cod was its main industry, though the Great Depression brought unemployment and bitter labour disputes.

On 10 May 1940 four British warships anchored in the harbour, and for the rest of the war British and then American soldiers in the city numbered about as many as the residents. The British built Reykjavík Airport and the Americans the airfield at Keflavík. The republic followed in 1944, with the president's office in the city. Reagan and Gorbachev met at Höfði in 1986. A building boom in the 2000s was cut short by the 2008 financial crisis, but Harpa opened in 2011, and in 2010 the comedian Jón Gnarr, leader of the new Best Party, became mayor. The current mayor is Hildur Björnsdóttir.

Reykjavík was named a UNESCO City of Literature in 2011. Most of Iceland's writers live in the city, and it is the setting for most contemporary Icelandic fiction — a literary life that has grown with the city over the past century. Music is just as central. Iceland Airwaves has filled venues across the city since 1999, now in November, with Harpa among its venues, and smaller rooms such as Kex, Húrra, Gaukurinn and the experimental Mengi keep a live scene going all year, alongside the Icelandic Opera and the National Theatre.

The city's biggest gatherings are in August. Reykjavík Pride, first held in 1999, is now Iceland's largest annual festival, and its parade, Gleðigangan, the "march of joy", draws more than 100,000 people into the centre. Menningarnótt, Culture Night, started in 1996 and fills the streets with free concerts, usually on the first Saturday after 18 August. In 2013 the mayor, Jón Gnarr, asked the city council to end Reykjavík's twinning with Moscow in response to Russia's anti-gay laws.

Everyday social life runs through the geothermally heated pools, where people soak in the hot tubs and talk; Laugardalslaug alone had about 800,000 visits in 2010. Football clubs are tied to districts — KR to Vesturbær, Valur to Hlíðar, Þróttur to Laugardalur. Tipping is not done, first names are the norm, and feeding the ducks and geese at Tjörnin is a habit shared by children and adults alike.

The municipality of Reykjavík had about 140,000 residents on 1 January 2026, about 35 per cent of Iceland's population, and the wider Capital Region around 252,000. The city has changed fast: immigrants and their children made up 26.7 per cent of residents in 2026, against 2.9 per cent in 1998, and most foreign residents come from other European countries, many of them from the Eastern European states that joined the EU from 2004.

Reykjavík is the centre of the country's government, business and culture, and its old harbour still serves trawlers alongside tour boats and cruise ships, while Sundahöfn in the east is the country's largest cargo port. Tourists, students and other temporary residents sometimes outnumber locals in the centre. Volcanic heat runs the city: every building is heated by geothermal water, which also warms the public pools and the snow-melting pipes under the busiest streets and many private driveways.

Most people live in flats and houses in residential districts such as Vesturbær, Hlíðar and the newer suburbs to the east. Car ownership is among the highest in the world — 779 cars per 1,000 people in 2024 — and a rapid-bus network, Borgarlína, is planned to ease dependence on the car, with its first phase due in 2031. Whether to move the domestic airport, which takes up land close to the centre, has been debated for years with no decision.

The city's best-known snack is the hot dog. Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, "the town's best hot dogs", has been selling them from a stand in the centre since 1937: a sausage made mainly of lamb with pork and beef, served in a bun with ketchup, sweet mustard, remoulade and both crisp fried and raw onion. Bill Clinton's order of one with only mustard in 2004 became part of the stand's story.

Fish and lamb are the foundations of Icelandic cooking, and the harbour is the place for fish: Sægreifinn, in a quayside shed near the whale-watching kiosks, is known for lobster soup and grilled fish. At the Kolaportið flea market at weekends, fishmongers sell hákarl, the fermented shark, harðfiskur, dried cod, and pickled herring. Traditional foods are still part of everyday eating: skyr, a soft yoghurt-like cheese eaten with a spoon; rúgbrauð, a dense, dark and moist rye bread; hangikjöt, smoked lamb, often served in thin slices on flatkaka, a soft rye flatbread; and kleina, a small knotted bun of fried dough.

At the other end of the scale, the New Nordic restaurant Dill, opened in 2009, became the first in Iceland to win a Michelin star in 2017. Laugavegur and the streets around it hold most of the city's restaurants, cafés and bars, and at midwinter many Icelanders still gather for þorramatur, a buffet of cured meat and fish served with rúgbrauð and brennivín, an Icelandic akvavit.