page_title: Western Norway
section_title: Emigration to Iceland
hierarchical_section_title: Western Norway / History / Emigration to Iceland
caption_attribution_description: English: American cultural icons, apple pie, baseball, and the American flag
context_page_description: Western Norway is the region along the Atlantic coast of southern Norway. It consists of the counties Rogaland, Vestland and Møre og Romsdal. The region has a population of approximately 1.3 million people. The largest city is Bergen and the second-largest is Stavanger. Historically the regions of Agder, Vest-Telemark, Hallingdal, Valdres and northern parts of Gudbrandsdal have been included in Western Norway.
  Western Norway, as well as other parts of historical regions of Norway, shares a common history with Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland and to a lesser extent the Netherlands and Britain. For example, the Icelandic horse is a close relative of the Fjord horse and both the Faroese and Icelandic languages are based on the Old West Norse.
  In early Norse times, people from Western Norway became settlers at the Western Isles in the Northern Atlantic, so that Orkney, Shetland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. During the Viking Age settlements were made at the Hebrides, Man and Ireland proper.
  In early modern time, Western Norway has had much emigration to the United States, Canada, and to a lesser extent to the United Kingdom.
context_section_description: The main source of information about the settlement period in Iceland is the Book of Settlements (Landnámabók), written in the 12th century, which gives a detailed account of the first settlers. According to this book, Western Norwegian sailors accidentally discovered the country. A few voyages of exploration were made soon after that and then the settlement started. Ingólfur Arnarson was said to be the first settler. He was a chieftain from Norway, arriving in Iceland with his family and dependents in 874. He built his farm in Reykjavík, the site of the present capital. During the next 60 years or so, Viking settlers from Scandinavia and also from Norse colonies in the British Isles—Ireland, Scotland and the Scottish Isles—settled in the country. There was therefore a Celtic element among the first inhabitants. The settlement of Iceland may also be viewed in the context of the general Viking expansion of the period, plausibly linked to population pressure in Western Norway and increasing scarcity of farming land.
  It has thus left few traces in the archaeological record, nor has it contributed more than a handful of words to the Icelandic language, which was a Scandinavian dialect, more or less identical with the Viking Age Norse spoken in Western Norway, the Faroes, Shetland, Orkney, etc. Today it is estimated that 60% of the Icelandic population are descendants of people from Western Norway.
caption: With the exception of Ireland, no single country contributed a larger percentage of its population to the United States than Norway, and Western Norway is not an exception. Famous Americans with ancestry from this part of Norway include Marilyn Monroe, Walter Mondale, Knute Rockne, Michele Bachmann and Knute Nelson.
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