Gunnar Karlsson

Iceland is unique among European societies in having been founded as late as the Viking Age and in having copious written and archaeological sources about its origin. Gunnar Karlsson, that country's premier historian, chronicles the age of the Sagas, consulting them to describe an era without a monarch or central authority. Equating this prosperous time with the golden age of antiquity in world history, Karlsson then marks a correspondence between the Dark Ages of Europe and Iceland's "dreary period", which started with the loss of political independence in the late thirteenth century and culminated with an epoch of poverty and humility, especially during the early Modern Age. Iceland's renaissance came about with the successful struggle for independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and with the industrial and technical modernization of the first half of the twentieth century. Karlsson describes the rise of nationalism as Iceland's mostly poor peasants set about breaking with Denmark, and he shows how Iceland in the twentieth century slowly caught up economically with its European neighbors.

The History of Iceland

Michael I. Smirnov

The Internet has nearly a ten year history as a global, public communication infrastructure. The two applications that have created the demand from private and business users have been the World-Wide Web and electronic mail. We have inthelast?veyearsseentherapidlyemergingpopularityofpeer-to-peersharing of ?les, mostly for music, and to a more limited extent also the introduction of Internet telephony, television, and radio. These services place demands on the infrastructure that are higher with respect to quality and connectivity than web sur?ng and e-mail. Mobile (cellular) telephony has rivaled the Internet with respect to growth during the last decade. The hitherto separate networks are now set to merge into a mobile Internet that will give wireless access to all Internet services. The ambition behind the Internet’s continuing development is that it should serve as a general-purpose infrastructure and provide adequate support for all types of applications in terms of quality, connectivity, and cost. Thus the demands made on all Internet services must also be met by wireless access, and the circuit quality of a voice connection for mobile telephony must also be provided in the wiredIPnetworks.

4th COST 263 International Workshop on Quality of Future Internet Services, QoFIS 2003, Stockholm, Sweden, October 1-2, 2003, Proceedings

Quality for All

'Iceland's 1100 Years' recounts the history of a society on the margin of Europe as well as on the margin of reaching the size and wealth of a proper state. Iceland is unique among the European societies in being founded as late as the Viking Age, and in surviving for centuries without any central power after Christianity had introduced the art of writing. This was the age of the Sagas, which are not only literature but also a rare treasury of sources about a stateless society.In sharp contrast to the prosperous society portrayed by the Sagas, early modern Iceland appears to have been extremely poor and miserable. It is challenging to question whether the deterioration was due to foreign rule, to a colder climate, or to an unfortunate internal power structure.Or was the Golden Age perhaps the invention of 19th-century nationalists? Iceland adopted nationalism quickly and thoroughly. In the mid-nineteenth century about 60,000 inhabitants, mostly poor peasants, set out to gain independence from Denmark, which was finally achieved in 1944 with the foundation of a republic. In recent decades Iceland has caught up economically with its closest neighbours. This has come about mainly through the mechanisation of fishing, which gave rise to a second battle for sovereignty, this time over the country's fishing grounds.

The History of a Marginal Society

Iceland's 1100 Years

Vilhelm Moberg -- en vänbok

Iceland's 1100 Years recounts the history of a society on the margin of Europe as well as on the margin of reaching the size and wealth of a proper state. Iceland is unique among the European societies in being founded as late as the Viking Age, and in surviving for centuries without any central power after Christianity had introduced the art of writing. This was the age of the Sagas, which are not only literature but also a rare treasury of sources about a stateless society. In sharp contrast to the prosperous society portrayed by the Sagas, early modern Iceland appears to have been extremely poor and miserable. It is challenging to question whether the deterioration was due to foreign rule, to a colder climate, or to an unfortunate internal power structure. Or was the Golden Age perhaps the invention of 19th-century nationalists? Iceland adopted nationalism quickly and thoroughly. In the mid-nineteenth century about 60,000 inhabitants, mostly poor peasants, set out to gain independence from Denmark, which was finally achieved in 1944 with the foundation of a republic. In recent decades Iceland has caught up economically with its closest neighbours. This has come about mainly through the mechanisation of fishing, which gave rise to a second battle for sovereignty, this time over the country's fishing grounds.

Gunnar Karlsson

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