The Man Behind the Legend
Long before Iceland was a settled land, a Norwegian Viking named Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson set out on one of the most audacious voyages in Norse history. His full nickname — Hrafna-Flóki, meaning "Raven-Flóki" — hints at the ingenious navigation technique that made him famous and eventually gave Iceland its name. He is the real-world inspiration behind the popular television character Floki in the series Vikings, though history and television diverge considerably.
What the Sagas Tell Us
The primary source for Floki's story is the Landnámabók (Book of Settlements), an Icelandic manuscript compiled in the 12th century but drawing on much older oral tradition. According to this account, Floki was a skilled sailor and a man of strong faith in the Norse gods. Before departing Norway, he performed a great sacrifice — offering three ravens to the gods as navigational guides.
His method was simple but brilliant:
- He released the first raven, which circled and returned to the ship — meaning land lay behind them, not ahead.
- The second raven flew out, circled, and also returned — still no land in the direction of travel.
- The third raven flew out and did not return — it had found land ahead. Floki followed its flight path directly to Iceland.
This technique, using birds to locate land, was a genuine Norse navigational practice. It appears elsewhere in Norse literature and is echoed in the Biblical story of Noah — a convergent solution to the same problem across cultures.
Arrival and the Naming of Iceland
Floki and his crew landed on the western coast of Iceland, settling near what is today Vatnsfjörður in the Westfjords region. The land was extraordinarily beautiful and the fishing was plentiful. The saga records that the crew became so absorbed in fishing during the summer that they failed to make hay — a catastrophic oversight that left their livestock with no winter fodder.
The winter that followed was brutal. The animals perished. The crew, cold and hungry, had serious doubts about this new land. When spring came and Floki climbed a mountain to survey the territory, he looked across a fjord filled with drifting pack ice. He named the island Ísland — Iceland — and the name has endured ever since.
A Mixed Assessment
Interestingly, the Landnámabók preserves the opinions of three different men from Floki's expedition, giving us a rare multi-perspective account:
- Floki himself reportedly spoke poorly of the land when he returned to Norway — the harsh winter had colored his view.
- Herjólfr, another crewman, gave a balanced account, saying it had both good and bad qualities.
- Þórólfr, an optimist nicknamed "Butter" for his enthusiasm, claimed butter dripped from every blade of grass — a Norse expression for exceptional abundance.
Despite his initial negative report, history records that Floki himself eventually returned to Iceland and settled there permanently. The land he had named in frustration became his home.
Floki's Place in the Story of Iceland
Floki was not the first person to reach Iceland — earlier Norse explorers, including Naddoðr and Garðar Svavarsson, had stumbled upon it before him. But Floki was the first to deliberately seek it out with the intention of settling. His voyage, likely in the 860s AD, came a generation before the official settlement of Iceland by Ingólfr Arnarson around 874 AD.
His story encapsulates many of the finest Viking qualities: boldness in exploration, practical ingenuity, honesty about failure, and ultimately — the resilience to return and succeed where he had once struggled.