Iceland’s national sport is glíma, a form of folk wrestling that Norse settlers brought with them. Its standard form is the trouser-grip style (brókartök), in which two wrestlers stand upright, hold each other by leather belts, step in a clockwise circle and try to throw the opponent. A wrestler loses a fall when any part of the body between elbow and knee touches the ground. Wrestling is recorded in the Jónsbók law book of 1325. Modern competitions date from 1888, and the main prize, Grettir’s Belt, has been contested since 1906. For crowds, though, football and handball come first. This guide goes place by place: the towns, clubs and halls where each sport is played.
Akureyri, 20 August 1906: the First Contest for Grettir’s Belt
Glíma’s most important prize was first contested not in the capital but in Akureyri. The town sits at the head of Eyjafjörður, the long fjord on the north coast, and is now the largest municipality outside the Capital Region, a port and fishing centre often called the “Capital of North Iceland”. On 20 August 1906 wrestlers met there for the first Grettisbeltið, or Belt of Grettir. It is named after Grettir Ásmundarson, the outlaw hero of Grettis saga, one of the Icelanders’ sagas, a group mostly written down in the 13th and 14th centuries; Grettir’s story is set in the 11th. The belt is described as the oldest trophy in Iceland. Whoever holds it carries the title glímukóngur, “glíma king”.
The modern sport took shape just before that first contest. Trouser-grip competitions had been held almost every year since 1888, but until 1905 wrestlers gripped each other’s trousers directly. In that year a special belt was introduced, worn around the waist with straps around each thigh, so that wrestlers had something solid to hold. The fixed grip is one hand in the belt and the other at thigh height, and it is still the grip used today. Women got a prize of their own much later. The Freyjumen, “Freyja’s necklace”, was first contested on 18 June 2000, and its winner is called glímudrottning, “glíma queen”.
The rules make glíma look quite unlike most wrestling. Wrestlers must stay upright, because bending forward at the waist is banned. They keep up a constant clockwise step called stígandi, which stops bouts from stalling and opens up chances to attack. Forcing an opponent down is considered unsporting, and wrestlers are meant to look over each other’s shoulders and wrestle by feel rather than sight. Training is built on eight main techniques that lead to about 50 different throws, all under a code of honour called drengskapur that asks for fairness and care for a partner’s safety.
Reykjavík’s Ármann Club and the Shield Wrestling of 1908
In Reykjavík the sport’s keeper is Glímufélagið Ármann, a club that traces its history to 1888, which makes it one of the oldest associations in Iceland. It was founded for glíma, and its rules still say it must protect Icelandic wrestling, although it now runs sections for athletics, basketball, gymnastics, judo, swimming and other sports. Early in 1908 the club was given a trophy, the Ármann Shield, to honour the best wrestler in Reykjavík. The contest named after it, Skjaldarglíma Ármanns, is one of the oldest and best-known sporting events in the country.
Schools kept glíma alive too. This page’s lead image, a 1934 Reykjavík scene, is the work of the Dutch photographer Willem van de Poll. It shows the glíma team of Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík, the city’s old grammar school, whose roots go back to a school founded at Skálholt in 1056. Two team members are wrestling on a grass slope while the rest watch, one of them holding a banner. Ármann later moved from its old grounds to Laugardalur, a district of Reykjavík. It shares that area with the club Þróttur, and it is also where the national football stadium and the main indoor arena stand.
Not every form of glíma is the polite trouser-grip style. In hryggspenna, or backhold wrestling, opponents grip each other around the upper body, and any part of the body other than the feet touching the ground loses. It is more a test of strength than of technique. Lausatök, or loose-grip wrestling, allows any hold and has two forms, one for friendly competition and one for self-defence. That style has found a home abroad, at the Norwegian Glima Championship and with a lausatök group in Finland.
Stockholm 1912 and Haukadalur: Glíma on Show
Glíma first reached an international audience at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, where trouser-grip wrestling was performed as a demonstration sport. Icelandic athletes had first taken part in the Olympics in 1908 and competed again in 1912; after a long gap Iceland returned in 1936 and has sent a team to every Summer Games since.
Visitors to Iceland can see the sport in stone as well as in a hall. A statue of two glíma wrestlers, one lifting the other off his feet in a throw, stands in Haukadalur in south Iceland, near the Geysir geothermal field on the tourist route known as the Golden Circle.
Glíma’s supporters have also applied for it to be added to UNESCO’s lists of intangible cultural heritage. The sport’s written record runs from the 1325 law book to the yearly contests for Grettir’s Belt, which have named a glíma king almost every year since 1906.
Laugardalsvöllur: 9,500 Seats and the Run to Euro 2016
For most Icelanders the sport they actually watch is football, and its home is Laugardalsvöllur in Reykjavík. The idea of a sports ground in Laugardalur goes back to 1871, when Reykjavík had only about 2,000 inhabitants. The town council set up a planning committee in 1943, and the pitch was built between 1949 and 1952. A 4,000-seat stand followed from 1953. The national team played its first match there against Norway in 1957, two years before the official opening on 17 June 1959. The stand was rebuilt and enlarged between 1965 and 1970, and a track-and-field hall under it was in use until 2007. Today the stadium seats 9,500 for football and about 28,000 for concerts.
The national league, long known as Úrvalsdeild and now called Besta deild karla, was founded in 1912 as the Icelandic Championship. Iceland played its first international on 29 July 1930, winning 1–0 away to the Faroe Islands. Its first match recognised by FIFA was a 3–0 home defeat by Denmark on 17 July 1946. Iceland joined FIFA in 1947 and UEFA in 1957, and it has entered qualifying for every World Cup and European Championship since 1974. The team is nicknamed Strákarnir okkar, “our boys”. In a friendly in Tallinn on 24 April 1996, Eiður Smári Guðjohnsen came on as a substitute for his father, Arnór, the first time a father and son had played in the same international match. Eiður later won the Premier League with Chelsea and the 2008–09 treble with Barcelona.
The rise came in the 2010s. Iceland beat the Netherlands home and away in qualifying and reached its first major tournament, UEFA Euro 2016 in France. There it drew with Portugal and Hungary, beat Austria 2–1, then knocked out England 2–1 in the round of 16, an upset that led England manager Roy Hodgson to resign straight after the final whistle. The host nation, France, ended the run with a 5–2 quarter-final win. On 9 October 2017 Iceland became the smallest nation by population ever to qualify for a World Cup, a record that stood until Curaçao qualified for the 2026 tournament in November 2025. At the 2018 finals in Russia, Alfreð Finnbogason scored the country’s first World Cup goal in a 1–1 draw with Argentina, and goalkeeper Hannes Þór Halldórsson saved a penalty from Lionel Messi.
Laugardalshöll and Beijing 2008: Handball’s Olympic Silver
Across the valley stands Laugardalshöll, opened on 4 December 1965 and still the home arena of Iceland’s national handball and basketball teams. Its main hall holds 2,300 for handball. A modern 8,600-seat arena is planned beside it and is expected to open in 2029 or 2030.
Handball has given Iceland its greatest team result. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing the men’s team, coached by Guðmundur Guðmundsson, won silver. It was the country’s first Olympic medal in a team sport and one of only four Olympic medals Iceland has ever won. Guðjón Valur Sigurðsson, Snorri Guðjónsson and Ólafur Stefánsson were named in the tournament’s all-star team, and much the same squad took bronze at the 2010 European Championship.
Strength sports bring Iceland its most individual titles. Icelanders have won the World’s Strongest Man contest nine times: Jón Páll Sigmarsson and Magnús Ver Magnússon won four times each, and Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson won in 2018. Björnsson also set an all-time deadlift world record of 501 kg in Kópavogur in 2020. Iceland had 394,324 people at the start of 2026. Even so, glíma, football, handball and strongman have each given it something to be proud of, and the glíma belt that first changed hands in Akureyri in 1906 is still contested every year. Runners have their own fixtures in the landscape: the Reykjavík Marathon, held in mid-August since 1984, drew 12,481 entrants across its races in 2011, and the 55 km Laugavegur Ultramarathon has been run every year since 1997.
To see these venues in context, read our guide to Reykjavík, Iceland’s capital, or visit the hot springs beside that wrestling statue in our article on Geysir and its geothermal field. For the athletes and writers behind Iceland’s wider reputation, see our list of famous people from Iceland.