Symbols
112Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Flag & national symbols
🇮🇸 is the regional indicators I + S. The flag in hearts: blue, white, red. The dragon, the eagle, the bull and the giant (🧌, in Folklore below) are the four landvættir, the guardian spirits on the coat of arms.
Money
The Icelandic króna is written kr or ISK and has no Unicode sign of its own. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, even for a coffee.
Icelandic letters
The letters of the Icelandic alphabet that are not plain A–Z, in alphabetical order (Þ, Æ and Ö come last), then the Icelandic quotation marks „ “.
Fire & ice
Volcanoes, glaciers, hot springs and geysers, waterfalls, black basalt and the sea. There is no geyser emoji: 💦 or ♨️ stands in.
Sky & weather
🌌 stands in for the northern lights (there is no aurora emoji); ☀️ 🌅 for the midnight sun of June, 🌙 for the long winter nights.
Animals
🐦 stands in for the puffin. The Icelandic horse, the sheep and the sheepdog are breeds of their own; the arctic fox is the only native land mammal.
Food & drink
Skyr 🥣, the Reykjavík hot dog 🌭, langoustine 🦞, hákarl 🦈, smoked lamb 🍖, rye bread baked in the hot ground 🍞, Brennivín 🥃.
Folklore & holidays
Trolls and hidden people, the thirteen Yule Lads and the shoe in the window, the Yule Cat, the Christmas book flood, New Year's fireworks and the 17 June National Day.
Sagas, parliament & culture
The sagas and the Norse settlers' ships, the Althing (founded 930), Hallgrímskirkja, the lopapeysa wool sweater, the music scene, and the swimming pools and hot pots of every town.
Sports
Football and the Viking clap, handball, strongman, and the 1972 chess match in Reykjavík.
Travel
The Ring Road, a 4×4 for the highlands, hiking boots, a tent and a camera.
Neighbours
Norway, where most settlers came from; Denmark, which ruled Iceland until 1918; and the North Atlantic neighbours, the Faroe Islands and Greenland.
🇮🇸 on the world map
Iceland flag emoji 🇮🇸: how it works and what the flag means
The Iceland flag emoji is not a single picture in Unicode. It is two regional indicator letters, I and S, Iceland's ISO country code, which phones and apps draw together as the flag. Country flags like this became emoji in 2015. Where flags are not supported, notably Windows' own emoji font, the reader sees the letters IS instead; the text underneath is the same, so it still shows as a flag on a phone.
The flag, Íslenski fáninn, is a blue field with a red Nordic cross edged in white. The usual reading of the Iceland flag colours is the country itself: blue for the sea and the sky, white for the snow and the glaciers, red for the fire of the volcanoes. It was approved for use at home in 1915, became the flag of the sovereign Kingdom of Iceland in 1918, and the flag of the republic on 17 June 1944. Without the flag, people paste its colours as hearts, .
Iceland flag vs Norway flag is one of the most searched mix-ups: they use the same three colours in the same cross, swapped. Iceland is blue with a white-edged red cross; Norway is red with a white-edged blue cross. The likeness is no accident, since most of Iceland's settlers came from Norway in the 800s.
Iceland symbols: the guardian spirits, the puffin and the falcon
The coat of arms of Iceland shows the flag's cross on a shield held by the four landvættir, the guardian spirits of the land from an old saga story: a dragon in the east, an eagle (often called a griffin) in the north, a bull in the west and a giant in the south, who together drove off a Danish king's spy, a wizard sent in the shape of a whale. is the set people paste for them. The gyrfalcon, the white falcon of the north, stood on Iceland's earlier arms and is often named as its national bird; covers it too.
Search "iceland symbols" and you also find Icelandic magical staves such as the Vegvísir and the Ægishjálmur, drawn signs from old manuscripts that are popular as tattoos. They have no Unicode characters, so they cannot be pasted as text; what you can paste are the letters around them, like the Æ of Ægishjálmur. The everyday symbol of Iceland on souvenirs and in posts is simpler: for the puffin, which has no emoji of its own.
Fire and ice: and the Icelandic year of light
Volcano and Ice are the two halves of Iceland's nickname, the land of fire and ice. Glaciers cover about a tenth of the country, and many volcanoes lie beneath them. Eyjafjallajökull's eruption in 2010 severely disrupted air travel across Europe, and since 2021 a run of eruptions on the Reykjanes peninsula near Grindavík has put on Icelandic feeds again and again. are the glaciers and peaks, the waterfalls such as Gullfoss and Seljalandsfoss, the black basalt columns and sea stacks, the North Atlantic all round.
Hot springs and are the geothermal country. The word geyser comes from Geysir, a hot spring in southern Iceland; its neighbour Strokkur shoots water into the air every few minutes. Hot water from the ground heats around nine homes in ten, and every town has an outdoor swimming pool with hot pots, so and belong to daily life, not just to the Blue Lagoon.
The light changes the whole year. are the bright nights of June, when the sun barely sets in Reykjavík and does not set at all on Grímsey, the island on the Arctic Circle. is the short days of December, and stands in for the northern lights, norðurljós, seen on clear dark nights from about September to April; there is no aurora emoji. are the weather that comes with it all.
Icelandic letters: þ ð æ ö and the accented vowels, copy and paste
The Icelandic alphabet has 32 letters, and ten of them are not plain A–Z: Á Ð É Í Ó Ú Ý Þ Æ Ö, small á ð é í ó ú ý þ æ ö. C, Q, W and Z are not part of it. Þ þ (thorn) is the "th" of thing, as in Þingvellir and þakka þér, "thank you"; Ð ð (eth) is the softer "th" of this, and it never starts a word, so the capital Ð turns up mainly in names written all in capitals. Both letters came from Old English, which also used them; Icelandic is the only language that still writes þ.
The accent on á é í ó ú ý does not mark stress (Icelandic stress is always on the first syllable); it makes a different vowel. á sounds like "ow" in cow, é like "ye" in yes, í and ý both like "ee", ó like "oh", ú like "oo". æ is the "i" of ice, and ö is the rounded vowel of German schön. That is why the accents matter: Ísland starts with "ee", and dropping an accent can give you another word: sál is a soul, sal a hall. Icelandic quotation marks open low and close high: „Góðan daginn!“
How to type þ and the other Icelandic letters: on Windows hold Alt and type on the number pad 0222 for Þ, 0254 þ, 0208 Ð, 0240 ð, 0198 Æ, 0230 æ, 0214 Ö, 0246 ö, and 0193 Á, 0225 á, 0201 É, 0233 é, 0205 Í, 0237 í, 0211 Ó, 0243 ó, 0218 Ú, 0250 ú, 0221 Ý, 0253 ý. With the US-International layout, AltGrT gives þ, AltGrD ð, AltGrZ æ, AltGrP ö, and an apostrophe before a vowel gives the acute. On a Mac, Option' gives æ, OptionE then a vowel gives the acute and OptionU then O gives ö; for þ and ð add the Icelandic input source or use the Character Viewer. On phones, add the Icelandic keyboard (iPhone and Android both have one) for þ, ð, æ and ö on their own keys. In HTML they are þ ð æ ö. The Icelandic language page has the whole alphabet; Faroese, its closest relative, shares ð, æ and most of the accented vowels.
Animals, food and the Icelandic year in emoji
is the Icelandic horse, small, sturdy and long-maned, with an extra gait, the smooth tölt. No horses may be brought into Iceland, and one that leaves can never return, which has kept the breed pure for a thousand years. are the sheep that roam the hills all summer, the Icelandic sheepdog, the arctic fox, the only land mammal that was there before people, and the reindeer of the east, brought over in the 1700s. At sea, stand in for the humpbacks, minkes, orcas and white-beaked dolphins seen on whale-watching trips, the seals, and the cod that built the economy. is the puffin, the raven and the eider duck.
Food: is skyr, the thick Icelandic dairy food eaten from a bowl; is the Reykjavík hot dog, ordered ein með öllu, "one with everything"; is ice cream, eaten even in winter; is langoustine, the pride of Höfn; and is the dark rye bread baked slowly in hot ground. is hangikjöt, smoked lamb for Christmas, and at the midwinter feast Þorrablót it sits beside hákarl, fermented shark, washed down with Brennivín. has a story of its own: beer was banned for most of the 20th century and became legal on 1 March 1989, still marked as Bjórdagurinn, Beer Day.
Christmas in Iceland has thirteen Yule Lads, jólasveinar, mischievous trolls' sons who come down from the mountains one a night from 12 December. Children leave a shoe in the window and find a small gift, or a potato if they were naughty. The Yule Cat, Jólakötturinn, is said to eat anyone who gets no new clothes for Christmas. On Christmas Eve people give each other books and read into the night, the jólabókaflóð, the Christmas book flood: . New Year's Eve brings bonfires and a huge amount of private fireworks for such a small country, set off across the city rather than at one official show, , and is for 17 June, National Day, the birthday of the independence leader Jón Sigurðsson and of the republic in 1944.
Sagas, sports and the Ring Road
is the Icelandic sagas, the medieval prose tales of the first settlers' families, and are the Norse ships and shields of the settlement age from about 870. is the Althing, founded in 930 at Þingvellir, an open-air assembly in a rift valley, and counted among the oldest parliaments in the world. is Hallgrímskirkja, the concrete church whose stepped front recalls basalt columns, above Reykjavík. are the trolls and huldufólk, the hidden people, of the folk tales; the sea stacks of Reynisdrangar are said to be trolls caught by the sunrise. is the lopapeysa, the wool sweater with a patterned yoke, and the music scene of Björk and Sigur Rós.
is the national football team and the "Viking clap": slow, thunderous claps with a shout of Húh! that the fans made famous at Euro 2016, where Iceland beat England 2–1. Two years later Iceland became the smallest country ever to play at a World Cup; Curaçao broke the record in 2026. is handball, where Iceland won Olympic silver in 2008; is strongman, with Icelanders winning World's Strongest Man many times, from Jón Páll Sigmarsson to Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson; and is the 1972 world chess championship between Fischer and Spassky, played in Reykjavík.
Visitors post on landing at Keflavík, for the Ring Road around the island, for a 44 into the highlands, and for the trails. Prices are in krónur, written 1.990 kr with a dot for thousands; there is no króna sign in Unicode, so and stand in, and cards are taken almost everywhere. Neighbours on the page are Norway, Denmark, which ruled Iceland until 1918 and whose language is still taught in schools, and the Faroe Islands and Greenland.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyIceland Emoji & Symbols combos
15Worth knowing
- The English word geyser comes from Geysir, a hot spring in southern Iceland whose name means roughly "the gusher".
- Icelandic is the only language that still writes the letter þ; English used it too, and the "ye" of "Ye Olde Shoppe" is a typographic stand-in for þe, "the".
- Most Icelanders have no family name: their last name says whose child they are, -son or -dóttir, so the phone book is sorted by first name.
- Beer stronger than 2.25 % was banned in Iceland until 1 March 1989, a date still celebrated as Beer Day.
- Iceland was one of the very few places on Earth with no confirmed mosquitoes until October 2025, when three Culiseta annulata were found there.
Questions people ask
8Is there an Iceland flag emoji?
Yes: . It is made of the regional indicator letters I and S. Phones show it as the flag; Windows' own emoji font shows the letters IS instead, but the text is the same, so copy it from this page and it appears as a flag wherever flags are supported.
What do the colours of the Icelandic flag mean?
The common reading is blue for the sea and sky, white for snow and ice, and red for volcanic fire. In emoji people write it or as hearts .
What is the difference between the Iceland flag and the Norway flag?
They swap colours. Iceland is blue with a red cross edged in white; Norway is red with a blue cross edged in white.
How do you type þ?
On Windows hold Alt and type 0254 on the number pad (0222 for capital Þ); with US-International, AltGrT. On a Mac or phone, add the Icelandic keyboard, which has þ on its own key. In HTML write þ. Or copy þ from the grid on this page.
What are the Icelandic letters not in English?
Þ þ (thorn), Ð ð (eth), Æ æ and Ö ö, plus the acute vowels Á á, É é, Í í, Ó ó, Ú ú and Ý ý. All are in the grid above, ready to copy.
What are the Icelandic alt codes?
Þ 0222, þ 0254, Ð 0208, ð 0240, Æ 0198, æ 0230, Ö 0214, ö 0246, Á 0193, á 0225, É 0201, é 0233, Í 0205, í 0237, Ó 0211, ó 0243, Ú 0218, ú 0250, Ý 0221, ý 0253: hold Alt and type the number on the number pad.
What is the currency symbol of Iceland?
The Icelandic króna has no Unicode sign. It is written kr after the amount, 1.990 kr, or ISK in banking. and are the usual emoji stand-ins.
What is the national animal of Iceland?
There is no single official one. The gyrfalcon is often called the national bird, the puffin is the best-loved symbol, and the coat of arms carries four guardian spirits: dragon , eagle , bull and giant .
