The island sits on the north end of the mid-Atlantic Ridge. That source of new ocean floor continuously pumps lava up to form fresh rock; Iceland is the extreme case of this newly created land. So the entire island is full of volcanoes, geysers and hot springs.
On the other hand its latitude, situated well north of the main currents of the Gulf Stream, means that when not geothermically warmed, it is as cold as its name. Large glaciers persist in the highlands of the center and southeast.
The coast line is generally indented: possessing both peninsulas and fjords with the most prominent claw-like protuberance in the northwest.
More than 19 out of every 20 speaks Icelandic and practices Lutheran Protestant Christianity.
There are no large cities; Reykjavik, the capital, with its suburbs, has the majority of the nation's population.
This is one of the last places settled by humans.: first by small numbers of Irish-speaking Catholic Christian monks in the first millenium. Later the Old Norse arrived. These spoke the ancestral language of Icelandic and other Scandanavian languages, and were followed by Norwegians in more recent centuries.
The Old Norse converted to Christianity around the turn of the millenium: officially voting in the Catholic religion in the year 1000. I presume the version of Christianity switched to Lutheran when it did in Denmark(2)--the 16th century; Denmark's monarchs controlled Iceland and Norway(3) at the time.
(1) Island in Icelandic; this misleadingly matches an English word of a different meaning.
(2) Danmark in Danish.
(3) Norge in Norwegian.