University of Iceland Travel Guide

The University of Iceland ("Háskóli Íslands"), in Reykjavik, is Iceland's oldest and largest university. 

Learn more about the city on a tour of Reykjavik.

Photo from Wikimedia, Creative Commons, by James Mason-Hudson. No edits made.

The University was founded in 1911 as a civil servant's school and has since grown steadily to become the country's largest public research universities. The university sees an average enrollment of 14,000 students a year. 

The University has twenty-five faculties, split between fields of teaching and research that include humanities, medicine, natural sciences, teacher education, social sciences and engineering. The largest school is that of social sciences, with around 4700 enrolled students.

There are approximately thirty buildings that come under the University of Iceland's banner, the most recognisable of which is the main campus, covering 10 sq hectares directly to the south of the inner-city pond, Tjornin. The University library, Þjóðarbókhlaðan, is situated beside the main campus, whilst the university's oldest building was built in 1934. 

The University of Iceland is also the largest single workplace in the country, employing 700 tenured lecturers, over 2000 non-tenured lecturers and approximately 300 researchers and administrators.