Following Iceland's conversion to Christianity around 1000, some Icelanders encountered the Islamic world through pilgrimage, for example to Jerusalem, of the kind described by Abbot Nikulás Bergsson in his Leiðarvísir og borgarskipan.
Perhaps the earliest known example of Muslims coming to Iceland occurred in 1627, when the Dutch Muslim Jan Janszoon and his Barbary pirates raided portions of Iceland, including the southwest coast, Vestmannaeyjar, and the eastern fjords [REF].