Women's football in Iceland is growing in popularity.
History
The first women's football team in Iceland was
Fótboltafélagið Hvöt that was founded in 1914 in
Ísafjörður
Ísafjörður (pronounced , meaning ''ice fjord'', literally ''fjord of ices'') is a town in the northwest of Iceland.
The oldest part of Ísafjörður with the town centre is located on a spit of sand, or ''eyri'', in Skutulsfjörður, a fjord ...
after the girls had been denied to practice with Fótboltafélag Ísafjarðar, an all-boys team. A year later, future actress
Anna Borg
Anna Guðmundína Guðrún Borg (; 30 July 1903 – 14 April 1963) was a Danish-Icelandic actress of stage and screen and autobiographer. The daughter of the Icelandic actress , she grew up in a household where theatre was part of her daily life a ...
founded a short lived football team in
Reykjavík.
It took several decades for a women's national league to form, first with an indoors league in 1971. A year later the transition to the modern day outdoor league came with 8 teams participating in the inaugural season. Few of Iceland's traditional footballing heavyweights participated at first, but came in with the main expansion in 1982.
Club Football
Besta deild kvenna
The Besta deild kvenna is the top-tier women's football league in Iceland. It features 10 teams that play a double round robin to decide the champion, which qualifies for a spot in the UEFA Women's Champions League. The 2022 season was the fir ...
is the highest tier of women's football in Iceland.
International Team
Since the 21st Century Iceland has seen an upsurge of success with the national team qualifying for the
UEFA Women's Championship
The UEFA European Women's Championship, also called the UEFA Women's Euro, held every four years, is the main competition in women's association football between national teams of the UEFA confederation. The competition is the women's equivalent ...
four times and their greatest achievement was reaching the quarter finals of
UEFA Women's Euro 2013.
References
{{Iceland-sport-stub