Icelandic passports are issued to citizens of

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

for the purpose of international travel. Beside serving as proof of Icelandic citizenship, they facilitate the process of securing assistance from Icelandic consular officials abroad (or public officials in the mission of another Nordic country in case an Icelandic consular official is absent).Article 34 of the Helsinky Treaty
Article 34 p. 8
The

passport A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...

allows for the

freedom of movement Freedom of movement, mobility rights, or the right to travel is a human rights concept encompassing the right of individuals to travel from place to place within the territory of a country,Jérémiee Gilbert, ''Nomadic Peoples and Human Rights' ...

in any of the states of EFTA and the EEA. This is because Iceland is a member state of

EFTA The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organization and free trade area consisting of four European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The organization operates in parallel with the European Uni ...

, and by virtue of it also being a member of the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Ass ...

(EEA) and part of the

Schengen Area The Schengen Area ( , ) is an area comprising 27 European countries that have officially abolished all passport and all other types of border control at their mutual borders. Being an element within the wider area of freedom, security and j ...

. For travel within the

Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; literal translation, lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmar ...

no identity documentation is legally required for Nordic citizens due to the

Nordic Passport Union The Nordic Passport Union allows citizens of the Nordic countriesIceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finlandto travel and reside in another Nordic country without any travel documentation (e.g. a passport or national identity card) or a reside ...

History

A new design was put into circulation in May 1987. It featured a dark blue (near-black) cover, laser-printed pages, and a laminated information page. The first machine-readable Icelandic passports were introduced on 1 June 1999, having a blue cover, a machine-readable strip and improved security features. A hard-plastic page with a biometric chip was added in May 2006,Þjóðskrá Íslands - Algengar spurningar (Archived)
/ref> and the validity was temporarily shortened from ten years to five. In June 2013, the chip was relocated to the back cover and the validity restored to ten years. A new Icelandic passport design was introduced on 1 February 2019, featuring a slightly enlarged Icelandic coat of arms and

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

wording on the front cover.

Physical Appearance

Icelandic passports are

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obs ...

, with the Icelandic coat of arms emblazoned in the centre of the front cover. The words "ÍSLAND" ( Icelandic), "ICELAND" (

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

) and "ISLANDE" ( French) are inscribed above the coat of arms and the words "VEGABRÉF" ( Icelandic), "PASSPORT" (

) and "PASSEPORT" ( French) are inscribed below the coat of arms. Icelandic passports have the standard biometric symbol at the bottom. ''Vegabréf'', the Icelandic word for passport, literally means "road letter", which was the Scandinavian word for

internal passport An internal passport or a domestic passport is an identity document. Uses for internal passports have included restricting citizens of a subdivided state to employment in their own area (preventing their migration to richer cities or regions), cle ...

s when such existed in Scandinavia.

Identity Information Page

The Icelandic passport includes the following data: * Photo of Passport Holder * Type (PA) * Code (ISL) * Passport No. * Surname * Given Names * Nationality * Height * Date of Birth * Personal code number * Sex * Place of Birth * Date of Issue * Date of Expiry * Authority The information page ends with the

Machine Readable Zone A machine-readable passport (MRP) is a machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with the data on the identity page encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s. Mos ...

Different spellings of the same name

Personal names containing the special Icelandic letters (ð, þ, æ, ö) are spelled the correct way in the non-machine-readable zone, but are mapped in the machine-readable zone. ð becomes D, þ becomes TH, æ becomes AE, and ö becomes OE.
Letters with accents are replaced by simple letters (e.g., é → E). This follows the standard for

machine-readable passport A machine-readable passport (MRP) is a machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with the data on the identity page encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s. Mos ...

Languages

The data page/information page is printed in Icelandic,

and French.

Visa free travel

Visa requirements for Icelandic citizens are administrative entry restrictions by the authorities of other states placed on citizens of

. As of 3 April 2020, Icelandic citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 180 countries and territories, ranking the Icelandic passport 11th in the world in terms of travel freedom (tied with Latvian and Slovenian passports) according to the

Henley Passport Index The Henley Passport Index (abbreviation: HPI) is a global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom enjoyed by the holders of that country's ordinary passport for its citizens. It started in 2006 as Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions ...

. As a member of the

European Free Trade Association The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organization and free trade area consisting of four List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe, European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerlan ...

(EFTA), Icelandic citizens have freedom of movement to live and work in other EFTA countries in accordance with the EFTA convention. Moreover, by virtue of Iceland's membership of the

(EEA), Icelandic citizens also enjoy freedom of movement within all EEA member states. The

Citizens’ Rights Directive The Citizens’ Rights Directive 2004/38/EC (also sometimes called the "Free Movement Directive") defines the right of free movement for citizens of the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes the member states of the European Union (EU) a ...

defines the right of free movement for citizens of the EEA, and all EFTA and EU citizens are not only visa-exempt but are legally entitled to enter and reside in each other's countries.

External links

* EU legislation
Council Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 of 15 March 2001 listing the third countries whose nationals must be in possession of visas when crossing the external borders and those whose nationals are exempt from that requirement

References

{{Passports

European Economic Area European Free Trade Association