Icelandic Police
national police force of Iceland
In Iceland, the Police (Icelandic: Ríkislögreglan, lit. 'the State Police') is the national police force of Iceland. It is responsible for law enforcement throughout the country, except in Icelandic territorial waters which fall under the jurisdiction of the Icelandic Coast Guard. Police affairs in Iceland are the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice and are administered by the Office of the National Commissioner of the Police (Embætti ríkislögreglustjóra) on behalf of the ministry. The organisation is divided into nine districts, the largest being the Reykjavík Metropolitan Police (Lögreglan á höfuðborgarsvæðinu), which is responsible for the Capital Region and its total population of around 208,000 people.
History
Origins
The police can trace its origins to 1778 when the first traces of industry started to appear. Up until that time, the law had been enforced first by individuals permitted to do so by the Althing and then by sýslumenn (sheriffs) and other Royal proxies.
The first policemen are considered to be the morning star-armed night watchmen of Reykjavík who were commissioned primarily to deter the prisoners of the Reykjavík prison from breaking into the Innréttingarnar.
In 1803, the first proper policemen were commissioned in Reykjavík as it became a free town or kaupstaður. The first police chief was Rasmus Frydensberg, the town mayor, who hired two former soldiers, Ole Biørn and Vilhelm Nolte, as the first policemen. It was not until shortly after 1891 that policemen were hired in most of the other areas of Iceland.
“Icelandic Police” enters the record as national police force of Iceland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Icelandic, Police and national can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3481484. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1778, 1803 and 1891.
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This entry incorporates text from “Icelandic Police” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.