Iceland's timezone

[Adam David]

Sorry about the delay getting back with this information.

> I'm working on a rewrite of `europe' with a large set of historical
> data.  My current draft (see below) claims that Iceland changed its
> timezone in 1968.  I've taken this claim from Thomas G. Shanks, The
> international atlas (3rd edition), San Diego: ACS Publications, Inc.
> (1991).  If you have some better data, please let me know.

In a way, there was a timezone change in 1968, where the summertime change
was applied during the spring, and became the all-year-round time, and there
have been no changes since then, not for DST or any other reason. When looking
back to previous years when there was DST, icelanders tend to refer to the
concept of "winter time", as the summer time had the same offset as the present
all-year-round time. This is why I was led to believe that no timezone change
had taken place in 1968.

> It would be nice to know what time zone abbreviations were used before
> 1968, since Shanks doesn't say.  In the following table I've made up
> the names `IST', `IDT', `RMT', and `LMT' for Iceland Standard Time,
> Iceland Daylight Time, Reykjavik Mean Time, and Local Mean Time
> respectively.

I have no details of any abbreviations, sorry.

> # From Shanks (1991):
> # Rule	NAME	FROM	TO	TYPE	IN	ON	AT	SAVE	LETTER/S
> Rule	Iceland	1908	only	-	Jan	1	0:00	0	S
> Rule	Iceland	1917	1918	-	Feb	20	2:00	1:00	D
> Rule	Iceland	1917	only	-	Oct	25	2:00	0	S
> Rule	Iceland	1918	1919	-	Nov	15	2:00	0	S
> Rule	Iceland	1919	only	-	Feb	19	2:00	1:00	D
> Rule	Iceland	1921	only	-	Mar	19	2:00	1:00	D
> Rule	Iceland	1921	only	-	Jun	22	2:00	0	S
> Rule	Iceland	1941	1942	-	Mar	Sat>=1	2:00	1:00	D
> Rule	Iceland	1941	1942	-	Jul	2	2:00	0	S
> Rule	Iceland	1943	1946	-	Mar	Sun>=1	2:00	1:00	D
> Rule	Iceland	1943	1948	-	Oct	Sun>=22	2:00	0	S
> Rule	Iceland	1947	1962	-	Apr	Sun>=1	2:00	1:00	D
> Rule	Iceland	1949	only	-	Oct	30	2:00	0	S
> Rule	Iceland	1950	only	-	Oct	22	2:00	0	S
> # From Paul Eggert <eggert at twinsun.com> (November 10, 1993):
> # Shanks's ``1953 Oct 26'' is probably a typo for Oct 25.
> # Likewise, correct Shanks's ``1961 Oct 22'' to Oct 29.
> Rule	Iceland	1951	1967	-	Oct	Sun>=23	1:00s	0	S
> Rule	Iceland	1963	1968	-	Apr	Sun>=1	1:00s	1:00	D
> # Zone	NAME		GMTOFF	RULES/SAVE	FORMAT	[UNTIL]
> Zone Atlantic/Iceland/Reykjavik -1:27:24 -	LMT	1837 Jan 1
> 			-1:28	-		RMT	1908 Jan 1
> 			-1:00	Iceland		I%sT	1968 Oct 27 1:00s
> 			0:00	-		GMT
> # This link is for backward compatibility with the old naming convention.
> Link Atlantic/Iceland/Reykjavik Iceland

I don't feel up to messing with this table and submitting a corrected version.
Here I copy a list of periods when summertime was active, and explanatory text.
This material is paraphrased from the 1988 edition of the University of Iceland
Almanak.