@ sso: I'm sure you know why Iceland and Greenland were named thus. Those wacky Danes; gotta love 'em.
to be fair they arrived (oddly enough) in summertime in greenland (2 months of summer), but landed in iceland in the wintertime and the harshest wintertime with a glacier in view to boot
its actually quite mild here, apart from about 2 months around january and february (24th december has often had no snow in memory, nor even 1st january)
there are some winters, decades apart, where snow piles up in meterdrifts (remember 2 meters at most (maybe 3 in some piles))
and lots more up north, but many winters in memory were just cold, no snow.
(though i remember snow and much of it from 0-20 years of my age)
it gets bitingly cold though around october, windy and cold, though lately with warmer periods in between. but no snow and real frost til at least january (normally, though around 15 years back, there was snow in october) (and even saw hail once in june (sunny hot, then hail, then sunny hot with a small tornado or 2 (3 meter tall) then icecold rain (really weird weather)
it had gotten much warmer though around 2000 and up, though the last two winters its starting to get colder again and more snow.
but never gets that cold here, was at most -15c during the coldest winters i remember,but usually -5c dipping to -10c with the occasional 0c, but during the warm period of 2000+ it never got lower than -5c. and often was at 0c or even 5c.
in the mountains it gets as low as -24c
