The island's inside, the Highlands of Iceland, is a cold and uninhabitable combination of sand, mountains, and lava fields. The Sagas of Icelanders say that a Norwegian named Naddodd (or Naddador) was the initially Norseman to reach Iceland, and in the ninth century, he named it Snæland or "snow land" mainly because it was snowing. After the crack-up of the union in 1523, it remained a Norwegian dependency, as a portion of Denmark-Norway.