Campers await the start of a raucous national day festival in the town of Vestmannaeyjar on Iceland's Heimaey Island.

Held every year on the first weekend in August, this three-day outdoor festival began in 1874, when bad weather kept residents from traveling to the mainland to celebrate Iceland's new status as a republic. They held a celebration of their own, and the rest is history.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "In Search of Vikings," May 2000, National Geographic magazine)