Icelandic Data

Data toolkit for Icelandic public data. The .agents/skills/ files document each data source — API endpoints, series codes, encoding quirks, classification changes — and the scripts/ directory has Python scripts that fetch, clean, and transform the data. It's harness-agnostic: any agent that can read the skills and run the scripts they reference (Claude Code, Codex, and others) works.

“I spent a good chunk of my career, including an entire startup, DataMarket, making public data accessible. This project cracks the problem from the angle I now believe is the right one: don't build another portal, make the data agent-ready. Ask a question in plain language and watch it pull together answers from dozens of official sources. I've been showing it to people in government as a direct demonstration of what such an approach can deliver.”

  Hjálmar Gíslason
  Founder & CEO of GRID
  Previously founder of DataMarket (acquired by Qlik)

The data sources badge reports upstream health, not this repo's code: a source only turns it red after 7 straight days down or returning the wrong shape. Anything shorter is weather — these are public APIs and they blink. Details in AGENTS.md; raw history is on the health-history branch.

Not a portable skill library. The skills reference co-located scripts and work as a unit. Get the repo, run setup, and use an agent to research questions, join data sources, or produce outputs — a gist, a CSV, an HTML report, whatever fits. It is plain Python and runs on macOS, Linux and Windows.

Structure

.agents/skills/{source}/SKILL.md → Data source docs (API, endpoints, caveats)
scripts/{source}.py              → Fetch + transform scripts
tests/health/test_{source}.py    → Upstream health probes (marker: health)
data/raw/{source}/               → Raw downloads
data/processed/                  → Cleaned datasets

Skills follow the agentskills.io open standard. .agents/skills/ is the real location (read natively by Codex); .claude/skills symlinks to it for Claude Code, and CLAUDE.md symlinks to AGENTS.md. One set of files, both agents.

Data sources

Currently 56 skills covering national statistics, government dashboards (mælaborð), regulatory filings, and utility APIs. Each skill's frontmatter description is its index entry — run ls .agents/skills/ to enumerate them, and see AGENTS.md for the quick-commands reference.

The light in each row is that source's current verdict, refreshed daily and finer-grained than the badge above (which waits a full week before going red): healthy · flaky (failed but recovered — these APIs blink) · dead, or the skill no longer matches the source · not enough observations yet. A · means there is nothing upstream to probe. Per-source uptime and last error are in the workflow summary.

Statistics & macroeconomic

	Source	Description
	Hagstofa Íslands	PX-Web API — economic, demographic, trade, income series
	Seðlabanki	SDMX API — monetary policy, financial stability, FX history via ECB
	Seðlabanki (FX)	Central Bank FX intervention — gjaldeyriskaup/-sala, turnover, reserves, ISK/EUR (monthly)
	Lánamál ríkisins	Government bond yields — RIKB/RIKS daily fixings, no auth (lanamal.is)
	Tekjusagan	Income-history dashboard — 5 Power BI report routes (Forsætisráðuneytið)
	Velsældarvísar	Hagstofa indicator catalogs — well-being + social + cultural (88 indicators → 77 PX tables)
	Heimsmarkmið	UN SDG national statistics — 137 indicators across all 17 goals (open-sdg ZIP bundle)
	Ríkisreikningur	State accounts — yearly afkoma 2015+, málefnasvið breakdowns, 35 published files (Azure Functions API)
	Fjárlög	State budget appropriations + 5-year plan at málaflokkur level (actual / enacted / bill)
	Energy	Electricity generation by source, energy-system tables and fuel sales (Environment & Energy Agency)
	Alþingi	Parliamentary XML — MPs, per-MP vote records, bills, committees, speeches (1875+)
	Eurostat	Euro-area / EU statistics — HICP, compensation of employees, employment, labour costs (official REST API)
	Housing completions	Completed dwellings 1970–2025 — Hagstofan IDN03001 + HMS húsnæðisáætlanir
	Income distribution	Hagstofan TEK01001 — mean/median income by source, age, gender + tax burden (1990–2024)

Government dashboards (mælaborð)

Systematic coverage of public dashboards published under Iceland's data-access law.

	Source	Description
	Landlæknir	33 Directorate-of-Health Power BI dashboards + Talnabrunnur PDFs
	Vinnumálastofnun	Registered unemployment — Power BI + monthly Excel
	Farsæld barna	Child-wellbeing dashboard (static-data Power BI)
	Mælaborð landbúnaðarins	3 Power BI dashboards — subsidies, livestock, markets
	Ferðamálastofa	Keflavík passengers, flights, accommodation — Power BI scraping
	Umferð (Vegagerðin)	168+ traffic counters — real-time 15-min + 7-day rolling daily
	Byggðastofnun	Regional-development dashboards — 11 Tableau Public embeds (population, income, energy, grants)
	Vernd (Ríkislögreglustjóri)	Asylum / international-protection monthly stats — Power BI

Business & markets

	Source	Description
	Skatturinn	Annual reports (ársreikningar), company registry, ownership chains
·	Financials	PDF-to-structured extraction via pdfplumber + Claude interpretation
	Nasdaq Iceland	Exchange notices, annual reports, insider trading
·	Insurance	4 insurers (Sjóvá, Skagi/VÍS, TM, Vörður), combined ratios, Nordic comparison
	Fuel	Gasvaktin prices + conglomerate financials for N1/Olís/Orkan/Atlantsolía
	Maskína	Public-opinion polls via Tableau Public VizQL + WordPress API
	Skoðanakannanir	RÚV opinion-poll aggregator — national + Reykjavík party support across pollsters
	Opnir reikningar	Government invoices by org/vendor/type, 2017–present
	Tenders	3,494+ public tenders via TED API + OCDS bulk data

Property, planning, addresses

	Source	Description
	HMS	Kaupskrá fasteigna (222k transactions, geocoded) + Landeignaskrá (89k parcel polygons)
	Skipulagsmál (Planitor)	Planning & building permits — cases, minutes, entities, nearby search across 5 municipalities
·	iceaddr	Icelandic address geocoding (bundled SQLite from Staðfangaskrá)

Transport & mobility

	Source	Description
	Samgöngustofa	Vehicle registrations by make, fuel type, location — Power BI
	car (island.is)	Per-vehicle lookup by plate/VIN via public GraphQL API

Environment & geography

	Source	Description
	Veður	Met-Office JSON API — observations, stations, forecasts, earthquakes
	Loftgæði	UST air quality — PM10/PM2.5/NO2/H2S, 57 stations, hourly
	CO2 (co2.is)	Climate action plan — 106 numbered actions across 4 kerfi, status + ministry + year tracking
	LMI	Vector geodata via GeoServer WFS — coastline, roads, rivers, glaciers
	LMI HRL	Copernicus High Resolution Layers via LMI — grassland, imperviousness (20 m raster)
	Náttúrufræðistofnun	Habitat-type polygons (vistgerðir) via WFS
	EEA SDI	European Environment Agency geospatial catalogue (GeoNetwork 4.4)
	UST GIS	Environment Agency WFS — contaminated land, water, protected areas, noise and wastewater
·	Kortagerð	Iceland map generation — matplotlib (static) + Leaflet (interactive)

Energy & fisheries

	Source	Description
	Hafrannsóknastofnun	Annual fish-stock assessments, advice, landings and survey series (embedded table JSON)
	Fiskistofa	Open WFS layers for active fishing closures, regulations and fishing areas (not paid catch/quota REST)

Personal finance & rates

	Source	Description
	Laun (payday.is)	Take-home salary calculator with tax/pension breakdown
	Gengi (Borgun)	Currency exchange rates (card rates, not interbank)

Legal & civic

	Source	Description
	Dómstólar	Court rulings — Héraðsdómstólar, Landsréttur, Hæstiréttur via RSS + scraping
	Reykjavíkurborg	CKAN + PX-Web APIs for municipal services, demographics, welfare, Opin Fjármál

Setup

You need a terminal once, for setup. After that, an agent does the typing.

1. Get the repo. git clone https://github.com/jokull/icelandic-data — or, without git, use Code → Download ZIP on GitHub and unzip it. (The Code tab in Claude Desktop needs Git for Windows installed on Windows even for a ZIP checkout; Claude Code CLI and Codex do not.)

2. Run setup. It installs uv if you don't have it, which then downloads Python and every dependency. Nothing else is required — no Homebrew, no system Python.

   ./setup.sh                                          # macOS / Linux
   powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\setup.ps1  # Windows

   Setup ends by running scripts/setup_check.py, which reports what works and repairs the .claude/skills link if git or the ZIP download flattened it. (On Windows that repair is a junction, and git status will show .claude/skills as changed from then on — expected, do not revert it.)

3. Open the folder in your agent. Claude Code, Codex, the Code tab in Claude Desktop, or ChatGPT Desktop (Codex) all read the skills from the repo. Ask a question such as "What is the median price per m² of apartments in Reykjavík since 2020?" Codex asks whether to trust the folder the first time — say yes. That loads .codex/config.toml, which lets the sandbox reach the Icelandic APIs; without it every fetch fails with a DNS error.

That is Tier 0 and covers 41 of the 56 skills. The rest need one more opt-in install; each skill says which at the top of its SKILL.md:

Tier	Install	Unlocks
0 core	uv sync	statistics, dashboards, registers, finance, polls, weather — plain Python
1 maps	uv sync --group maps	map rendering and rasters (kortagerð, LMI, NÍ habitats, traffic/cattle maps)
2 browser	uv run playwright install chromium	Power BI / Tableau / JS-rendered scrapers
3 pdf	uv sync --group pdf	Docling AI table extraction (pulls in torch, ~2 GB)
4 restricted	—	needs an Icelandic IP or private credentials; documented, not portable

scripts/setup_check.py prints which tiers are installed.

What a first run looks like

Measured on a fresh macOS user account and a bare Ubuntu container, both with only curl on PATH: setup.sh finishes in 20–30 s, the environment is about 500 MB, and the maps tier adds a couple of seconds. Where newcomers can stall, and the fix:

Stops at	Why	Fix
Claude Desktop Code tab on Windows	needs Git for Windows	install Git, restart the app
PowerShell refuses setup.ps1	execution policy	run it as shown above, with -ExecutionPolicy Bypass
uv: command not found right after install	new PATH not in the current shell	open a new terminal, or re-run setup.sh
Codex: every fetch fails with a DNS error	sandbox has no network until the folder is trusted	trust the folder when asked
Power BI / Tableau skill fails to start a browser	Tier 2 not installed	uv run playwright install chromium
A map script exits asking for the maps tier	Tier 1 not installed	uv sync --group maps
Samgöngustofa times out	geo-fenced to Icelandic IPs	run from Iceland or skip
On Windows setup.ps1
sets PYTHONUTF8=1 for your user account so Icelandic characters print correctly.

Every command in the docs is of the form uv run python scripts/<name>.py ... and works the same in bash, zsh, fish and PowerShell. SQL against the processed files goes through uv run python scripts/sql.py "SELECT ...", so no DuckDB binary is needed.

Usage

# Process data
uv run python scripts/sedlabanki.py
uv run python scripts/fuel.py

# Query with DuckDB
uv run python scripts/sql.py "SELECT * FROM 'data/processed/fuel_prices_daily.csv' LIMIT 10"

# Company financials pipeline
uv run python scripts/financials.py company <kennitala> --year 2024

# Scrape a government dashboard
uv run python scripts/landlaeknir.py list
uv run python scripts/landlaeknir.py fetch --slug mortis

# Build the indicator catalog for visar.hagstofa.is
uv run python scripts/velsaeldarvisar.py fetch

See AGENTS.md for the full command catalog across every skill.

Tests

uv run pytest -m "not slow"   # fast unit tests (~0.5s) — what PR CI runs
uv run pytest -m slow         # network + Playwright tests (several minutes)
uv run pytest -m health       # upstream health probes
uv run pytest -m health -k hagstofan   # probe one source

Health probes check that each upstream source still serves the smallest contract its script depends on. They run daily in CI; browser-based probes are manual-dispatch only. See .github/workflows/source-health.yml.

Adding a new data source

See the new-data-source skill for the methodology — discovery, probing, skill authoring, script conventions, testing, and visualization.