For the next 1,500 years, its inhabitants enjoyed a somewhat warmer and damper climate than today, living in a well-wooded steppe area where wild cereal grasses were abundant.
Climbers, surfers and cyclists love the emptiness, while fishing enthusiasts can dodge the whirlpools of the Moskenstraumen and follow in the oar-strokes of the Vikings.
On Tuesday, helicopters arrived with food and other supplies in one of the hardest hit towns, Constitucion, which was swamped with waves after the quake.
Their house, designed by 3sixty Technology of Henderson, Nevada (of which Mr Johnstone is a director) and built in the aptly named neighbourhood of Mountain Helix, revolves completely, once an hour.