On August 29 there was a symposium in the Library held by the Institute of History of the University of Iceland in collaboration with the Swedish Embassy in Iceland on the occasion of 250 years since the first British scientific expedition visited Iceland in 1772. Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir opened the symposium and Jón Atli Benediktsson, Rector of the University of Iceland, delivered a speech. The seminar was held in English. The foreign speakers were Professor Sverker Sörlin, who gave a talk about the Swedish botanist Daniel Solander, Banks' closest colleague, and Dr Neil Chambers, who discussed Banks' publishing work. Páll Einarsson, a geophysicist, talked about volcanoes, but Banks' main purpose for the Iceland trip was to climb Hekla. Botanist Þóra Ellen Þórhallsdóttir and biologist Gísli Már Gíslason discussed the scientific reports of the expedition, but they have never been studied before. Finally, the historians Anna Agnarsdóttir and Sumarliði Ísleifsson discussed the legacy: Banks' friend of Iceland and the pictures that Banks' artists drew in the expedition and which can now be seen in an exhibition that is ongoing in the Library.