REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Bobby Fischer's latest audacious gambit has begun in a wind-lashed corner of the north Atlantic.

The volatile chess icon arrived in Reykjavik late Thursday, a brand-new Icelandic citizen and unrepentant critic of the United States, which considers him as a fugitive from justice.

Hours after being freed from nine months' detention in Japan, Fischer called the United States "an illegitimate country" and said the charges against him were groundless.

Dressed in jeans and sporting a bushy gray beard, Fischer stepped from a chartered jet at Reykjavik airport to applause from about 200 supporters in a tiny, chess-loving nation still grateful for its role as the site of his most famous match - a 1972 world championship victory over Soviet player Boris Spassky that was the highlight of Fischer's career and a world-gripping symbol of Cold War rivalry.

Fischer had been held in Japan for trying to leave the country using an invalid U.S. passport. Japan agreed to release him after he accepted Iceland's offer of citizenship.

An American chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15, the enigmatic, eccentric Fischer has long had a reputation for volatility, and a troubled relationship with the United States.

Fischer, 62, wanted by the United States for violating sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia by playing an exhibition match against Spassky there in 1992, had fought deportation from Japan.

"I grew up with the concept of freedom of speech. I'm too old,' he said. "It's too late for me to adjust to the new world, the new world order," he said with a chuckle.