Icelandic Futures: Arctic Dreams and Geographies of Crisis

Abstract

In the wake of the economic crisis in 2008, Iceland’s efforts to brand itself as a modern Arctic nation state intensified. The author examines how public discourse markets Iceland’s clean and pristine nature and ample natural resources as a vehicle for becoming a global geopolitical player for dominance in the North. She argues that government rhetoric conveys a consistent “Arctic optimism” on behalf of officials, as part of Iceland’s attempt to leave the crisis behind and to articulate a future conceived as one of environmental cleanliness, purity, and efficiency. This kind of Arctic-as-utopia discourse is often criticized in twenty-first-century Icelandic art. Art foregrounding Icelandic nature, landscapes, and environments thereby becomes an important counter-narrative to official rhetoric and a space where conflicting approaches to natural resources can be negotiated.