Framing the national interest: the political uses of the Arctic in Iceland’s foreign and domestic policies

Abstract

In the article, I discuss how Iceland’s Arctic policies have been framed, developed, and enacted from the early 2000s to the present. The purpose is to show how the geopolitical importance of the Arctic has – after a post-Cold War hiatus – made the region a core component of Iceland’s foreign policy. By stressing the multifunctionality of the Arctic as a concept and spatial entity, I highlight which Arctic issues have been singled out and integrated into Icelandic official narratives. I examine how a cultural–historical interpretation of an Icelandic past has been used to underpin a discourse on a future Arctic economic dividend; how the Arctic has been projected as a symbol of Iceland’s renewed geostrategic promise following the end of the Cold War and the US military withdrawal; how Arctic narratives have functioned as a domestic political “displacement factor” in response to the financial crisis; and how the region has been “seized upon” both to reinforce Iceland’s Western foreign policy identity and to explore non-Western possibilities, such as increased ties with China. I argue that what has made the Arctic attractive as a political instrument in Icelandic foreign and domestic policies is its discursive “flexibility,” “expedience,” and “incompleteness.” By juggling diverse political, economic, and cultural factors, Icelandic elites have articulated the topicality of the Arctic by constructing ideological narratives of the region’s “future return” unencumbered by the immediacy of political accountability or scrutiny.