Introduction

The role of the Arctic in Iceland’s foreign and security policies has been heavily influenced by external geopolitical factors. After World War II, Iceland was associated with Arctic militarization as part of its Cold War integration into NATO and the global U.S. base network. In the closing years of the East-West conflict, it, symbolically, became part of efforts to break out of a Soviet-American stalemate through its hosting of the Reykjavík Summit, which was followed by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s heralding of a new era of intergovernmental cooperation in the Arctic. In the post-Cold War period, Iceland cemented its status as an Arctic state by becoming a member of several Northern subregional organizations—designed to integrate Russia into Western institutional structures—by assuming the rotating chair of the Arctic Council (AC) and by taking part in Arctic science cooperation. Yet, despite these various links to the Arctic, Iceland did not prioritize the area until two seminal events prompted it to do so: the U.S. military withdrawal from Iceland in 2006, relegating to history one of the Cold War’s main theaters in the North Atlantic, and the collapse of the Icelandic banking system during the height of the global financial crisis in 2008.