Conclusion

Since the end of the Cold War, Iceland’s approach toward the Arctic has been driven by two central concerns: that it be counted as a legitimate Arctic state and that its geostrategic location be used to promote political and economic aims. It partly explains the belabored status-seeking attempts to define Iceland’s Arcticness as being exceptional or privileged—whether to buttress the questionable claim that it is the only coutry situated as a whole within the Arctic region or to push, until recently, for external recognition of its status as an Arctic coastal state. As we have seen here, this national narrative was met with skepticism by some other Arctic states. To be sure, despite strong Soviet and, later, Russian reservations, Iceland was included in the Arctic institutional arrangements that were formed in the 1990s, notably, the Arctic Council, but also other regional organizations—where its stakeholding role or interests were minimal—such as the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, the Council of the Baltic Sea States, and the Northern Dimension. Yet the Arctic Five were initially not prepared to accept Iceland’s coastal state aspirations, even if they belatedly recognized its maritime interests in the Arctic by including it in the negotiations on the fishing moratorium in the Arctic Ocean.