Theoretical Overview

Intensified global processes have led to new questions regarding national identity. When scholars first started to address the effects of globalization, some predicted it would undermine nationalism (Appadurai 1996). Nations, however, seem to remain one of the most important everyday settings in which people imagine themselves (Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin 2002, 11). Furthermore, “culture,” once a term used only in the social sciences, has become a global commodity. Globalization has simplified and packaged cultural stereotypes, allowing “culture” to gain wide currency with the increased neoliberalization of the global economy (Lavie and Swedenburg 1996, 6). Branding nations the same way a company trademarks a product also relies on the idea of culture. The prevalence of nationalism in the age of globalization and neoliberalism makes it important to analyze how neoliberalism and nationalism have reconciled with one another. I assert that the strongly nationalistic idea of the Business Viking is in concert with the neoliberal emphasis on flexibility and individualism. Neoliberalism, as scholars have increasingly stressed, is not only about specific policies but also about a particular rationale that is negotiated on a political and uneven field (Schwegler 2008, 686).

Feminist scholars have demonstrated that nationalism is deeply gendered, for example, in Mary Louise Pratt’s (1990) criticism of Benedict Anderson’s (1983) nation as an imagined community. Pratt (1990, 50) asserts that concepts such as fraternity and camaraderie reflect the nation as a community of males. Her point reflects the ongoing criticism of how theories of nationalism have tended to ignore gender and articulate ideas of women and men differently according to the ideas of the nation (see also Yuval-Davis 1997). In Iceland, as elsewhere, nationalistic identities have certainly been constructed through deeply gendered ideas. This is clearly demonstrated by Sigríður Matthíasdóttir’s (2004) research showing that at the turn of the nineteenth century, when important Icelandic nationalistic ideas were being formed, crucial symbols of “Icelandicness” such as logic, courage, and honor were primarily assigned to males. This notion of maleness constituting crucial Icelandic characteristics is also apparent in Icelandic texts about non-European people (Loftsdóttir 2009; 2010).

Furthermore, this treatment of culture engages with older ideas and creates new forms of subjectivity. Nationalism involves a particular remembering and reconfiguration of the past and has not decreased in the present, as underlined by Andreas Huyssen’s (2001) work. The successful marketing of memory creates a framework for understanding the present. In a sense, the past becomes a resource used by different actors in different contexts for understanding the present and making it meaningful.

As postcolonial theories claim, colonialism and imperialism helped shape European identities (Dirks 1992; Gilroy 1993). My research shows how Icelandic identity has been affected by its position as both a dependency of Denmark and as a country that, while not a colonizer itself, has participated in the racist and imperialistic attitudes of other colonizing powers (Loftsdóttir 2009; 2012a). While Iceland was not colonized brutally like many other countries were, it was still a subjugated country. Therefore, analysis of Icelandic identity must be enriched by how Icelanders saw their relationship to Denmark as a Danish dependency within the context of other colonized people (Loftsdóttir 2012a). As I have discussed in other publications, the acceptance of the images and actions of the Business Viking in Icelandic society in the 2000s can be linked to Icelandic anxieties of being classified with the “wrong crowd,” a fear dating back to the period when Iceland was forming its consciousness as an independent nation state while still a Danish dependency (ibid.; Loftsdóttir 2012b). Images of the Business Viking were thus made meaningful through a particular social memory of times when Icelanders were under foreign rule, indicating a search for recognition as a legitimate nation deserving independence.

Icelandic Identity and Schoolbooks

In 1262 Iceland became a subject of Norwegian rule. In 1536, when the Norwegian and Danish kingdoms were unified, Iceland became a part of the Danish kingdom. It remained so until 1944. Throughout this period Icelanders maintained a separate identity (Karlsson 1995), and their strong pride in Icelandic culture created a fertile environment for nationalistic ideas (Hálfdanarson 2000, 90).

By the mid-nineteenth century, Iceland was one of Europe’s poorest countries. In spite of being a financial burden on Denmark, it had struggled for independence for a century (Karlsson 1995). The final struggle started in the mid-nineteenth century under the influence of Icelandic students in Copenhagen who were affected by nationalism in Europe (Hálfdanarson 2000). During this time medieval Icelandic literature (the sagas) and the Icelandic language became the most important factors in the creation of an Icelandic national identity. They served as a basis for demanding the nation’s independence (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1992) and created continuity between the Icelandic commonwealth’s glorious past and the present.

Icelanders’ ideas of how they thought others perceived them contributed to Icelanders’ developing identity. Denmark may have been reluctant to let go of Iceland because it saw Iceland as preserving the old Nordic culture (Karlsson 1995). Although this belief glorified Icelandic culture, it also presented Iceland as pre-modern (Oslund 2002, 328), a more troubling idea to Icelanders. As Paul Durrenberger and Gisli Palsson have shown, Icelanders have struggled since the Middle Ages to correct what they believe to be misconceptions that foreigners have about their country (Durrenberger and Pálsson 1989b). In 1593 Arngrímur Jónsson published the book Brevis Commentarius de Islandia, and in 1597 Oddur Einarsson published a description of Iceland titled Qualiscunque descriptio Islandiae, both intended to defend against foreigners’ misconceptions about Iceland (Benediktsson 1971).

In 1915 two textbooks were published under the title Íslandssaga (Iceland’s History). One was intended for young children and written by Jónas Jónsson, usually identified by his origin at the farm Hrifla in northern Iceland. The other was by Jón Jónsson Aðils and was intended for older students. Both of these men were extremely influential in Iceland’s history. Both were authors of many books. Jónas from Hrifla was also a member of the Icelandic Parliament, while Jón Aðils is sometimes identified as one of the most important people to shape Icelandic nationalistic sentiments (Matthísardóttir 2004,). The book by Jónas from Hrifla was used for the next seventy to eighty years and Jón Aðils’ book for half a century, indicating their striking influence over several generations of Icelanders (Þorsteinn Helgason 2008).

Jón Aðils proclaims in his text that 84 percent of Icelandic settlers came from excellent stock (úrvalsættum) (Jónsson Aðils [1915] 1946, 22). In his widely read book Íslenskt þjóðerni (Jónsson Aðils 1903), he had already elaborated on this idea by emphasizing that Icelanders possessed a mixture of Celtic intelligence and the inner strength of Norwegians, which gave birth to “national culture which is hardly similar to anything in history” (ibid., 22–23). He claims furthermore in his educational text that during the Viking period, many good men and rich chiefs had been unable to tolerate the ruling of the Norwegian kings and thus sought to settle elsewhere (ibid., 22–23, 7). Jónas from Hrifla presents a similar narrative in his book, that of Icelandic history as a story of hardworking men who built the country. He mentions women occasionally. When discussing the settlement of Iceland, Jónas states that those who settled Iceland were the best part of the Norwegian population but also the most stubborn (óbilgjarnastur) and most difficult to control (Jónsson [1915–16] 1966, 15).

Even though these two schoolbooks would be used for decades to come, other books were also published that perpetuated a similar view of Icelandic nationality. Stefán Jónsson’s Eitt er landið (The Country Is One), published several decades later in 1967, claims that Icelanders originated from the best Norwegian stock and that the country itself has shaped Icelandic nationality. This fact, the author claims, makes Icelandic nationality different from the “nationality of related nations” (Jónsson 1967, 76). For Jónsson, the courage required to settle Iceland became ingrained in Icelandic heritage and serves as a light shining on the lives of future generations (ibid., 4). This idea of Icelandic nationality being shaped by hardship was not new. It can be seen, for example, nearly seventy years earlier in the book Lýsing Íslands (Description of Iceland), published in 1900, which states that the nature of the landscape shaped Icelandic nationalism as well as the physical body of Icelanders (Thoroddsen 1900, 76).

It is interesting to compare these views of the Icelandic nation to world history textbooks of the early twentieth century. Instead of emphasizing the unique origin of Icelanders, the world history books include Icelanders as part of other civilized Europeans and thus as a part of the inevitable progress of European males. Usually these texts do not address Iceland in particular but more indirectly refer to the collective “us” in which Iceland is woven into the birth of the modernity story. In this story colonized peoples are not seen generally as deserving much attention or sympathy but rather are characterized as natural subjects of European control (see Loftsdóttir 2009). Men and masculine qualities are highlighted, just as in books about Iceland’s history, by positioning world explorers as the key players of history (ibid.), for example. This viewpoint is similar to that of other writings in Iceland at that time. For example, in the annual journal Skírnir, Icelandic men are invited to imagine themselves as part of progressive, civilized Europeans exploring and subjecting the rest of the world to their power. An issue of Skírnir from 1890, for example, focuses on the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley and describes one of his most controversial trips to Africa. Stanley is presented as a heroic figure, masculine and resilient (Stefánsson 1890; see discussion in Loftsdóttir 2009). Icelandic authors seem not to have been primarily interested in constructing images of Africans and other colonized people but in positioning Icelanders as part of civilized Europe (Loftsdóttir 2009).

The Business Vikings (Almost) Take Over the World

In the early 2000s, Iceland became much more visible globally with Icelandic businessmen buying up companies in other parts of the world as well as extending the operations of their companies internationally. Banks collaborated with firms in their international expansion both by lending them money and by investing their equity in their customers’ projects (Sigurjónsson and Mixa 2011, 210). A part of this global integration included increased immigration to Iceland (Skaptadóttir 2010a) and intensification of transnational activities. For example, the Icelandic government developed a heightened interest in participating in various international operations. This aim was often explained using the same rhetoric as the business venture (Loftsdóttir 2010).

Of particular interest is how the economic expansion was interpreted in highly nationalistic terms by the media and leading politicians and became incorporated into Icelandic social discourses. Across diverse social contexts, the economic boom was attributed to the special characteristics of Icelanders. For example, the success of the Icelandic entrepreneur overseas is expressed in terms such as útrás (outward expansion) and útrásarvíkingur (Business Viking). When economic success was attributed to individual qualities in the entrepreneurs, the populace nevertheless claimed them as Icelandic entrepreneurs, and as such their success reflected on the character of Icelanders as a whole.² The intensified nationalistic discourse of the time focused on the Business Viking and showed similarities with older conceptions of Icelanders evident in the textbooks discussed earlier, but these ideas were still articulated differently in this new global environment. I have used the term “individualistic nationalism” to attempt to capture how older national symbols of Icelandic identity were negotiated in a highly globalized context, where individualism and market orientation were also strongly emphasized (Loftsdóttir 2007).

A speech from 2006 by the Icelandic president, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, shows clearly how the Business Viking concept works by anchoring it in the past. The president stated that the “Age of Settlement was the beginning of this whole process,” referring to the economic miracle (Grímsson 2006, 2). He explained that one of the leading causes of Icelandic success internationally was that Icelandic entrepreneurs inherited a tradition rooted in the origin of Icelandic settlement. Thus he claimed that the settlement of Iceland and the Viking era had given contemporary Icelanders a particular role model. Hannes Smárason, former CEO of FL Group, one of the leading companies at that time, made similar claims when he said in 2007 that Iceland’s foreign acquisitions may be traced to the energy of the Viking spirit (Schram 2007).

A statement made by Iceland’s former minister of trade, Björgvin G. Sigurðsson, is another example of how Icelandic national culture was evoked in relation to the economic expansion: “Power, guts, and good knowledge of the Icelandic Business Vikings has given more results faster in regard to Icelandic investments overseas than could be speculated, and the Viking has gained a lot of attention internationally” (“Útrás og árangur bankanna” 2007, 19). An influential report on Iceland’s international image, developed by a committee established by the prime minister in 2007, strongly emphasized the settlement heritage of Iceland, also without any kind of critical analysis or discussion (Forsætisráðuneytið 2008).

Masculine imagery was invoked in the fall of 2007 when Sigurðsson told a crowd of investors and business owners in Denmark that the Icelandic economic expansion overseas (útrás) was like a volcano: it began with earthquakes and then, at the turn of the millennium, ended with a volcanic eruption (Erlingsdóttir 2007). A report by the Iceland Chamber of Commerce about the extension of Icelandic business to London uncritically used concepts like “Vikings” and “pillage,” both of which highlight masculinity (Sigfússon and Þorgeirsson 2005, 21). Both of these examples illustrate how males were primarily credited with the so-called economic miracle, as did discussions about the Viking settler in the early twentieth century.

These social narratives were not scattered statements by leading politicians or occasional comments in reports but were reinforced by the changing social fabric of daily life. As economic inequality grew (Oddsson 2010, 8), so too did the Icelandic tabloid media, which to some extent emerged during these years. Tabloids reported glowingly on the conspicuous lifestyles of the Business Vikings (Mixa 2009) and gave regular updates on the intermingling of prominent Icelanders with international superstars. Such idolization of the rich and famous was unknown prior to the economic boom and ran contrary to the common belief that equality was a basic characteristic of Icelanders (Durrenberger 1996; Pálsson 1989). The concept útrás was also used for the growing success of Icelandic novelists overseas, which the media also reported actively on. When I along with many other Icelanders visited Copenhagen in 2006, a window display in a big bookstore highlighted Icelandic novels, thus underlying the success of Iceland internationally. Finally, the social narratives of Icelandic success abroad mirrored the experience of people at home who were playing and winning big in the Icelandic stock market.

Together these different social discourses created an environment saturated with success stories and connected powerfully to the historical memory of Icelanders as different from everyone else. Ideology has to be in sync with the experiences of individuals (Eagleton 1991, 14–15), and this “common sense” feeling that Antonio Gramsci’s work refers to indicates how particular ideas gain strong hegemony within society at particular times (Gramsci 1971, 210–11). A 2008 children’s song is a vivid example of the saturation of these narratives at the most basic level of Icelandic society.³ Likely referring to an old children’s song about two kids fighting over which one has the strongest dad, this song is a dialogue of two children fighting over who has the richest dad. One dad has bought Eden and redesigned it, while the other has an Egyptian pharaoh in the freezer. The text is meant to be funny, of course, but it becomes particularly so in the context of Iceland’s economic boom. Certain words used in the song, such as “derivative contracts,” could almost be used by children in the social atmosphere of the time.

The term “the Manic Millennium years,” which was used critically over the boom period (Mixa 2009), captures the pervasive idea that the turn of the century would be a new turning point for Iceland. As such, this period reflects the old anxiety of Icelanders that foreigners have a misconception of them and don’t see their uniqueness or specialness. Anne Brydon (2006, 236) notes that Icelanders often find foreigners oblivious of Iceland’s “full modernity on a par with that of Europe and the United States,” and Palsson and Durrenberger found that when Icelanders talk among themselves, the “primary scholarly task was not so much to understand others but to be understood by them” (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1992, 313; emphasis in the original). Therefore the exuberance expressed in the boom years can be understood as self-affirmation, as if finally Icelanders could show their worth on the international stage. The optimism and sense of a new bright future, as Mixa points out, resembles the Roaring Twenties in the United States in many ways (Mixa 2009). My analysis of two business newspapers in 2006 and 2007 reveals that in addition to celebrating their international success, Icelanders also demonstrated a desire to disinherit their lowly status of the past. In 2006 Danske Bank issued a warning about the way Icelandic banks were operating, which Icelanders interpreted as Danish jealousy toward their economic miracle. Often this perceived jealousy is so evident to the writers that they don’t bother to mention it directly. In the business newspaper Viðskiptablaðið, for example, Gísli Reynisson, the CEO and main owner of the investment firm Nordic Partners, proclaimed that “in spite of that certain press [in Denmark] getting pleasure from and enjoying bullying Icelanders, that has not been the case with all the Danes” (“Nordic Partners kaupa sögufræg hótel” 2007, 1). One of the bluntest expressions of this kind was uttered by the acting minster for foreign affairs when she stated that there was something “unnatural about the criticism that Danske Bank issued.” She claimed that this was due to “scratches in the Danish self-image in relation to Iceland” after “Icelanders started to invest a great deal in Denmark” (“Sjálfsímynd Dana farin að rispast” 2006, 12–13).

Neoliberalism and Nationalism

The idea of the Business Viking and the economic boom relied strongly on a familiar theme—dating from Icelandic independence—about the unique characteristics of Icelanders due to their Viking or settler background, which was shaped by the roughness of the land itself throughout the centuries. As in earlier times, these ideas primarily focused on men, portraying Icelandic nationality as masculine. To intensify the association with the past, parallel discourses about Danes as enemies of Icelandic prosperity seemed to engage with this historical memory. It is important to locate this strong association with past discourses of Icelandic nationalism within the global perspective, where scholars have shown increased reification of “culture.” It is probably no coincidence that we see intensification of nationalism at times when Iceland is becoming more globally integrated. During the Manic Millennium years, we see almost a reinvention of Icelandic nationalism that articulates older ideas in concert with those of individualism and neoliberal ideology (Loftsdóttir 2007). Nationalism during the Manic Millennium years thus emphasized local nationalistic symbols as well as their creative application for a wider marketplace where individual success was celebrated.

Also, how did the changing working environment in Iceland during this time interact within this “reinvention” of Icelandic nationalism? As Elizabeth Dunn has pointed out in her brilliant ethnography of neoliberalism in Poland, neoliberalization involves changes in labor practices such as audits and quality control. These are used to shape people into “flexible, agile, self-regulating workers,” who presumably then assist their companies in adapting to shifting conditions in the global markets (Dunn 2004, 7). This emphasis on flexibility often means that workers must tolerate risk and insecurities on the job market, embedded within the rhetoric that they should be “self-directed, self-activating [and] self-monitoring” (ibid., 19–20). In Iceland we see an increase of audit and surveillance techniques in the workplace, where it is the worker, rather than his or her work, that is being monitored (Rafnsdóttir et al. 2005).

The Business Viking narrative of flexibility and individualism as inherited Icelandic characteristics overlaps in an interesting way with these wider ideas of neoliberalism. It is tempting to ask to what extent did those who wanted certain Icelandic businessmen to take control of Icelandic banks and companies manipulate these nationalistic ideas? Clearly the businessmen encouraged comparisons of themselves with Iceland’s first settlers, evident, for example, in Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson’s naming of his yacht Viking and displaying statues of Leifur Eiríksson, Iceland’s first settler, in the lobby of his London headquarters (Elíasson 2009). These ideas were applied not only to the takeover of companies but to other Icelandic successes, and as such notions of inherently Icelandic characteristics appeared in many spheres of society and fed off of each other, making it extremely difficult to contradict them prior to the crash.

Final Comments

The Icelandic economic expansion gained strong acceptance in Iceland due to its association with Icelandic nationalistic symbols that had a strong gendered component. These symbols were reconceptualized within a global environment, building on the historical image of Icelanders as unique individuals by adding neoliberal ideas of flexibility and individualism. As Henrietta Moore (2004, 74) has pointed out, the “global” has become a part of most people’s imagined worlds, reflecting how notions of globalization are in various ways embedded with questions of identity and selfhood. As such, the economic expansion signaled an intense conversation with the present globalized world with identity becoming meaningful by anchoring it in past national symbols and discussions.

With the economic collapse, Iceland was the prime object of global media attention—labeled by some international media as the canary in the coal mine. It wasn’t the kind of attention Iceland had hoped for since seeking independence. Stefán Jónsson’s comment in his textbook for children reflects this desire to be recognized the right way. Reformulated in somewhat naïve arrogance, he states, “[I]t is a pleasure for a small nation to best larger nations” (Jónsson 1967, 4).⁴ During the economic boom, Icelanders certainly seemed to be relishing their moment in the spotlight, which perhaps explains why there was so little critical discussion around what was happening to Iceland’s economy until it was too late.