The Picture—Small and Big: Iceland and the Crises

Abstract

This paper was written for the 2014 Winter Symposium of the Nordic Summer University’s (NSU) research group number three, dealing with the concept of crisis. In it, I provide two pictures of Iceland’s notorious 2008 economic crisis and unexpected 2009-2013 recovery: one small, another big. The small one is a concise three-step account of what sort of policies preceded the economic crisis, what this crisis consisted primarily in, and what sort of policies followed it. The big one is a twofold reflection on how the Icelandic experience fits within larger global trends, which means considering the country’s experience from an economic-historical perspective and from an axiological one.

Keywords

• crisis
• Oddsson
• Galbraith
• McMurtry
• Iceland
• IMF