Iceland is an island nation in the North Atlantic with a population of around 400,000. It is a founding NATO member but has no armed forces, relying instead on a coastguard with three helicopters, two ships and one aeroplane.
Iceland has spent just 0.2% of GDP on defence in recent years, relying mainly on America for protection. There are plans to boost spending to perhaps 1.5% of GDP to help keep watch over the Atlantic and build infrastructure that American and European ships, submarines and planes could use as wartime staging posts. Iceland has no intelligence service. A cross-party task force is discussing what additional capabilities are needed.
Arnor Sigurjonsson, until recently Iceland's top defence official, has called for a thousand-strong army to defend airports and harbours in emergencies. The foreign minister, Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir, says the debate is welcome.
Iceland straddles the mid-Atlantic ridge, a boundary between two crustal plates drifting apart, which allows magma to well up from the depths. The island sits just below the Arctic circle and is home to 34 active volcanoes, half of which are buried under ice up to 1km thick. As the climate warms, some predict the glaciers will vanish within two centuries. The land around some ice-bound volcanoes is already rising by as much as 3cm a year as glaciers retreat, reducing pressure on the underlying rock and lowering its melting point. Early geological data suggest two or three times more magma is being produced beneath Iceland than was the case a century ago.
Grimsvotn and Bardarbunga, two volcanoes in central Iceland, have been more active than normal in recent decades. Katla, in the south, once erupted roughly every 50 years but has been quiet for over a century. When Eyjafjallajökull, a small volcano by Icelandic standards, erupted in 2010 it sent an ash cloud into the atmosphere sufficient to trigger six days of aviation chaos across Europe. In the late 18th century Laki emitted so much sulphur dioxide and ash that some historians suggest the resulting crop failures helped cause the French revolution.
After the retreat of an ice sheet thousands of metres thick that smothered Iceland during the last ice age, some 10,000 years ago, volcanic eruptions increased 30- to 50-fold. Altogether some 250 volcanoes worldwide are known to lurk beneath or close to ice sheets, including in Antarctica, Alaska and the Andes. Research published in 2020 suggests that though only 20,000 people dwell within 5km of an affected volcano, 160m live within 100km of one.
Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein are members of the European Economic Area (EEA), which gives them access to the EU's single market in exchange for adopting swathes of EU rules with little influence over how they are made. EEA membership puts them outside the customs union: the EU imposed tariffs on ferroalloys, metals that Iceland and Norway produce in huge quantities, and EEA membership did not protect them.
Iceland first applied for EU membership in 2009. By 2012 it had closed 11 out of 35 "chapters" in the EU's accession process—faster progress than Montenegro, another candidate, which took 13 years to do so. A right-wing government ended the talks in 2013. On August 29th 2026 Iceland's government plans to hold a referendum on restarting accession talks—the first time Icelanders have been asked about the EU in a referendum. Most Icelanders support restarting the process, and those who favour joining outnumber those who oppose it, though many are undecided. Iceland's foreign minister, Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir, has said that the Greenland crisis showed how valuable EU membership is for Denmark. Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, has suggested the EU should be more flexible to ease Iceland's accession. Gudrun Hafsteindottir, leader of the opposition Independence Party, calls accession talks "pointless", arguing the EU would eventually make Iceland adopt all its rules. Settled by rebellious Vikings more than 1,000 years ago, Iceland values its independence. Donald Trump's threats against nearby Greenland have further increased Icelandic interest in European integration.
Even Iceland, with one of the lowest crime rates in the world, has uncomfortably full jails thanks to lengthier sentences.
If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.