I’m not surprised that Iceland voted No to resuming EU accession talks, but the romance of the old man of the sea is a luxury that may soon pass its sell-by date.
Icelanders have been fishing their waters for longer than most EU countries have existed.
It is more poetic to make laws in the Alþingi, the world’s oldest (930AD) parliament, than in the beige labyrinths of EU committee and working group meetings in supra-national institutional buildings in Brussels.
And even though Reykjavik smelled the geopolitical coffee by voting Yes to the EU, the peripheries of older people in the countryside carried the No to a 52.8 percent victory in the Nordic micro state on Saturday (29 August).
It would have had just six MEPs out of 720 in the European Parliament, in what seemed like diminished status, for a proud nation, and guardian of the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, and UK) gap – a strategic chokepoint controlling naval access from the Arctic to Atlantic oceans.
“We want to remain in close contact with the European Union, Europe, and as many other countries as possible, [but] the nation is sending a clear message that we intend to steer that course ourselves,” said Guðrún Hafsteinsdóttir, leader of the opposition Independence Party, who had campaigned for a No.
But Iceland’s identity-romance is a luxury in a new hard-power era – and not just because US president Donald Trump has threatened Greenland and degraded Nato’s Article 5 joint-defence deterrent.
Iceland has no navy or armed forces (even though EU funds under the ‘SAFE’ programme could have financed these), making it vulnerable to Russian hybrid threats and so-called ‘little green men’ (occupation forces without insignia, as in Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014).
Luxury of saying ‘no’
It is also a luxury because Iceland benefits from single-market access anyway as an European Economic Area member and could de facto rely on defence assistance from Nordic and Baltic countries, Poland, the UK, and Ukraine if it was attacked.
Even grizzled Icelandic fishermen know that if Iceland needed to join the EU, they could flip and be welcomed in overnight.
And their Alþingi romance is decadent at a time when like-minded European nations should be showing maximum solidarity against their common aggressor, Russia, instead of telling medieval sagas by the fireside.
“Something big has to change in the next 24 months for this [EU accession] to be at the top of the agenda [again],” said Icelandic prime minister Kristrún Frostadóttir on Saturday.
But I bet that if the Icelandic Króna crashed, or a Trump trade war battered Iceland’s economy, that would be big enough for those stubbly fishermen to come running to the EU with open arms, let alone if Iceland needed help in a security crisis.
Moby Dick exists, so do ogres and orcs (just ask Ukrainian soldiers), but they are not poetic in 2026: They are a mechanised, full-spectrum armed forces of a rogue state, which cares nothing about your history or dignity, while your European family is happy to buy you the gunboats that you can use to help us protect ourselves together.
This story was corrected on 31 August 2026, to say Kristrún Frostadóttir is the Icelandic prime minister (not Irish, as originally reported)