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The Reykjavík Grapevine Archives

We planned to discuss Iceland in 2025 with three experts and got slapped in the face by current events

The Grapevine planned a political lunch meeting for January 5, 2026. While the flu affected our guestlist, Ólafur Þórður Harðarson, the University of Iceland’s Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Paweł Bartoszek, Liberal Reform Minister of Parliament and Chairman of Foreign Affairs, Egill Helgason, longtime journalist and current host of Kiljan on RÚV, and of course our own publisher, Jón Trausti Sigurðarson joined me for what we thought would be a recap of 2025. As it happened, events in Venezuela, and a comment from President Trump, made January 4, 2026 about a need for the US to control Greenland, overtook our discussion.  

Egill: I am being called a Trumpist by the socialists. Some of the socialists seem to have the illusion that Maduro was actually the real thing. An icon for them. 

I have friends in Venezuela who give me regular briefings on what’s going on. It’s just a horrible, horrible, absolutely dangerous bad place. Basically, the police and the military are criminals as well.  

Paweł: The stuff that I’ve been saying publicly and getting some pushback for, I mean… part of this part is just the whole internationally legal aspect of it, which is obviously very dubious. 

There are supposed to be rules about how you engage in this type of thing. They’re obviously not being followed, but the reason that I’ve not been able to push through with some huge words of condemnation is the fact that I’ve, in my travels as a foreign chairman’s committee, I’ve met lots of people who have left Venezuela in Europe, at conferences, places, and, they were all pretty much cautiously optimistic in the last months because they hoped that something like this might happen. 

Bart: Cautiously optimistic? I don’t understand how you phrase what happened. Is this a liberation? Because to me it looks like a kidnapping. 

Egill: It’s not a liberation. It doesn’t seem to have a precedent. It doesn’t seem to be a plan of any sort. I’m a bit reminded of Romania in 1989 when the security police actually knocked off Ceaușescu. But the rest of the, uh, the baddies were still in place. 

Bart: I feel like I have trouble understanding the current US administration because I don’t understand pre-Gorbachev Soviet policies. 

Ólafur: This is even older than that. I think what we’re seeing is 19th-century imperialism, where no international rules were applied. The big ones simply sort of swallowed the little ones. Might is right in that sense. 

“I’m a bit reminded of Romania in 1989 when the security police actually knocked off Ceaușescu.”

Egill: Yes. With the US kind of blowing up the world order it created itself after the war. But I have friends in Venezuela, and they’re very worried and they’re very worried that the same people will stay in. They’re actually thinking of trying to get to Colombia. And these are people who were actually kicked out of Iceland because they were refugees in Iceland. 

The Iceland government, which is a dark chapter in Icelandic history, when we kicked out Venezuelans who we promised refuge here. And these people they’re basically just afraid, but they hate Maduro. Absolutely. 

Jón Trausti: If we stay on the topic of 2026, then, so like if we put aside the internal politics of Venezuela here and think about the sort of international connotations of what the United States just did and what it perhaps means for the northern hemisphere. The independence of places such as Iceland is only possible through this world order created in the late 1940s. What can this mean for us into the future or for Greenland or anybody really who is not powerful? 

Paweł: I’ll, for a moment, switch hemispheres, but it’s still relevant. The reason that countries aren’t actually invaded and taken over is unfortunately more and more actual deterrence rather than respect for international law. 

So in that sense, I would not go as far as saying that this operation in Venezuela means that Taiwan can be easily taken over because I don’t think that what’s stopping the Chinese from intervening in Taiwan is necessarily only their respect for international law. 

Bart: In this hemisphere, then: Do you think there’s a military deterrence to Greenland actions? 

Paweł: I would not say any secrets in claiming that Iceland doesn’t have an army. I mean that’s so much an obvious thing. 

Bart: We have an army here, though, but it’s not Iceland’s. 

Paweł: Well, Iceland doesn’t have an army on their own. We have a treaty with the US. 

Bart: So if action were taken on Greenland, would it come from US military in Iceland? 

Paweł: From the US? I think the hypothetical questions are better for scholars rather than politicians. 

Egill: I’m a journo. The taking over of Greenland wasn’t, would not be a major operation really. It’s a country of 50,000 people and they’re concentrated in very few places. Yeah, I know. So it’s not a big operation if you’re thinking in military terms. 

Ólafur: It is incomprehensible why Trump is demanding that he can hold Greenland because already the Americans have all the military advantages they need in Greenland. Now, perhaps he isn’t also interested in mines, but taking over Greenland would be extremely serious because that would be violating the Danish Kingdom. 

I was in China just a few months ago, and when you look at China, you see a rising superpower progress in more or less every aspect. I was also in America not long ago, and you see a declining superpower. They can’t even manage their own infrastructure. 

As I see it, we will have three major powers. The US, of course, China and the European Union. What Trump has done is that he has, I’m not going to say completely united the European countries inside the EU, but the EU is more united now than it has been for a long time, with a few exceptions like Hungary and those populists. 

“The reason that countries aren’t actually invaded and taken over is unfortunately more and more actual deterrence rather than respect for international law.”

If the US attacked Greenland, that would obviously make the rift that we can already see between America and Europe. That would of course deepen that very deeply. If Europe is faced with increasingly hostile America, will that change Europe’s sort of view on China and cooperation with China? 

Bart: You said populist exceptions like Hungary, but you didn’t refer to the United Kingdom. 

Ólafur: No. The United Kingdom of, of course, left the European Union. But on Ukraine and in many markets the UK have been sort of working very closely with the European Union. And the situation, of course, in Britain is that the Brits, the, the Brexit decision was probably the most, one of the most, stupid [political decisions] I have ever seen during my life. 

And I was reading the other day an article saying what the British want to do is join the EU without formally joining it. Even though they have to make friendly gestures to Trump, and we traditionally of course have this special relationship between Britain and the US, I think that is not as strong as it used to be. 

Paweł: It’s ironic that they are so unhappy with Brexit that their protest will be voting in Reform. 

Bart: The UK would then have a special relationship again with the United States if that happened. They would’ve a special relationship with Trump if Farage was prime minister. 

Egill: But the problem is that the attention span of the Trump administration is very short. We would have hoped that the populist scourge would’ve gone away. But it’s amplified, and we have it in Scandinavia, we have it in Slovakia, even in Spain, which has been a relatively well-governed country compared to most. And so that’s really something you have to worry about going into the new year. And even in Iceland we have the populist scourge gaining momentum in the polls. 

Bart: Yeah, that’s the story of 2025 almost, isn’t it? 

Paweł: I would not be that pessimistic. The party has gained the most, this election is the Social Democrats. My party, the Liberal Reform, is doing quite well. The government has like 56 percent overall support in the polls. From the perspective of somebody who’s supportive of the government this has just been a pretty good year. 

“It is incomprehensible why Trump is demanding that he can hold Greenland because already the Americans have all the military advantages they need in Greenland.”

Egill: The big news story of the year was of course the government and, in a way, the superb handling of Kristrún Frostadóttir. She seems to be born into it. She doesn’t overexert herself in the media. She keeps back in a way that I think Katrín Jakobsdóttir could not have done. She’s not all over the place. 

Ólafur: Before I get to the Icelandic situation, I’d like to comment on what Paweł was saying. Because I basically agree with him. I think the rise of populism, right wing, nationalistic populism is in many places a threat to democracy. The most dangerous thing obviously is America, where traditional American democracy is under threat, very serious threat. If you look at Europe, we have certainly a few instances where right-wing populists have been part of leading governments. But for most of Europe and for traditional Western Europe those populist parties have been obtaining 20 to 30 percent of the vote. Which is important but not as dangerous as it could be.  

Paweł: And to sort of, you know, bring sort of this situation into the Icelandic context. I would also say that I don’t consider the centre party to be extreme right.  I consider it to be hard right. 

Bart: If the centre party is not extreme right, what would a party have to do to indicate that they’re beyond hard right? Because there’s some xenophobia, there’s some dog whistling. What’s the line between far right and extreme right? 

Paweł: You know, I would not like to give people too many ideas. 

Ólafur: I agree with Paweł, that there is a great difference between individual parties. The progress party in Norway, which is sort of sceptical on immigration, is very, very different from the AfD in Germany. One criterion might simply be, uh, are those parties advocating sort of abolishing democracy or not? Are they a threat to democracy? 

Bart: Is a threat to the press the same as a threat to democracy? Some of these dog whistles are threats to the press, right? 

Ólafur: I don’t see being hostile to the press as a threat to democracy, even though it might in most cases be inappropriate and unfair. If you on the other hand are in a position of power and you threaten the press, for instance, like Donald Trump has done, then that is a threat to democracy. Of course, a free press, a strong critical press, is a fundamental characteristic of functioning liberal democracy. 

This is an excerpt from an hour-and-a-half free-for-all discussion. While an extended interview will be online for subscribers, we can’t promise it’s the most comfortable information for those of us entering 2026.