Iceland Report

For all intents and purposes, Iceland is a city-state. With a population under 300,000 living mainly in and around the capital of Reykjavik, most Icelanders literally call each other by first name. In fact, ninety percent of Icelanders have no inherited surname, instead using their father's (or sometimes mother's) first name as a patronymic to differentiate between each other. The use of a national registry number, based on birthdate and a few random numbers, helps distinguish between citizens for official purposes and also serves as a continually-updated substitute for a census.

Iceland is an incredibly bookish culture, with the small population (smaller than any US state) reading three daily newspapers and an assortment of other publications and papers. Iceland has the highest per capita publication of books and magazines in the world. Historically, the oldest Norse writings still available are the Icelandic sagas; they present a record of Nordic life settling Iceland in the early Middle Ages.

Iceland is one of the few countries in the world to not have a real army. Unlike Japan, which actually has a highly trained army that it decides to call the Self-Defense Forces, Iceland has little more than a light coast guard, a police force, and a small assortment of armed, uniformed peacekeepers sent abroad to Bosnia and Afghanistan. The US provides defenses by treaty obligation and has since it took over for the UK in 1941 following an Allied invasion of the strictly neutral Iceland (Iceland having just declared independence from Denmark following the Nazi invasion of Denmark).

Iceland's parliament, the Althing, is one of the oldest parliamentary bodies in the world. It was founded in 930 AD and continued to hold sessions until 1799. It was reconstituted in the mid-19th century in Reykjavik and has been open since then. The medieval commonwealth under the Althing is the source of much discussion among libertarians and anarcho-capitalists (most prominently, the Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman). The sole government official under the Icelandic Commonwealth was the Law Speaker, whose two official duties were to sit as chair of the Althing and to recite all the laws of the Althing (until the 12th century, when they began writing the laws down in what are now called the Gray Goose Laws); if the Speaker of the Law failed to recite a law and nobody called him on it, then it was no longer a law. The enforcement of the laws fell to the Icelanders themselves and to chieftans.

Aside from the appeal of having one government official, anarcho-capitalists appreciate the judicial model because it allowed Icelanders to pick their membership in one of various judicial associations, and the chieftanship position or head of each association was itself a commodity - able to be loaned, bought, sold, and inherited. The chieftans were responsible for appointing arbitrators for intra-association disputes, and for general defensive arming; layers of appeals for both intra- and inter-association disputes were processed through progressive layers of associations and arbitrations. This model is strikingly similar to one discussed by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia. Defenders of the Icelandic Commonwealth point out that the voluntary membership of the associations acted as a check on the chieftans, thus providing something similar to democracy (or at least popular representation) since Icelanders could simply switch to a competing association if they didn't appreciate their previous ones.

The historical model ended in the 13th century when the Norwegian king became monarch of Iceland, ending the Commonwealth and giving Iceland its first chief executive. The Commonwealth was not at the time a libertarian system, even if the model is appropriate to anarcho-capitalism. The conversion of Iceland to Christianity was made by government mandate and baptism became mandatory while pagan rituals were banned.

Most of Iceland's parties oppose joining the EU, but slightly more controversial is continuing in NATO and the US alliance. The vast majority of Iceland is Lutheran, despite full religious freedom. Residents and citizens from outside Northern and Central Europe is very limited, mostly to Balkan ethnicities and Filipinos (both under 1,000 each) meaning immigration as an issue has yet to spark Iceland the way it has hit Europe.

Althing 63 Seats	Results Seats & Proportional Vote
Independence Party	22 seats; 33.7% vote
Alliance	20 seats; 31% vote
Progressive Party	12 seats; 17.7% vote
Left-Green Movement	5 seats; 8.8% vote
Liberal Party	4 seats; 7.4% vote
New Force	0 seats; 1% vote

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