Culture & Ideas ICELAND: Journey to Iceland’s cultural miracle

Iceland escaped the grip of austerity and has turned Icelandic culture into the country’s second largest contributor to GDP, with an impact of around €1bn per year. Unemployment is at 5.7 per cent, growth at 3 per cent – and the island is alive to the sound of music and movie shoots.

If the financial collapse Iceland went through in 2008 is viewed as a laboratory of questions and answers about the current crisis, taking notes on some of the solutions the Icelanders have come up with might be wise.

Unlike in southern Europe, where cuts and tax increases have hit on the culture sector in particular, since 2008 this country of 320,000 inhabitants, which is the size of Portugal, has thrown itself into the creative industries sector. The economic impact of that activity (€1bn) is double that of agriculture today and ranks just under the island’s top industry, fishing – the legendary export machine that ships cod (and other seafood) to the continent.

LER MAIS