Baudenbacher said that the referendum on 29 August was not about Europe or isolation, because Iceland was already deeply integrated into Europe through her membership in the European Economic Area, EEA, and in the European Free Trade Association, EFTA. The referendum was whether to continue in the EEA or join the European Union, the EU. Baudenbacher argued that Iceland would have negligible influence in the EU, relatively much less than in the EEA. The EU was confronted by many difficulties, not least in Germany. As an EU member state, Iceland would have to transfer control of her fisheries, agriculture, foreign trade, and monetary affairs to Brussels, whereas these sectors were exempted from the EEA agreement. At present, the EFTA Court decided on cases, but if Iceland joined the EU, judicial power would be transferred to the Court of Justice of the European Union which was known for its tendency to support the European Commission. It was not a plausible argument that Iceland had to join the EU for security reasons. She already had a defence treaty with the United States, and changes in long-term foreign policy were not made on the basis of comments by a US President whose bark was worse than his bite.

Baudenbacher said that if the voters approved of resuming the accession negotiations in the referendum, then there was a danger that the Icelanders would be entrapped in such negotiations which were essentially negotiations about the adjustment of Iceland to the EU legal framework. While formally nothing barred Iceland from rejecting membership, it might be difficult to return to the situation of 2026. A membership application meant not only that a state wanted a discussion, but also that it wanted to join the EU. A Yes in the referendum meant a big step towards membership, not only an exploration of the terms offered.

Baudenbacher recalled the Icesave dispute between the Icelanders on the one hand and the British and the Dutch on the other. It began when the British and the Dutch government unilaterally decided, in the midst of the 2008 Icelandic bank collapse, to compensate deposits in Landsbanki’s Icesave accounts and then demanded that the Icelandic state guaranteed the reimbursement of their outlays, roughly four billion euros, with interest. The Icelandic state rejected this demand as it was the Landsbanki’s estate and the Icelandic Depositors’ Guarentee Fund that were liable for the accounts, and as the Icelandic state had fulfilled all its obligations under European law on financial markets. After the Icelandic voters had twice rejected deals where the liability of the Icelandic state was accepted, if the assets of Landsbanki could not cover its liabilities to depositors, the dispute was referred to the EFTA Court where Baudenbacher presided. The European Commission joined Great Britain and the Netherlands in the case. The EFTA Court rejected a liability of the Icelandic state in the case, as there was no statute to be found that it was financially liable, and as the current European legislation was about bank failures, but not the collapse of a whole banking system.

The meeting hall was packed, and after Baudenbacher’s lecture he got a standing ovation. It was followed by a lively discussion. The chair, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, quipped that Baudenbacher was probably the only person alive who could prompt the three ex-ministers Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson from the Social Democrats, Gudni Ágústsson from the Agrarians, and Gudlaugur Thór Thórdarson from the Independence Party to attend the same meeting. In one of his responses Baudenbacher pointed out that Brexit had been a great loss for the EU, because the British has developed a strong legal tradition different from that of the continent, especially in France. He quoted the Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenbeg who had not wanted a Europe controlled by French dirigisme combined with German thoroughness. Baudenbacher added that Schwarzenberg’s forefather, Karl Philipp, Prince Schwarzenberg, had led the army which defeated Napoleon at Leipzig in October 1813, Napoleon being one of the many despots who had tried to unify Europe.

One illuminating paper by Thráinn examined how the Icelanders escaped what has been called ‘the tragedy of the commons’. The original settlers, arriving between 874 and 930, found a subarctic island with green valleys reaching the coast, surrounded by mountain pastures. The interior of the country, however, was barren and uninhabitable. The land was mainly suitable for sheep farming. It was relatively easy to establish private property rights over the farms in the valleys, but during the summer, the farmers of each valley jointly utilised the mountain pastures for their sheep. This created a temptation for each farmer to graze more sheep than was optimal, since he alone enjoyed the profit of any additional sheep, whereas the commune bore the loss. The solution was to assign each farm a set number of sheep to graze in the mountain pastures, a quota. The total number of sheep was set so that, when they returned in the autumn, they were as fat as possible, which was the economically correct target.

The quota system in the mountain pastures was relatively efficient. But in another illuminating paper, Thráinn described a disaster: how the Icelanders starved for centuries despite living next to the most fertile fishing grounds in Europe. The reason was that Iceland was long under the Danish crown, which formed an alliance with the landowners (while most farmers were tenants) to stifle the growth of the fisheries: 1) by prohibiting foreigners from staying for the winter, 2) obliging everybody to work and register at a farm (bondage), and 3) issuing royal decrees that priced fish far below its market value. The crown did this to maintain its hold on the country, and the landowners to keep their access to cheap labour. The consequence was a series of famines that only ended in the nineteenth century with free trade, the abolition of bondage, and the growth of the fisheries.

Thráinn was a scholar, not a preacher, but he gave talks on controversial contemporary topics at two RNH international conferences in Reykjavík. One was in 2012, when a left-wing government was trying to dismantle the sustainable and profitable system of individual transferable quotas we had developed in fisheries (in some ways similar to the quota system in mountain pastures). Thráinn gave his full support to the system and sought to explain why some people were bent on reducing wealth. The other talk was at the retirement conference of Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson in 2023, when he spoke about the ‘dictator’s dilemma’ that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, faces. The dilemma is that an authoritarian ruler must choose between the free flow of information, which may weaken his hold on power, and its suppression, which may stifle economic growth. Xi is trying to overcome the problem by leveraging advanced technology and artificial intelligence, hoping to stimulate economic growth without accepting freedom. If he fails (which is likely), Thráinn predicted he would resort to warmongering.

One AB project has been the republication of anti-communist literature, before and during the Cold War, under the editorship of Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland. The books are printed and also accessible free of charge online, while some have been produced as audiobooks. They include Greinar um kommúnisma (Articles on communism) by philosopher Bertrand Russell, Konur í thraelakistum Stalíns (Women in Stalin’s Slave Camps) by Elinor Lipper and Aino Kuusinen, Úr álögum (Out of the Night) by Jan Valtin (Richard Krebs), Leyniraedan um Stalín (Khruschev’s Secret Speech on Stalin), El campesino  by Valentín Gonzáles and Julián Gorkin, Örlaganótt yfir Eystrasaltslöndum (Baltic Eclipse) by Ants Oras, Eistland. Smathjód undir oki erlends valds (Estland. En studie i imperialism) by Andres Küng, Thjónusta, Thrælkun, flótti (Service, Servitude, Escape) by Aatami Kuortti, Ég kaus frelsid (I Chose Freedom) by Victor Kravchenko, Nytsamur sakleysingi (Nightmare of the Innocents) by Otto Larsen, Til varnar vestrænni menningu (In Defence of the West) by six Icelandic writers, Rádstjórnarríkin: Godsagnir og veruleiki (Soviet Myths and Reality) by Arthur Koestler, Framtíd smáthjodanna (The Future of Small Nations) by Arnulf Øverland. Many of those books, speeches and articles caused controversy in Iceland when communists, often paid by the Kremlin, were still an aggressive force.

Another AB project has been, under the supervision of AB Managing Director, historian Jónas Sigurgeirsson, the publication of books about the traumatic 2008 Icelandic bank collapse:  Búsáhaldabyltingin: sjálfsprottin eða skipulögð? (The Pots and Pans Revolution: Spontaneous or Organised?) by historian Stefán Gunnar Sveinsson, Andersen-skjölin: rannsóknir eða ofsóknir? (The Andersen Files: Investigation or Persecution?) by journalist Eggert Skúlason,  Seðlabankinn gegn Samherja: Eftirlit eða eftirför? (The Central Bank Against Samherji: Supervision or Hunting Expedition) by lawyer Björn Jón Bragason, Gjaldeyriseftirlitid: Vald án eftirlits? (The Currency Control Agency: Power without Control?) by the same author, and Icesave-samningarnir: Afleikur aldarinnar? (The Icesave Deals: the Blunder of the Century?) by journalist Sigurdur Már Jónsson. These books have sold well and been praised by many, although the folks at the Public Broadcasting Service, RÚV, have ignored them.

Managing Director Jónas Sigurgeirsson presented the annual financial report of the Public Book Club, which did well in 2025. Subsequently, the shareholders and special guests enjoyed dinner at the restaurant Tides. From left: Sigríður Snævarr, Ármann Þorvaldsson, Karítas Kvaran, Kjartan Gunnarsson, Hannes H. Gissurarson, Baldur Guðlaugsson, Jónas Sigurgeirsson og Rósa  Guðbjartsdóttir.

Dr. Marek Mutor, President of the Platform.

RNH is a member of The Platform of European Memory and Conscience, established in 2011 in response to a European Parliament resolution calling for the memory of victims of totalitarianism to be kept alive. RNH Academic Director Hannes H. Gissurarson had already in 2009 translated the Black Book of Communism into Icelandic, and in 2011, he published a history of the Icelandic communist movement. The Platform’s 2026 annual meeting was held in Katowice, Poland, 25–27 May, alongside a one-day conference on heroism and remembrance.

It may be recalled that on 27 September 1939, in an Icelandic newspaper, the communist Halldór Laxness (later to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature) applauded Stalin’s annexation of eastern Poland, writing that fifteen million people under medieval feudalism, notorious for its dirt-poor peasants, had ‘smoothly jumped’ into the Soviet republic of workers and farmers. The truth was quite different. While the Nazis certainly behaved with unspeakable cruelty in their part of Poland, it is less well known that the communists did likewise in theirs: they murdered not only 22,000 Polish officers in 1940, but also deported 1.7 million people to Siberia and Kazakhstan, as described in a well-written book reported on by an Icelandic newspaper in 1946, The Dark Side of the Moon by Zoe Zajdlerowa.

The main topic in Katowice was how to convey totalitarian crimes as well as heroic deeds to the younger generation, for whom they were distant and almost unreal, through survivor testimonies, history textbooks, social media, museums, and elsewhere. All too often, for example, the Cold War is described in textbooks as a game played by two superpowers, the Americans and the Soviets. History is not only about numbers. It is also about names. Of course, numbers are important: the Nazis murdered six million Jews, and communism cost about one hundred million lives. But these numbers only come to life when they are attached to people of flesh and blood. Some victims’ voices were heard at the Katowice conference. Kordian Borejko, who was deported by the Soviets in 1940, a one-year-old with his parents to Kazakhstan, and returned to Poland in 1946, gave a moving speech. Antoine Arjakovsky, a French historian and moderator at one of the panels, recalled that his grandfather, a Russian Orthodox priest in France, had died in a Nazi camp, and that several of his Russian relatives had perished in the Soviet Gulag.

Another topic at the conference was the distinction between perpetrators, accomplices and collaborators. Arjakovsky mentioned the mass arrest of more than 13,000 Jews in Paris on 16–17 July 1942 (which Gissurarson have also written about). It was carried out by the French police at the initiative of the Nazi occupiers. The victims were confined at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a sports arena, and subsequently deported to Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. None of the 3,900 children survived. Later, French President François Mitterand refused to apologise for this action, but his successor, Jacques Chirac, did so in 1995.

The book’s first selections are from the writings of Icelandic historians Ari the Learned and Snorri Sturluson. In a famous speech at the Icelandic Parliament in the year 1000, the Lawspeaker, Thorgeir from Brightlake District, emphasised, according to Ari the Learned, that the Icelanders had no king but the law, unlike the other Nordic nations where kings waged endless wars and imposed heavy taxes. The same theme was found in Snorri’s account of another famous speech, by the farmer Einar from Thverá at the Parliament in the year 1024. In Snorri’s Heimskringla, the history of the Norwegian kings, two ancient Germanic principles are taken for granted: government by consent and the right of rebellion. Later, the English philosopher John Locke built a systematic defence of liberty on those two principles.

Hannes said that the three most remarkable Nordic conservative-liberal thinkers were Snorri, the Swedish pastor and politician Anders Chydenius, and the Danish pastor and poet N. F. S. Grundtvig. In 1765, Chydenius had anticipated the two powerful ideas articulated eleven years later in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: that one man’s profit need not be another man’s loss; and that order could arise spontaneously, without commands. In the nineteenth century, Grundtvig had argued, much in the same manner as the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, for free associations that could serve as both guardians and outlets for individuals, such as congregations, people’s high schools, various societies, collectives, cooperatives, and private companies.

The audience included the Icelandic Ambassador to Spain, Kristján Andri Stefánsson, and a lively discussion followed Hannes’ talk. The Czech student Jonáš Kurus asked about the connection of religion to the Germanic political tradition. Hannes replied that the roots of Germanic tribal self-government were pre-Christian, just as the Roman chronicler Tacitus had described in the first century AD. Admittedly, a principle of Roman law was that what affected all should be decided by all, Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur, but this had not been a general principle as in the customary law of the Germanic tribes. However, St. Thomas Aquinas accepted the right to rebel if and when kings became tyrants. Natural law in the Thomist tradition certainly had acted as a restraint on kings, but not to the same extent as Germanic customary law.

From left: Hannes, Breki, Schweiger and Tyler.

The German student Anne Struffmann asked what other nations could learn from the Nordic example. Hannes replied that the relative success of the Nordic countries was not because, but in spite of, social democracy. The Nordic heritage of liberty had been strong enough to withstand both the past assaults by kings invoking the grace of God and the modern assaults by social democrats invoking the will of the People. The success of the Nordic countries rested, Hannes said, on three pillars: the rule of law, including strong protection of private property rights, free trade, and social cohesion, which implied a robust civic spirit. But such a social cohesion could not be constructed. It developed over a long time, through compromises and mutual adjustments.  Nevertheless, newly liberated nations in the South could learn from Grundtvig to try and transform peasants into responsible citizens and the masses into self-conscious nations by means of people’s high schools.

Other speakers at the conferences included three friends of Iceland who have often visited: Professor David D. Friedman, Dr. Tom G. Palmer 0f the Atlas Network, and Robert Tyler of New Direction. They have all studied the Icelandic chronicles and sagas. The conference was attended by two other Icelanders, Lukas Schweiger, former Chairman of European Students for Liberty, and Breki Atlason, the Icelandic coordinator of European Students for Liberty.

The oldest event described in the book took place in 946, when Norwegian King Haakon the Good returned to his subjects the land that his father, King Harold Fairhair, had expropriated, and promised to uphold the ancient law of the land, which could be traced back thousands of years to the customary law of the Germanic tribes, as described by the Roman chronicler Tacitus. The most recent event was in 1945, when Danish communists tried to restrict freedom of expression just to those who accepted democratic values, while Poul Andersen recalled Grundtvig’s exclamation that freedom was for Loki as well as for Thor. Snorri Sturluson, Anders Chydenius, and N. F. S. Grundtvig contribute most to the anthology, which contains 468 pages, of which 267 pages are the introduction.

At the 2026 Liberty Forum, RNH Academic Director, Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland, presented on 9 April a forthcoming book that he edits and introduces, Conservative-Liberal Thought in the Nordic Countries, 946–1945: An Anthology. It is 468 pages, of which 267 are his introduction. The first selections from the writings of Nordic authors are by the Icelandic chroniclers Ari the Learned and Snorri Sturluson, and the last ones by the Norwegian economist Trygve Hoff and the Danish law professor Poul Andersen. The anthology is published by the Brussels think tank New Direction.

In his talk in Porto Alegre, Hannes Gissurarson said that the success of the Nordic countries was despite, and not because of, social democracy. Its three main explanations were: a strong tradition of the rule of law; a firm commitment to free trade; and social cohesion, reflected in a high level of trust. Hannes also suggested an explanation of the tradition of hard work in the Nordic countries (possibly now being eroded by sloth, made possible by generous welfare benefits). It is that, over the centuries, the Nordic nations had to prepare for and endure harsh winters through hard work, unable to collect low-hanging fruit from trees in milder climates.

Oddsson addressing in 2016 a meeting celebrating 25 years since Iceland renewed her recognition of the Baltic countries.

The most successful Icelandic politician of all time, Davíd Oddsson, passed away on 1 March 2026. He was Mayor of Reykjavik for 9 years, Prime Minister for almost 14 years, Foreign Minister for a year, Governor of the Central Bank of Iceland for four years, and Chief Editor of Morgunbladid, the only remaining daily in Iceland, for almost 17 years, from 2009 to his death. No Icelandic politician has done more to increase individual freedom and protect citizens’ rights against the state. On the day of Davíd’s funeral, 13 March, Morgunbladid printed many articles about him, including a long one by one of his closest friends, Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland. Hannes offered three explanations of Davíd’s great success as a politician. First, the circumstances worked in his favour, he was the right man at the right time, riding on the same wave as Thatcher in Great Britain and Reagan in the United States. Secondly, his political views were deeply rooted in the Icelandic national spirit; he was an extraordinary man with ordinary beliefs. Thirdly, he had the personal qualities of an effective politician. He had great charisma, and he was, in Machiavelli’s phrase, brave as a lion and sly as a fox. From the beginning, he was seen as a born leader. Hannes also published two articles in The Conservative on Davíd, an obituary, and a defence of his legacy on the occasion of leftist attacks.

Davíd was given a full state funeral in Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík, with a sermon delivered by the Rev. Geir Waage (the father-in-law of Davíd’s son Thorsteinn, a judge in the Reykjavík District Court). The ten pallbearers were (from right): Davíd’s loyal supporter, businessman Kjartan Gunnarsson; Davíd’s schoolmate and friend, the poet Thórarinn Eldjárn; Davíd’s loyal supporter, businessman Thórólfur Gíslason; Davíd’s colleague at Morgunbladid, Editor Haraldur Johannessen; Hannes H. Gissurarson; the surgeon Eiríkur Jónsson, who successfully treated Davíd for cancer; Davíd’s former adviser on international affairs, Albert Jónsson; Davíd’s cousin, Supreme Court Judge Ólafur Börkur Thorvaldsson; Central Bank Governor Dr. Ásgeir Jónsson; and Davíd’s loyal supporter, businessman Gunnlaugur Sævar Gunnlaugsson. Immediately following them were Davíd’s widow, Ástrídur Thorarensen, and their son, Thorsteinn Davídsson.