Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland and RNH Academic Director, gave a talk at the Summer University organised by Brussels think tank New Direction and French think tank ISSEP at Chateau de Thorens in France on 30 June to 4 July 2025. His subject was the root of conservative-liberal thought. Gissurarson pointed out that a distinction could be made between southern liberalism, originating in Roman law and the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, and northern liberalism, originating in the customary law of the Germanic tribes and their self-government, described by Tacitus and applauded by Montesquieu (who exclaimed that European freedom was born in the forests of Germany).

This northern liberalism was articulated in the works of Icelandic chronicler Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) who described the conflict between the Norwegian (and Swedish) kings and their subjects who insisted on the two ancient principles of government by consent and the right of rebellion. Later John Locke was to build a whole system upon those two principles, in his justification of the 1688 Revolution in Britain which was made in order to defend ancient liberties against a king who craved absolutism. This system was further elaborated by David Hume with his conception of justice, spontaneously developed as a response to limited altruism and natural scarcity, by Adam Smith with his case for free trade, and by Edmund Burke with his polemic against attempts at destroying all ancient institutions instead of reforming then gradually.

Gissurarson recalled that eleven years before Smith published his great treatise on the Wealth of Nations, a Finnish pastor, Anders Chydenius (1729–803], as a member of the Swedish Parliament, Diet of the Four Estates, in 1765 had published a tract with essentially the same arguments for free trade. Chydenius had also been instrumental in abolishing censorship and introducing freedom of religion in Sweden. In the nineteenth century, Swedish liberals deposed a king in 1809 and wrote a relatively liberal constitution the same year. They reinforced the rule of law, abolished the guilds and most restrictions on trade, and in 1866 replaced the Diet of the Four Estates with a Parliament. Sweden, between 1870 and 1970, experienced a high and sustained rate of economic growth and became one of the richest countries in the world.

In the nineteenth century, the third great liberal appeared, the Danish poet, pastor and statesman Nikolai Frederik S. Grundtvig (1783–1872). When the Danish king in 1848 transferred his absolute power to the people, Grundtvig saw it as a necessary task to educate the people in so-called People’s High Schools so they could become responsible citizens. He was a nationalist, but a non-aggressive one. For example, he thought that only the Danish-speaking part of the contested Schleswig should belong to Denmark. Nationality had to be chosen, not imposed. Grundtvig’s nationalism was about respecting and developing the national heritage, the history, language, literature, folk songs and folkways, of one’s own country. When Denmark had lost Norway, in 1814, and Schleswig and Holstein, in 1864, he emphasised that she should grow within her own borders, as a nation proud of her identity and achievements.

Gissurarson emphasised that conservative liberalism was not only the product of individual writers, but that it was also embodied in Nordic practices, first and foremost the rule of law, and a strong civil society, full of voluntary associations and local communities. The Royal charters of the late Middle Ages also acted as constraints on arbitrary power. It showed how strong was the conservative-liberal tradition of liberty under the law that it was able to withstand both the seventeenth century assault of the kings, claiming power by the grace of God, and the twentieth century assault by Social Democrats, claiming power by the will of the people. Today, the Nordic nations are some of the freest nations economically in the world, and the happiest ones as well. They have cast off the yoke of Social democracy in the same way as they cast off the yoke of absolutism and in the same way as the English, gradually from Magna Carta in 1215 to the 1688 Revolution, cast off the Norman yoke and returned to their Saxon freedom, a part of the Germanic heritage of all Northern peoples.

Other speakers at the summer school included Hungarian professor Ferenc Hörcher who defended moderate conservatism in the spirit of Roger Scruton, Croatian MEP Stepan Bartulica who criticised the centralisation in the European Union, New Direction Senior Adviser Robert Tyler who described the conservative views on the nation state, French professor Jean Luc Coronel de Boissezon who presented the conservatism of Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald, Swedish Oikos adviser Arvid Hallén who argued for an alliance between right-wing liberals and conservatives, English Professor James Orr who gave a defence of conservative values, and Mateusz Morawiecki, former Prime Minister of Poland, who discussed the current state of affairs in Europe. Many lecturers expressed worries about asylum seekers in Europe who refused to follow the laws and conventions of their host countries. This might even lead to local soft civil wars. They emphasised the conservative support for the family, church, and nation. Fifty students attended the school, while many more had applied.

As a parlour game, the lecturers were asked to name seven books that they would recommend. Gissurarson mentioned Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke (1790),  Socialism by Ludwig von Mises (1922), The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. von Hayek (1944), The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl R. Popper (1945), Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957), The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1974), and Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick (1974). Both teachers and students at the summer school agreed that the venue, Chateau de Thorens, was superb.

The 2025 general meeting of the Public Book Club, Almenna bokafelagid, AB, was held on 17 May. Jonas Sigurgeirsson, AB Executive Director, presented the 2024 accounts which showed the best-ever performance, not least because of sales to foreign tourists. Other shareholders are Kjartan Gunnarsson, Baldur Gudlaugsson, and Armann Thorvaldsson. AB celebrates its 7oth anniversary this year. It was founded on 17 June 1955 at the initiative of Bjarni Benediktsson, then Minister of Education and Vice-Chairman of the Independence Party, and the poets Gunnar Gunnarsson, Tomas Gudmundsson, Gudmundur G. Hagalin, and Kristmann Gudmundsson. The objective of AB was to present an alternative to the communist publishing house, Mal og menning, supported lavishly by Kremlin. In recent years, AB has published three novels by Ayn Rand, We the Living, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged, books by Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus, and by Matt Ridley and Johan Norberg, and reprints of anti-communist books of the Cold War, including Essays on Communism by Bertrand Russell, El campesino by Valentín González, Baltic Eclipse by Aants Oras, and I Chose Freedom by Victor Kravchenko.

RNH Academic Director, Professor Emeritus Hannes H. Gissurarson, was one of the speakers at the Budapest meeting on 13 May 2025 of the Free Market Road Show, organised by the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, in cooperation with the Danube Institute in Budapest, and the Hungarian-American Chamber of Commerce, New York. Gissurarson participated with Dr. Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute in a panel about trade and tariffs, moderated by Philip Pilkington. Dr. Barbara Kolm of the Austrian Economics Center and Dr. Daniel Mitchell of the Freedom and Prosperity Institute participated in another panel on the dollar and gold. Her Excellency María Lorena Capra, Ambassador of Argentina to Hungary, also gave a talk at the meeting on the liberal reforms of Argentinian President Javier Milei.

In the beginning of his remarks Gissurarson recalled that in the 1970s at the end of his anti-communist speeches—when communism was still an issue—he used to recite a stanza by Hungarian poet Sàndor Petöfi:

Talpra magyar, hí a haza!
Itt az idő, most vagy soha!
Rabok legyünk, vagy szabadok?
Ez a kérdés, válasszatok!

In English this has been translated:

On your feet now, Hungary calls you!
Now is the moment, nothing stalls you,
Shall we be slaves or men set free
That is the question, answer me!

In the nineteenth century, the Icelanders followed with sympathy the Hungarian struggle for independence, as they were themselves demanding home rule from Denmark.

Gissurarson said that the two main arguments for international free trade were prosperity and peace. God has created individuals and countries with different resources and capabilities and thus He has directed them towards trading with one another. If you have what I lack, and I have what you lack, then we both benefit by trade, and the division of labour. The second argument for international free trade is that if you see a potential customer in me, then your propensity to shoot at me diminishes. Gissurarson welcomed Elon Musk’s proposal that North America and Europe should become one huge free-trade area, without any tariffs, but he added that China was a problem for free traders because of her unfair trade practices, the annexation of Tibet, threats against Taiwan and aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea. Communist China could not be regarded as yet another ordinary business partner. Nor could the other three Axis powers, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

The Head of the Danube Institute, John O’Sullivan, and his wife Melissa gave a dinner for the speakers after the conference. From left: Eamonn Butler, John O’Sullivan, Daniel Mitchell, Christine Blundell, and Hannes H. Gissurarson.

RNH Academic Director, Professor Emeritus Hannes H. Gissurarson, was one of the speakers at the Vienna meeting on 12 May 2025 of the Free Market Road Show, organised by the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna. The meeting took place at the Ringturm, a tower overlooking Vienna. On behalf of the Vienna Insurance Group which hosted the meeting, Peter Höfinger welcomed the participants. The first session was held in German and was about the Austrian budget. Subsequently, at 11.30 in the morning, a panel discussed Hayek’s relevance, public debt and monetary and fiscal constraints. The panel participants were Dr. Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson of the University of Iceland, Dr. Barbara Kolm of the Austrian Economics Center and Austrian MP, Dr. Daniel Mitchell of the Freedom and Prosperity Institute, and Professor Alexander Tokarev of Northwood University.

In his contribution, Gissurarson recalled a dinner he and other members of the Hayek Society at Oxford University had with Hayek at the Ritz in London in the spring of 1985. A group of musicians moved between tables and played the tunes the guests would choose. Gissurarson whispered to them that they should play the tune ‘Vienna: The City of my Dreams’ by Rudolf Sieczyński. When Hayek—86 years at the time—heart the tune, he smiled broadly and began to sing softly in German.

Gissurarson said that indeed a distinction could be made in terms of dreams, between conservative liberalism on the one hand and socialism on the other hand. Conservative liberals believed in the innumerable little dreams that people formed about their lives—to find a job, found a family, set up a company—so that the task was to try and facilitate those dreams. The socialists believed however in the one big dream of reconstructing society according to some blueprint which always ended in failure, the big dream becoming a nightmare.

According to Gissurarson, the reason why the attempt to impose one big dream on society inevitably failed was that the socialists did not understand Hayek’s profound insight about dispersed knowledge, each individual only possessing a fraction of total knowledge. There were two ways of using this knowledge without having it: in time is was to rely on tradition, the accumulated knowledge of generations, the ‘wisdom of our ancestors’; in space it was to use the price mechanism of the free market to discover where one’s special abilities could be put to best use.

In 2024, the ECR Party, the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, published a study by Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland, Conservative Liberalism, North and South: Grundtvig, Einaudi and their Relevance Today. The book is in four chapters. The first chapter describes the origins of classical liberalism, in Icelandic chronicler Snorri Sturluson, and Italian philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, and its articulation as a systematic theory by John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith. In the French Revolution, it split into the conservative liberalism of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Constant, and Alexis de Tocqueville, based on respect for spontaneously developed traditions and distrust of grand theory, and the social liberalism of Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill, inspired by romantic individualism. In the second chapter, the Danish poet and pastor N.F.S. Grundtvig is presented as a spokesman for national liberalism. Grundtvig’s nationalism did not imply any desire to subdue or belittle other cultures: it was rather an exhortation to the Danish nation to protect and develop its national heritage, language, literature, history and folkways.

In the third chapter, the Italian economist Luigi Einaudi is presented as a spokesman for liberal federalism which looks with distrust on nationalism. Einaudi’s goals for Europe were peace, prosperity, and liberty. He believed that this could only be achieved by a European federation, not by a looser confederation, invoking the examples of the Kingdom of Poland, the American Confederation of 1781–1789 and the League of Nations. In the fourth chapter, the national liberalism of Grundtvig and the liberal federalism of Einaudi are compared. A contrast is drawn between the Nordic or Grundtvigian model of international relations—the right to secede, border changes by plebiscites, autonomy of nationalities, and cooperation aand coordination between states with a minimal surrender of sovereignty— and the European model, implemented in the European Union—ever-growing centralisation, a non-transparent and unaccountable bureaucracy and an activist and unaccountable judiciary.

The Icelandic Research Centre for Social and Economic Affairs, RSE, and the Institute of Studies in Administration and Politics at the University of Iceland jointly held an international conference in Reykjavik on Professor Gissurarson’s book on 8 May 2025 under the title ‘Whither Europe?’. Former Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde delivered the opening remarks. He said that he found it fascinating that in Gissurarson’s book Snorri Sturluson and Nikolaj F. S. Grundtvig, two personalities that the Icelanders well knew and respected, were described as contributors to the classical liberal tradition. He added that he and Gissurarson had began their political activities more than fifty-five years ago in the Independence Party, and that Gissurarson’s ideas had made a great impact in Iceland.

Danish historian Dr. David Gress gave a talk about the nation state. The author of several books on the subject, he pointed out that in the nineteenth century in Europe nationalism and classical liberalism went hand in hand in most countries. The desire for a nation state was also a desire for devolution. The elites and the masses were united in the fight for national self-determination. This changed in the twentieth century where at least a large part of the elites turned against Western civilisation and their own countries under the influence of Marxism and other left-wing ideologies. At present, Gress submitted, there was a tension between the masses and the elites, safely ensconced in their offices in Brussels and the big capitals of Europe as well as in the media and universities. This tension was not least about immigration. The European peoples simply refuse to accept that their countries should be taken over by Muslim immigrants, bent on imposing their cultural values upon the rest of society.

Dr. Alberto Mingardi, Director of the Bruno Leoni Institute in Milan, Professor of Political theory at the IULM University, Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute in Washington DC and Secretary of the Mont Pelerin Society, discussed Luigi Einaudi and his theories. Einaudi was President of Italy in 1948–1955 and one of the fathers of the ‘Italian miracle’ in which rapid economic growth followed liberalisation and stabilisation after the Second World War. Mingardi pointed out that in Gissurarson’s book a distinction was made between economic integration which was desirable, and political integration which was simply a euphemism for centralisation. He argued that Einaudi would have found much to applaud in the European Union, especially the common market and increased competition, but also much to criticise, especially the tendency towards centralisation. The task was to reduce political power, not to transfer it from national capitals to Brussels. Mingardi has written a review of Gissurarson’s book in Italian, and in Icelandic two reviews of it have been published, by former Education Minister Bjorn Bjarnason and former Finance Minister Benedikt Johannesson.

Lord Borwick, of the House of Lords, explained Brexit, the decision of British voters in a 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. He said that his fellow Conservative, Prime Minister David Cameron, had been convinced that the Remainers would win the referendum. Cameron’s intention with the referendum had therefore been to remove a contentious issue from British politics once and for all. He, and the whole political establishment, was however unprepared for the result. In Borwick’s opinion those, like him, who wanted to leave mainly sought to regain British control over British affairs. Where they were wrong was in imagining that the fight was over with the victory in the referendum. The EU itself had tried to make Brexit as difficult as possible, while the political establishment had not given up trying to rejoin the EU. Borwick pointed out that there had indeed been another Brexit in 1776, British people disassociating from an Empire across the sea. This was when the Americans declared independence from the Empire based in London. They wanted to take control of their own affairs instead of obeying orders from London.

Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, former Prime Minister and at present Leader of the Centre Party, delivered a few closing remarks. He said that he agreed mostly with the speakers, but perhaps not entirely with Mingardi’s enthusiasm with federalism. Now was the time to defend the European nation state. He would himself fight all possible proposals for Iceland to join the European Union. Dilja Mist Einarsdottir, Member of Parliament for the Independence Party, chaired the meeting. At the end of the conference, two leaders of conservative Nordic youth, Julius Viggo Olafsson, Chairman of Young Independents in Reykjavik, and Haakon Teig from the Norwegian Conservative Students Association commented on the conference from the point of view of a new generation. They said that there seemed to be a conservative and libertarian revival among the new generation, not least in opposition to wokeism and cancel culture. Young people were once again interested in their natural heritage, including Christianity, classical architecture and naturalistic painting.

The conference  was well-attended, and in a reception following it, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson gave a toast to Friedrich A. von Hayek, whose birthday it was: He was born on 8 May 1899. Gissurarson and his friends, some of whom attended the conference (Fridrik Fridriksson, Skafti Hardarson, and Audun Svavar Sigurdsson), had indeed founded the Libertarian Alliance on Hayek’s 80th birthday in 1979. Gissurarson said that the most fascinating and attractive feature of Hayek’s teachings was his incontestable recognition of inevitable individual ignorance combined with the possibility of overcoming this ignorance, both in time by traditions as accumulated knowledge and in space by transmission of knowledge through the price mechanism of the free market.

In the evening, after the conference, RSE invited the programme participants and people who had assisted with organising the conference to dinner at the renowned Reykjavik restaurant Tides where they drank red wine from Luigi Einaudi’s vineyard with Icelandic lamb and skyr: products of the North and South of Europe. From left: Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson, former Foreign Minister, Breki Atlason, Students for Liberty Europe, Alberto Mingardi, Ragnar Arnason, Chairman of the RSE Research Council, Hannes H. Gissurarson, David Gress, Haakon Teig, Lukas Schweiger, RSE coordinator, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and Lord Borwick.

Dr. Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland and Academic Director of RNH, presented his recent book, Conservative Liberalism, North and South: Grundtvig, Einaudi and their Relevance Today, 18 March 2025 at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Mexico City 16–19 March. He pointed out that the Danish poet and pastor N. F. S. Grundtvig, probably his country’s most influential thinker ever, filled a gap in classical liberal theory: he proposed a national liberalism, with due respect for spontaneous organisations, companies, societies, congregations, clubs, collectives and other civil associations, and most importantly the nation, giving people a sense of belonging, enlarging their selves. In this, to some extent, and undoubtedly unconsciously, he followed in the footsteps of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Constant, and Alexis de Tocqueville, whose main explanation of the failure of the French Revolution was that France had lacked these intermediate institutions, these ‘little platoons’, between the individual and the state, which served both to train people in social adaptation and to constrain the power of the state.

A special Nordic or Grundtvigian model in international relations could be discerned, Gissurarson submitted. 1) Right of secession, used by Norway in 1905, Finland in 1917, and Iceland in 1918. 2) Border changes by plebiscites, as in Schleswig in 1920. 3) Autonomy of national enclaves, such as the Aaland Islands, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Sami regionals in the Scandinavian far north. 4) Arbitration of conflicts by international bodies, as between Sweden and Finland over the Aaland Islands in 1921, and between Denmark and Norway over Eastern Greenland in 1933. 5) Cooperation and integration with a minimal surrender of sovereignty in the Nordic Council and by negotiations, including the abolition of passports within the Nordic countries, reciprocal legal and social rights and duties in the Nordic countries, and a common labour market.

Gissurarson compared the national liberal Grundtvig with the Italian liberal federalist Luigi Einaudi, a distinguished economist and President of Italy in 1948–1955. Einaudi had become convinced by the two world wars that the only way in Europe to protect free trade, limited government, and private property—the three pillars of a free society—was to found a European federation. Gissurarson submitted that the European Union had not turned out in the way Einaudi envisaged. The economic integration of Europe was a success, but the political integration which started after that, in the early 1990s, threatened not only the nation state but also individual liberties. Europe should be an open market, and not a closed state. Gissurarson mentioned some possible reformes of the European Union in the spritit of Einaudi’s liberalism: 1) to transfer legislative power from the unelected, non-transparent and unaccountable European Commission to the European Parliament; 2) to divide the European Parliament into two chambers, in Brussels and Strasbourg, where one would replace the European Council and represent the European states and the other one would be elected by popular vote; 3) to turn the European Commission into a normal civil service; 4) to split up the Court of Justice of the European Union into two courts, one with the sole role of deciding on the competence of member states and the union guided by the Subsidiarity Principle and the other one an appelate court similar to the present CJEU; 5) to change the selection process of the CJEU to ensure that euro-enthusiasts would not dominate the court, but rather experienced judges who decided according to the law, but not according to an agenda of centralisation.

A lively discussion followed Gissurarson’s presentation. The audience was particularly interested in the Nordic tradition of liberty under the law which could be traced all the way back to the Germanic tribes described by Roman chronicler Tacitus two thousand years ago. Gissurarson pointed out that it would be an anachronism to call Icelandic chronicler Snorri Sturluson a liberal, but that nevertheless many liberal ideas were found in his works: government by consent, the right of rebellion, respect for private property, and the advantages of trade. At the Mont Pelerin Society meeting, Gissurarson also intervened in a discussion after a lecture by Professor Eduardo Nolla about the concept of America where it was mentioned that the Icelanders had discovered America almost 500 years before Columbus. As Gissurarson recalled, Oscar Wilde had quipped that the Icelanders had discovered America but that they had the good sense to lose it again. Gissurarson also reminded the audience of German philosopher Lichtenberg’s comment: The American who first discovered Columbus, made a bad discovery. These witticisms did not however change the fact, Gissurarson added, that America and Europe should unite in the protection of liberty under the law.

The Mont Pelerin Society conference was ably organised by Bertha Pantoja and Roberto Salinas. The speakers included Lebanese-American writer Nassim Taleb, Peruvian lawyer Enrique Ghersi, Lord Hannan of Highclere, and Professors Thomas Hazlett, Randall Holcombe, Deirdre McCloskey and George Selgin.