Iceland Strikes Back

Meeting Details

Audio recordings and presentation

Here are two audio  files which are the recordings of each speaker. They are live recordings in situ.

Download Iceland Strikes Back – Thorvaldur Gylfason

The ‘Question and Answer’ session was recorded in the venue and is  1 hour 10 minutes in duration.

Professor Thorvaldur Gylfason used notes for this meeting. However, much of the material is covered in his presentation at a conference on “Women and Constitutional Futures: gender equality matters in a new Scotland”, on February 14/15, 2013, at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. A copy of that
presentation can be downloaded here. 

Meeting Background

ICELAND STRIKES BACK

Feb
13^th 2013 6-8pm

Venue
Edinburgh University, Old College, Lecture Theatre 183

In March 2012 a
packed Nordic Horizons meeting heard a fascinating talk from Icelandic
Economist Professor Thorvaldur Gylfason – the most voted-for member of the
Icelandic Constitutional
Council which drafted the country’s new “crowd-sourced” constitution. Since
then Icelanders have been to the polls in a six question referendum to
approve it and Iceland has clawed its way back to BBB+ credit rating and a
projected 2.3% growth rate after opting to let “bad banks” go to the wall (in
contrast to the UK and Ireland.) They’ve also paid back Scottish councils and
investors.

It seems this
Nordic nation of 300,000+ people is making (yet another) comeback. So will they
join the EU – or continue alone? Has the People’s Constitution passed its final
political hurdle? Is bank regulation now tight enough to ensure crisis can
never undermine the whole country again? And what prompted Icelandic President
Olafur Grimsson to end 2012 with a BBC
interview backing the prospect of Scottish independence?

Prof Thor joined us
for an Icelandic update together with Sigrun Davidsdottir – a London-based journalist working for the
Icelandic State Broadcaster Rúv whose blog Icelog
explores the financial “adventures” of her home. She’s also published her
second novel – Samhengi hlutanna, a financial thriller that takes place
in London and Iceland.