Iceland in 2007

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102,928 sq km (39,741 sq mi)
(2007 est.): 310,000
President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde

Elections to Iceland’s Althingi (parliament) were held in May 2007. The incumbent government coalition, made up of the Independence Party and the Progressive Party, barely survived with a majority of one vote in the 63-member body. Because this majority was considered too slim, the leader of the Independence Party, Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde, decided to form a new coalition with the Social Democrats, giving his new government a majority with 43 votes.

Iceland’s economy began to slow down in the course of 2007, following the vigorous pace of growth of the previous several years. The Kárahnjúkar 690-MW hydropower station in the northeastern part of the country was completed and began supplying power to the Alcoa aluminum plant at Reyðarfjörður. The construction of the power station provoked a bitter debate in the country on the use of natural resources, damage to the environment, and the future plans for additional power projects and aluminum plants. The proposal for a planned expansion of an Alcan plant near Hafnarfjörður, a suburb of Reykjavík, was put to a municipal referendum and was narrowly defeated. In his New Year address on January 1, Pres. Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson called on Iceland to “become a centre of international collaboration and discussion on clean energy.”

Iceland’s currency, the króna, had gradually come under scrutiny for being too weak and subject to exchange rate fluctuations. During 2005–06 Iceland’s basic interest rate was hiked from 5.3%to 13%, a move that attracted large foreign króna-denominated bond issues and thereby further destabilized the currency. This instability led to a debate on whether Iceland would be better off adopting the euro.

The stock of codfish in Icelandic waters had diminished over the years, despite stringent efforts to manage the catch. In 2006 the authorities concluded that the catch would have to be cut by 63,000 tons per year for the next two years, limiting the annual catch to 130,000 tons. Since cod was the most valuable species in the entire fish catch, the cut would have a serious effect on many fishing villages around the coast.

On October 9 Japanese American artist Yoko Ono inaugurated the Imagine Peace Tower on the island of Videy, near Reykjavík, in memory of her late husband, British singer John Lennon. The memorial was designed to shine a beacon of light into the sky every year from October 9 (Lennon’s birth date) until December 8 (the date of his death in 1980).

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