The Ideological Fundaments And Central Political Gains Of The Iceland Independence Movement Ca 1830-1900

The ideological fundaments and central political gains of the Iceland independence Movement ca 1830-1900.

By the beginning of the 19th century, Iceland was the poorest territory in the Norden region. Despite some efforts of the Danish crown to improve the life quality in the island, it’s still fair to say that being so far from continental Europe, and not having any economic interest forDenmark since it had no useful resources, Iceland was somehow a forgotten part of the kingdom, whit a minuscule population, most of it really poor and almost uneducated, and really deficient means of communication in the country. The percent of urban population was extremely low, and the rural occupations, such as agriculture and fishing maintained more than half of all the Icelanders, even though theused techniques and methods were obsolete.
It is also true that in the last decades of the 18th century Denmark showed interest in raising Iceland’s standards of living to make them alike to the ones on mainland, but the war between Denmark and England (1807-1814) took away the priorities of the Danish Crown from the periphery. During the period after the war the country started to regain itsformer economic force, but it still can be said that Iceland was not a priority, even though some positive changes were made.
Under such deficient rule, the desire to do something about the precarious situation of Iceland comes as no surprise. But it is not the only reason that moved the people engaged into making a better future of Iceland to start actually doing it.
While the political arenain France continued to be unstable and culminated in the 1830’s revolution, the Romantic Movement from Germany reached Scandinavia in the beginning of the 19th century, and brought not only Nationalistic ideas, but also pointed at the importance of the past and nostalgia for it, and especially the Middle Ages. The nationalistic movement unraveled a decent amount of Icelandic scholars in Copenhagenthat had their own ideas about the Icelandic identity: the historical and linguistic value of the Icelandic language, the pureness of Iceland’s culture, the beauty and uniqueness of its literature and poetry, and its very own way of historical development. This very own way in which Iceland developed became a key argument for a considerable part of all the claims addressed to the King; also, Ithink that the way chosen to do so, i.e. petitions to the monarch with clear demands instead of armed conflict or authority takeovers, avoided serious problems with Denmark and was actually useful on the way of gaining independence.
It seems to me that the most powerful argument to grant some new rights to Iceland, provided by Jón Sigurðsson, appears to be the following: since Iceland has been ina personal union with the King of Norway, and when Norway became a subject of the Danish Kingdom, this personal union continued to exist with the actual ruler of Norway, the King of Denmark. Since the union is personal, no Danish people should be allowed to represent the King on Icelandic land, but only native inhabitants of Iceland.
In 1830 the King Frederick VI decides to convene consultativeassemblies along Denmark, which raised the demand to reestablish the Althing, an ancient Icelandic assembly, as a consultative institution for Iceland’s rule. In response to that, the monarch created a council of ten members which would discuss Icelandic problems; this council met in 1839 and 1841; in 1845, following the orders of the King Christian VIII, elections were held and the Althing wasreconstituted, but only as a consultative council. Despite the restricted role that the Althing was able to play, it gave voice to the Icelanders and their major problems, so for Denmark it was now more difficult to ignore the existence of the island and its particular concerns.
Meanwhile in Denmark the political situation did not remain the same; in 1849 the ancient regime ended and was...