A seminar on this subject will be held in Sölvhóll, a meeting room in the Central Bank of Iceland on Thursday, September 13 at 3 PM

Speaker: Gudmundur Jónsson, Professor of History at the University of Iceland

Abstract: Before the First World War, Iceland was an open economy and among those European countries that supported free trade. There were almost no restrictions on imports of goods, capital and labour. After the war this changed and protectionism became strong under the slogan "Iceland for Icelanders". In this seminar Gudmundur Jónsson discusses the reasons for this sudden turn towards economic nationalism, the role of independence in 1918 in this turn and what it meant for economic policy in Iceland during the following decades.