Iceland was the coveted accession for Brussels. A quick and easy negotiation (despite the fisheries chapter), a new net contributor to the community coffers, and a strengthening of the Nordic dimension of the European Union at a time of strategic reconfiguration of the Arctic. But it will not be. Icelanders have rejected, by a narrow margin, the Icelandic government's request to restart accession negotiations with the EU, frozen since 2013. The result: 52.8% voted against and 47.2% in favor, with voters in the capital in favor of integrating into the Union and those in rural areas against. Icelanders have preferred to remain committed neighbors aligned with Europe, but without full accession. A resounding and painful message for an EU obsessed with the immediate future of enlargement.

The no prevailed in Iceland's referendum on resuming accession negotiations with the European Union by a clear margin: 52.8% versus 47.2%. Turnout was extremely high: 82.5%. The result is a blow to the community project, which wanted to incorporate a high-income country after the setback of Brexit, to strengthen itself internally and also against external threats represented by the United States, Russia, and China. For this reason, Brussels had shown some flexibility on the thorniest issues that concerned Reykjavík, especially fishing quotas. Far-right, Eurosceptic leaders have not missed the opportunity to celebrate it.

The journalist Èric Lluent (Barcelona, 1986) tries not to think too much about the distance separating him from his native Gràcia. Arriving in Reykjavík for the first time ten years ago, he is now preparing a podcast about the origins of modern terrorism, an interest that was already hinted at in La bomba del Liceu (Ara Llibres, 2026), his latest essay, which talks about the man who planted the bomb at the Gran Teatre.

Iceland decides this Saturday on its European future in a referendum that could reopen a debate shelved for more than a decade. Icelanders are called to the polls to vote on whether they want the government to resume accession negotiations with the European Union. The Nordic country already applied for membership in 2009, in the midst of a financial crisis, but four years later, with the economy recovered and a change of government, it withdrew from the talks.The center-left government of Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir, at the beginning of its term, wanted to hold the consultation during the year 2027. But from Reykjavik they acknowledge that the threats from the President of the United States, Donald Trump, regarding Greenland (located just 300 kilometers away) have contributed to increasing uncertainty in the North Atlantic, and have weighed on the decision to advance the referendum by one year.From the executive, the vote for yes is defended, justifying that in a moment of turbulent waters in a region disputed between world powers for being the gateway to the Arctic, the country needs the stability and security that the EU can offer. On the side of no are all the opposition parties, who warn of the possible effects of accession on key sectors such as fishing, and warn of the risk of losing national sovereignty before European institutions.Throughout the campaign, it has been noted that Icelanders remain deeply divided on the issue. Polls also do not point in a clear direction. Earlier this week, the Icelandic newspaper Visir published a survey in which 51.3% of respondents were in favor of negotiating with Brussels about joining the bloc, while 48.7% were opposed. But on Friday, the prestigious polling firm Gallup published a survey with the opposite result: a narrow majority, 51.6%, rejected reopening accession negotiations, compared to 48.4% who were in favor. The final decision, therefore, is still uncertain.

Even with the memory of having lived "the unforgettable experience" of her first Sant Jordi, Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir (Reykjavik, 1958) strolls through the garden of Club Editor, the publishing house that has already published three of her unclassifiable novels, where an unwavering faith in the human race shines. Accustomed to the volcanic landscape of Iceland, Ólafsdóttir cannot help but marvel at the ease with which trees and flowers of all kinds grow in southern Europe, the setting of her best-known novel, Rosa candida –available in some thirty languages–, until now unpublished in Catalan, translated by Macià Riutort, as well as La veritat sobre la llum and Edèn, with which she won the Llibreter prize 2025.

Whiteout, sometimes translated as white storm, is a situation in which the white of the fog, the low clouds and the snow make you lose all spatial reference. It is also the title of a mystery novel by the Icelandic writer Ragnar Jónasson, one of those Nordic authors who have become fashionable in recent years. Here and now, as we drive through the north of his country in the middle of winter, climbing a mountain pass on a particularly tortuous stretch of the Arctic Coast Way, this meteorological expression is distressingly apt. Through the windshields I can see absolutely nothing. Moving forward is difficult, since, in dangerous terrain like this, you can end up falling off a cliff or colliding with some invisible obstacle.