What if Britain had annexed Iceland?

[President Jack Kemp]

This is my first ever post on alternatehistory.com, so forgive me if I get something wrong.

This what-if is rather less unlikely than it seems. The Danish crown often saw Iceland - remote, impoverished (indeed probably the poorest country in Western Europe until the Second World War) and frequently affected by famines and volcanic eruptions - as something of an encumberance, and actively tried to get rid of it. So far as I can see, there are at least two occasions when it could plausibly have ended up in British hands.

1) In 1518 King Christian II of Denmark sent an envoy to Henry VIII, asking for a loan of 100000 florins and pledging Iceland (and the Faroe Islands) as collateral. He made the same offer in 1524 after he had been forced into exile, and his successor Christian III made the offer yet again in 1535. Of course Henry rejected all three offers, having little interest in Iceland. We should note that Orkney and Shetland both came into Scottish hands for similar reasons, though - they served as collateral for an unpaid debt owed by the King of Norway to James III of Scotland. Also, it's not as if Iceland was completely insignificant to England in the C16th - the Icelandic fishing grounds, as they are today, were very fertile, and Iceland was an extremely common destination for English fishing vessels.

2) In 1785 Iceland was suffering from a severe famine (the 'Mist Famine') following a volcanic eruption that blocked out sunlight and damaged the soil. Around 10000 Icelanders (1/5 of the population) perished, and at this time John Cochrane, a Scotsman, proposed that the UK should annex Iceland. He suggested that Iceland would be economically desirable for its cod fisheries and its sulfur mines. Cochrane was ignored at the time, but in 1801, with Denmark peripherally involved in the War of the Second Coalition on France's side, he made his suggestion again and the government took interest. Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, was commissioned to write a report on Iceland, in which he described it as a region unhappy with Danish rule. Though Banks didn't see much economic advantage in annexing Iceland, he argued that the British should consider doing so anyway for the 'glory of the British crown.' He contended that, since there was no army in Iceland, it could easily be subdued and settled by a handful of Scottish troops, and that the Icelanders, who had apparently suffered under Danish misrule, would welcome their new status and might even provide a new source of recruits for the Royal Navy. It seems that William Pitt the Younger seriously considered Banks' plan but eventually rejected it, reasoning that Britain could do what it wanted in Icelandic waters anyway and that the costs of maintaining a garrison on Iceland would outweigh any benefits. Nevertheless Banks continued pleading his case as late as 1813, when he proposed giving Iceland equivalent status to the Channel Islands.

So what would have happened if Britain had decided the benefits of annexing Iceland outweighed the costs? Would the British presence on Iceland have been short-lived as future leaders abandoned it to be retaken by Denmark - or could Iceland have maintained some form of constitutional relationship with Britain to the present day?

Personally, I think it might have been a tall order for Britain to maintain a permanent presence in Iceland. Sure, Scotland maintained a firm hold on the Northern Isles, but Shetland is a lot (lot) closer to the Scottish mainland than Iceland is. But let's suppose the British occupation of Iceland was successful and enduring. I think modern-day Iceland might look quite a lot like Orkney and Shetland, a fusion culture with plenty of Scottish influences but also a clear Norse affinity. It would almost certainly be majority-Anglophone, with the Icelandic tongue less important; if we take the earlier of the two points of divergence, I suspect Icelandic might have gone the way of Norn in Orkney and Shetland and died out completely. With the earlier PoD Iceland would probably have become a pretty remote and marginal corner of Britain, with little industry except for fishing. The later PoD might have afforded Iceland a lot more independence; if it had acquired a status similar to Jersey and Guernsey, it's possible to imagine it following a path similar to the other crown dependencies, never joining the EU and enjoying a status as a self-governing, low-tax region that might have kept more of its traditional culture than in the early PoD.

 

[DocJamore]

I think modern-day Iceland might look quite a lot like Orkney and Shetland, a fusion culture with plenty of Scottish influences but also a clear Norse affinity. It would almost certainly be majority-Anglophone, with the Icelandic tongue less important; if we take the earlier of the two points of divergence, I suspect Icelandic might have gone the way of Norn in Orkney and Shetland and died out completely.

That is definitely a likely and plausible outcome of a British annexation of Iceland. A general linguistic and cultural erosion of the Island into the wider English/Scottish Culture (which while different, would look similar to an outsider). Even if the Icelandic survives, the language will still likely be drastically effected by the impact of English on the Island.

In fact I'm curious exactly how much of its language/culture/heritage Iceland could retain under a long term British annexation. Becoming a Crown Dependency and given some level of autonomy would help but the difference in demographics is still a formidable challenge. French was once commonly spoken on the Channel Islands and it is extinct there now.

 

[President Jack Kemp]

That is definitely a likely and plausible outcome of a British annexation of Iceland. A general linguistic and cultural erosion of the Island into the wider English/Scottish Culture (which while different, would look similar to an outsider). Even if the Icelandic survives, the language will still likely be drastically effected by the impact of English on the Island.

In fact I'm curious exactly how much of its language/culture/heritage Iceland could retain under a long term British annexation.

Indeed. In either PoD Icelandic would be very marginal, and in the earlier one I suspect virtually or entirely extinct. We would probably see a lot of Anglicisation of place names; this definitely happened in the Northern Isles with Kirkjuvágr becoming Kirkwall and Leirvik becoming Lerwick. Perhaps Reykjavík would become ‘Raywick’ or something similar.

Overall I suspect Iceland is better off OTL. Not only would its cultural independence be threatened but I would wager it would perform worse economically. Of course there are benefits as well as drawbacks - for one, the 2008 banking collapse would never have happened in an Iceland sheltered by its place in a large, economically diversified UK. Before WWII the positives might have outweighed the negatives, as Britain would have probably been at least a little invested in making their new colony work (during most of the period it would have been hard for the Danish government to be less invested in Iceland than it actually was). The downside would have been significant ‘brain drain‘ of younger Icelanders to London or Edinburgh, probably leading to a lower population than OTL.

The path really diverges for the worse after WWII. OTL Iceland did very well out of the war, partly by expanding and industrialising the fishing industry but also by procuring large amounts of Marshall Aid (actually the most per capita of any European country). With Iceland treated as part of the UK it would have received far less aid and likely would have been peripheral to the concerns of a Britain hit by rationing and austerity. Potentially Iceland remains the poorest part of the UK up to the present day.

I wonder how much nationalist sentiment we would see, as Icelanders look at the social-democratic Nordic states with their robust safety nets, and feel short-changed by British rule. Of course the unionist argument would be that Iceland would be too poor and too small, that it was heavily subsidised by Westminster and that austerity-plus might be necessary for an independent Iceland to survive. Still, I feel that Icelandic nationalism would be as much or more of a concern to Westminster than Scottish nationalism OTL.