The eye of the guest : Icelandic nationalist discourse and the whaling issue

The Icelandic government continues to campaign for regulated commercial whaling in its territorial water, and advocates the maintenance of this practice as part of what it terms the "rational management of the ocean ecosystem," despite international pressure for a termination of whale hunting. Support in Iceland for a pro-whaling policy is extremely high, and the debate about whaling has over the last twelve years become increasingly nationalistic in focus.This dissertation examines the whaling issue in the context of Icelandic nationalism and the rise of the Icelandic nation-state during the 19th century. It argues that the national self is constructed through discourses which articulate space and construct it as the locus for social action. Three spatialdiscourses relevant to the nation-state--as territory, property, and nature--are discussed in terms of their emergence in Europe during the 17th century, and their relation to the "institutional clusters" of capitalism, industrialism, surveillance, and control of the means of violence.Icelandic nationalist discourse celebrates three key symbols: a pure and ancient language, a pure and beautiful land, and the sagas, a body of medieval historical and heroic literature. The idea of independence is pivotal to political action, as well as a moral imperative for guiding individual behaviour and attitudes toward the survival of the nation. For Icelanders, all are forms of knowledge about the world which situate their identity in relation to other nations, and to their own past. The whaling issue and associated events arouse nationalist sentiments because they are seen to threaten the independence of the nation