Insularity in a Connected World? The COVID-19 Pandemic in Iceland

ABSTRACT

This chapter explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has played out in Iceland. Due to its specificities (insularity, remoteness, small population), the country has featured prominently in the history of health studies. From Cliff and Haggett's pioneering work on the modelling of the diffusion of diseases to deCODE Genetics' research projects, Iceland has been used as laboratory to forge new theories and experiment with new methods. In the chapter, this special status is reconsidered in the light of the pandemic. Using fine-grained data, it analyses the spatio-temporal spread of the disease from March 2020 to April 2021 and describes how health authorities constantly adjusted their responses to the virus, managing rather successfully to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. The increasing entanglement of Iceland with processes of global mobilities is stressed. The chapter concludes by suggesting that concepts such as remoteness and insularity do not capture the reality of connectedness that is so important in understanding the still-ongoing COVID-19 saga. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.