Viking futures: an ethnography of storytelling and economic enchantment in crisis Iceland

Abstract

In this dissertation, I argue that storytelling is an economic practice in Iceland that challenges the myth of economic disenchantment proposed by Max Weber. I show that what is unique to Iceland’s economic rise, neoliberal expansion, and rebuilding after the 2008 global economic crisis that leveled and paralyzed Iceland’s banking system, is an engine of exceptionalism that, unlike North American and British economic systems and practice, does not disavow enchantment. Based on my fieldwork including interviews and participant observation in Iceland in 2013, 2015-2016, and follow up interviews in 2021 and 2022, I show how Icelandic indigenous cultural production of stories, neoliberal capitalist “magic”, and “post”-colonial liberal practices for self-determination are central to Iceland’s economic recovery after the 2008 economic crisis. By tracking intersections of political participation and economic recovery in ongoing social crises since 2008, particularly the Panama Papers Offshore Banking Scandal that unfolded during my fieldwork, I develop an intersectional, transhistorical, and interdisciplinary argument for studying Icelanders as central interlocutors in our analyses of capitalism, crisis, modernity, and ultimately North Atlantic whiteness.