[BRIEF NOTE] Iceland in Atlantic Canada
Sep. 8th, 2006 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldYesterday, The Globe and Mail observed, with a certain amount of mirth, that Icelanders were expanding their economic empire into Atlantic Canada.
The website of Canada's Reykjavik embassy dates the beginning of Canadian-Icelandic relations to the Viking landing at L'Anse aux Meadows, but the first sustained engagement between Canada and Iceland took place only in the late 19th century, with the formation of a large Icelandic immigrant community. This community was concentrated in Manitoba, but there appears to have been some Icelandic settlement in Nova Scotia as well. After the Second World War, Canada and Iceland were both involved in North Atlantic institutions like NATO.
After the Cold War, a newly prosperous Iceland found itself in an interesting position relative to Atlantic Canada. I noted earlier at The Head Heeb how Iceland in many ways represented a counterfactual scenario for Newfoundland and perhaps even for all of Atlantic Canada, of a small insular North Atlantic society that was a success. From the 1990s on, Iceland's profile in Atlantic Canada has grown sharply: there are Icelandic artists in Halifax, flights between halifax and Reykjavik, collaboration between Dalhousie University and Icelandic tech companies. If Icelandic companies are starting to treat Atlantic Canada as an extension of their domestic market, all the more power to them. The idea of a corporate Vinland has a certain charm to it.
Iceland's leading bank will officially open a Canadian headquarters today in Halifax, a city that has more people than the island nation itself.
Glitnir Bank HF, a high-growth, high-efficiency niche player, will host a seafood business conference to celebrate the opening of its representative office, which will specialize in three business sectors -- seafood, sustainable energy and offshore supply. The bank comes to Atlantic Canada with a client list that already includes some of the region's leading companies, including Halifax-based Clearwater Seafoods Limited Partnership and Fisheries Products International Ltd. of St. John's.
The opening of the office in Halifax (population 359,000 at the time of the last census in 2001 and estimated at more than 380,000 today) and the pending opening this year of a representative office in Shanghai are part of an international growth strategy created largely by the constraints of operating in a country of 297,000 people.
"Iceland is a country of about 300,000 inhabitants, and in that country there's not great growth potential,'' Bjorn Richard Johansen, the company's international communications director, said in an interview yesterday. "In 2004, our international expansion started really out of necessity.''
Reykjavik-based Glitnir -- which changed its name from Islandsbanki HF this year -- decided earlier this decade that it had to expand overseas to survive, so in 2004 it bought two Norwegian banks to transform itself into an international business. It bought KredittBanken ASA for 345.1 million kroner ($60.4-million) and Bolig-og Naeringsbanken ASA, or BNbank for 3.3-billion kroner. Largely because of those acquisitions, the bank's assets have grown fourfold to 1.2-trillion Icelandic kronur ($18.7-billion) in the past three years.
The website of Canada's Reykjavik embassy dates the beginning of Canadian-Icelandic relations to the Viking landing at L'Anse aux Meadows, but the first sustained engagement between Canada and Iceland took place only in the late 19th century, with the formation of a large Icelandic immigrant community. This community was concentrated in Manitoba, but there appears to have been some Icelandic settlement in Nova Scotia as well. After the Second World War, Canada and Iceland were both involved in North Atlantic institutions like NATO.
After the Cold War, a newly prosperous Iceland found itself in an interesting position relative to Atlantic Canada. I noted earlier at The Head Heeb how Iceland in many ways represented a counterfactual scenario for Newfoundland and perhaps even for all of Atlantic Canada, of a small insular North Atlantic society that was a success. From the 1990s on, Iceland's profile in Atlantic Canada has grown sharply: there are Icelandic artists in Halifax, flights between halifax and Reykjavik, collaboration between Dalhousie University and Icelandic tech companies. If Icelandic companies are starting to treat Atlantic Canada as an extension of their domestic market, all the more power to them. The idea of a corporate Vinland has a certain charm to it.
