[ISL] "Winter Ain’t Coming to Iceland’s Thunder-Clapping Economy"

[rfmcdonald]

Iceland, Bloomberg notes, is having an economic boom. This is a very good thing indeed, the more so that it seems broad-based.

Iceland’s economy is growing at its fastest pace since the 2008 collapse of its banks, with annual gross domestic product up a whopping 4.2 percent in the first three months of the year.

Latest tourism and spending data suggests the Icelandic summer could be just as good.

Thanks in part to the popularity of Game of Thrones – filming for the seventh series is due to start in Iceland in January – and the exploits of its thunder-clapping soccer team at the Euro 2016 championships, foreigners are flocking to the North Atlantic island nation.

The number of tourists has been growing steadily since the start of the decade and is now a bigger source of foreign sales than traditional exports like fish and aluminium. The Chamber of Commerce once called tourism “the largest recession remedy for the Icelandic economy.”

June data suggests 2016 could smash last year’s record of 1.3 million arrivals.