Abstract
Images and texts referring to Africa and African people have been created in Iceland since earliest time, in spite of Iceland's somewhat marginalized position. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Icelanders were well familiar with the racial stereotypes dominating European discourse, and which often celebrated the colonial project, simultaneously as Icelanders themselves sought independence. My discussion suggests that social discourses addressing racism and race in Iceland reflect attempts to hold on to an idea of Icelandic innocence as a persistent and ongoing Icelandic characteristic, and Iceland seen as exempted from racism and colonialism of the past. This refusal to acknowledge racism has been also shown in other Nordic countries, thus reflecting a notion of Nordic exceptionalism. To demonstrate this, I focus on two social debates regarding racism in Iceland.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 27-41 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | African and Black Diaspora |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2 Jan 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information: 2. The data is mostly based on two interconnected research projects in 2009 and 2011 supported by the Developmental Fund for Immigrant Matters, which is run by the Ministry of Social Affairs and a grant for the project Icelandic Identity in Crisis funded by the University of Iceland Research Fund 2010 and 2011. A part of the data was collected with the assistance Guðbjört Guðjónsdóttir and Diana Wilson whom I am really thankful to.Other keywords
- Iceland
- Nordic
- exceptionalism
- i whiteness
- racism