Icelandic economic history: A historiographical survey of the last century

Economic history as an independent field of study is of fairly recent origin in Iceland, emerging only in the last quarter of the twentiethth century with the increased specialisation and differentiation of the history profession.¹ With no separate economic history departments and in fact, only one general university, the University of Iceland in Reykjavfk, it is not surprising that economic history has largely been in the hands of either historians educated within the broad church of history, non-professionals or scholars outside the history profession. Only in the last twenty years or so have specialist economic historians, educated abroad, entered the field and and turned the subject into a distinct discipline.