Questions of population replacement and societal extinction assume a certain urgency when a people can trace its lineage directly to the Vikings, easily read the Norse sagas, and count a population smaller than Wichita, Kansas. This is precisely the scenario in Iceland, where mass migration has reached crisis proportions. Yes, even Iceland.

It is the same tiresome pattern that has proliferated across Europe. Migrant crime is making certain neighborhoods unrecognizable. Some makes the rounds online, less reaches Icelandic media, and almost none garners international attention. “Youth” criminal activity befuddles teachers, parents, and law enforcement. Criminal gangs have arrived from continental Europe’s migrant neighborhoods. National police warn that Islamic extremism is a new threat, and at least one ISIS-linked migrant has been deported this year.

A particularly heinous case concluded this summer, when the Supreme Court of Iceland ruled that a Syrian migrant working at an elementary school had repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl, a student at the school, over the course of several months. A district court had previously dismissed the more serious rape charges, citing cultural misunderstandings. The secretary to a previous prime minister had even highlighted the perpetrator as an integration success story at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum. In just five years, he will go free, a walking symbol of a changing Iceland citizens did not get to choose.

In a 2024 episode that drew international attention in conservative media, three migrants interrupted a session of the Alþingi (Parliament) during an asylum debate, with one climbing over the upper-gallery railing and suggesting he would jump onto the chamber floor. It was especially symbolic since anyone can, for now, walk up and touch the Alþingishúsið, the people’s house of high-trust Iceland. 

These developments are unprecedented. Extinction is on Icelandic lips. 

“It is only natural that emotions arise when it comes to such rapid social change,” said Social Democratic Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir this summer. “We must bear in mind that the proportion of immigrants in Iceland has grown extremely rapidly in just a few years, and naturally this makes people think.”

The outspoken basketball coach Brynjar Karl Sigurðsson coined the nickname “Baby Malmö” for Breiðholt, a working-class district of Reykjavík that has quickly acquired a large immigrant population. “I’m mad at myself and everyone, letting this get this bad,” Sigurðsson said. “And we’re at the point where we’re letting the infection cause the entire leg to have to be amputated. There’s nothing that can be done when it gets past a certain point.” 

One Reykjavík teacher sparked national debate with an editorial claiming 90 percent of his students were of foreign origin, and none—even among the small number of notional Icelandic-speakers—could understand the sentence, “The heart pumps blood.” By 2023, foreigners comprised between 15 and 20 percent of Icelandic school students. In districts like Breiðholt and the area near Keflavík International Airport, replete with former U.S. military facilities, the percentages are significantly higher. 

The economic landscape features the usual European mix of government support, gig work, and illicit activity. Gang activity is increasingly appealing to migrant boys and young men. A recent report from state broadcaster RÚV details how the taxi-driving profession has been swamped by foreign labor. One night in the capital region, journalists interviewed drivers from Afghanistan, the Ivory Coast, Morocco, and the Philippines. “The market is completely oversaturated,” stated one Icelander employed in the industry. “They are still pumping out licenses. There are no restrictions, and the competition is far too fierce, which means that it increases the chances that people have started to cheat and evade taxes.” Some among the dwindling number of Icelandic drivers have begun to showcase the national flag on their windshields. 

Icelanders increasingly complain their sovereign land is morphing into an English-speaking economic zone or colony. “The country is to be sold,” goes the refrain in Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness’s Cold War novel, The Atom Station. Eight decades later, the sentiment holds up remarkably well.

Iceland did not follow the standard model of Western Europe, where, by 1973, West Germany housed 2.6 million Gastarbeiter and the French writer Jean Raspail issued a stark warning to European civilization. Instead, it has resembled Ireland, another secluded island where unrestrained capitalism has consumed a previously agrarian society, and militant progressivism has captured hearts and minds from the state church (in this case, the Lutheran Church of Iceland).

In the 1990s, Icelanders’ generosity extended to a modest but visible contingent of refugees from the wars in Yugoslavia. In 1994, Iceland joined the European Economic Area, and in 2004, a large swathe of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe joined the European Union. Again, the pattern resembled Ireland. Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, and Filipinos were conspicuous in an unprecedented wave of new arrivals to the secluded, homogeneous island. Most of these newcomers hailed from cultures largely compatible with Icelandic society. Notably, Catholicism gained a prominence unseen since the execution of Bishop Jón Arason in 1550. (The current Catholic Bishop of Reykjavík is a Slovak, and the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico attended the consecration of a Catholic Church in secluded eastern Iceland in 2017.) 

Then—cue the Irish comparisons again—Iceland’s financial crisis of 2008–2011 was, by some measures, the largest banking collapse in human history. It was a time to take stock of Icelandic society, but immigration still had not emerged as a pressing political topic. By 2015, immigrants comprised 8.9 percent of the population (still fewer than 30,000 people), and Icelanders owed themselves an examination of their national future; instead, Icelandic policy began to converge fully with continental Europe.

During that year’s Merkelian crisis, well-heeled Icelanders proclaimed their homes were open to Syrians and other Middle Eastern asylum-seekers. Wealthy Reykjavík neighborhoods have remained largely Icelandic and full of pro-refugee sentiment, while poorer, grittier districts such as Breiðholt have come to resemble the no-go zones of other European capitals. “Breiðholt 2035” has become a catchphrase for cynical Icelanders as they look forward to their national transformation. 

A familiar pattern created Breiðholt 2025. Over the last decade, Icelanders have been subject to the pernicious liberal web linking government and transnational funding, NGO activity, corporate addiction to cheap labor, and migratory incentives of young men in the Third World. In one decade, the foreign-origin population has tripled to over 80,000 people, representing over 20 percent of the island’s population. 

The firewall around this issue is not as oppressive as in other parts of Europe. Nonetheless, debate in polite society is largely confined to noting problems in schools and neighborhoods and claiming the government should spend more to address them. The heart-pumping teacher concluded his editorial by writing, five times, “The state needs to provide funding for the primary school system.” Crime statistics are available to the enterprising researcher, but government officials do not publicize the obvious conclusions. Cultural distance, closed borders, and deportation are still largely out of bounds for those who don’t want to be branded with the r-word.

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The country stands at an existential inflection point. The good news is that a critical mass can develop quickly in the lightly populated Icelandic society, and the political cupboard is not bare. Miðflokkurinn (the Centre Party) is a natural vehicle for anti-immigration sentiment. Its leader, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, is an eccentric former prime minister. Party leadership must urgently decide whether it will prioritize strict immigration and asylum policies or seek the good graces of transnational and pro-business forces.

A promising sign of the former came in a piece from Centre Party parliamentarian Snorri Másson in the weekly Viðskiptablaðið last month. “The unique heritage of generations and the historical continuity of a thousand years are at stake,” he wrote. Addressing those who default to economic arguments, he added, “When we look at the nation as a company, it cannot be denied that one of the most valuable assets in the collection is precisely Icelandic culture.” 

Then, there is the topic of extinction, so often on the minds of Icelanders these days: “At stake is the very magic of Icelandic society, deep social trust, a shared understanding of life in the country, cohesion in the face of adversity, a shared history, short lines of communication and unwritten rules that allow us not to write too many laws.”