Watch a 10-minute film on why modern business people like to compare themselves to their vision of the Vikings.

After World War I had been raging for six months and the pressure to choose a side was mounting, the kings of Denmark, Norway and Sweden met to find a common position. On the surface, the meeting was a success - the three countries were united in their neutrality. But, behind the scenes there were bubbling tensions due to differing perspectives on Nordic cooperation and the wider geopolitics of Europe.

Listen to an overview of the history of Iceland in either English or Danish! / Lyt til en podcast om Islands historie på engelsk eller dansk!

Despite the formation of the Rekjavík Theatre Company in 1897, a National Theatre (Þjóðleikhúsið) was not established until 1950 and the Company did not become fully professional until 1963. The problematisation of values and the critique of materialism became a recurring theme in the drama of the 1960s and 1970s. Social and economic change figured prominently in the 1980s and 1990s with, for example, Birgir Sigurðsson’s Day of Hope (Dagur vonar) about a working-class family and Ólafur Haukur Símonarson’s 'The Sea' Hafið (1992) about the fishing industry. Interestingly, Erlingur E. Halldórsson’s The Calculator (Reiknivélin) written all the way back in 1963 dealt with the presence of foreign troops in Iceland; American troops, who came to Iceland after the Second World War, remained in Keflavík until 2006.

800,000 Norwegians left their homes and moved to other countries between the years of 1830 and 1920. The majority went to North America, but many travelled to other continents, including Australia and New Zealand, or to South America, elsewhere in Europe, or even to Africa as missionaries.

Jan Troell is a Swedish film director and cinematographer who also made a number of internationally successful films, such as 'The Flight of an Eagle' (Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd) in 1982.