ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses emerging civil society in Iceland during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. At that time, Iceland was a province of the Danish Crown. Icelandic language and literature were seen as the living heritage of the Old Norse past and the republican constitution of Althing was regarded as a cornerstone of Nordic democratic civil heritage. Two societies were of special importance. The Icelandic Society, the first local voluntary association established in 1794, promoted cosmopolitan Enlightenment ideas instead of ideas derived from the Old Norse heritage. This was one reason why the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, founded in 1825 in Copenhagen, focused on nourishing its roots in Iceland. These societies promoted different paths to the future, but both met with great enthusiasm among the public. The gradual formation of Icelandic civil society was in its various ways a delicate state-civil society nexus. Issues such as freedom of the press, the legal framework and education had to be dealt with, as well as the controversy over the abolition of the Althing (founded in 930) and the 1809-affair. Emerging civil society in Iceland had transnational implications and held an integrative meaning for the Nordic world at the wakening of modernity.
