Icelanders have opposed military activities and NATO since the time that the country was occupied in 1940, first by the UK and then by the US. One of the demands at a huge demonstration against Iceland’s forcible incorporation into NATO in 1949 was a referendum about Iceland’s entry into NATO. Read here about the antimilitarist work of our affiliate Samtök hernaðarandstæðinga in Iceland and their ongoing campaigning against militarism.

As published in The Right to Conscientious Objection in Europe, Quaker Council for European Affairs, 2005.

Iceland has no armed forces and maintains only a small coastguard. Iceland's external security rests on its membership of NATO and on the 1951 joint defence agreement with the USA.