Power and Purity: Nature as Resource in a Troubled Society

Abstract This article analyses representations of nature as brand and resource in current Icelandic society. This is done through an interdisciplinary approach consisting of concepts from the discipline of cultural geography and the analytical methodologies of visual cultural, imagology, discourse and brand analysis used to highlight key narratives in images and written sources. The article discusses how ideas of purity are used in branding strategies and what they mean in Iceland today e.g. as a part of the emerging regional consciousness of ‘Arctic Iceland.’ The current overlapping crises of the economy, the environment and the collective self-image in Iceland have fostered critical representations of the past, present and future of the relationship between humans and the environment. Thus utilitarian environmental policies and shallow ecology is treated critically in contemporary Icelandic art, as is the question of what constitutes pollution. Such internal conflicts of interest are analysed to show critical perspectives on the dominant narratives about Icelandic nature and society that are communicated to the outside world through nation branding.