Egill Thor Nielsson is a Visiting Scholar at the Polar Research Institute of China, China.
Briefing Note
The West Nordic Council and its Arctic Engagement
Egill Thor Nielsson
The Arctic is undergoing rapid changes and has in the last century moved from being a largely
unknown part of the world to a global hotspot. In recent times the Arctic region has started to carry
more weight in geo-economic terms than before, due to its promises of vast amounts of attainable
mineral resources and feasible Arctic shipping routes. These discourses have mainly emphasised the
larger and more powerful Arctic players, while sparsely populated places such as Iceland, Faroe
Islands and to some extent Greenland are seldom in the foreground. This briefing note seeks to
explain how West Nordic cooperation has grown in the past 30 years, both internally and externally,
and how the West Nordic council members can influence Arctic developments in a stronger
manner, by identifying common Arctic interests and goals, which can then be implemented through
a joint West Nordic Arctic strategy. This opportunity will be looked at through the following
questions:
What is the West Nordic Council and how does West Nordic cooperation work?
How can the West Nordic countries increase their Arctic cooperation and the influence they
hold in a gradually more global Arctic?
The Origins and Rational for West Nordic Cooperation
The West Nordic Parliamentarian Council of Cooperation was formed in Nuuk in 1985 and its
establishment created a formal cooperation between the parliaments of the three West Nordic
countries, namely: Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands
1
(Althingi, 2013a). The council was
created following political discussions in the three countries during the early 1980s, after home rule
was introduced in Greenland 1979. Its rational was: