When Iceland succumbed to the global financial crisis, the world watched the once wealthy nation fall suddenly into massive debt, fleecing the people of an over-the-top luxurious lifestyle they had lived during a recent 10-year banking boom.
Just last year the remote island in the North Atlantic had ranked first in standard of living in the world, according to a United Nations' report, before October 2008 hit. Unable to stave off creditors, the country's three largest banks collapsed under billions of dollars of bad debt, forcing government takeover and saddling every man, woman and child with more than $300,000 of debt.
As our Merrill College of Journalism Class in International Reporting arrived in Reykjavik in March, we discovered just what that meant to Iceland's ordinary people. In a matter of months, the value of the krona, the Icelandic currency, plummeted 50 percent, one in 10 Icelanders lost their jobs in a land where unemployment virtually had not previously existed and food prices increased by more than 12 percent.
The people responded with fury, blaming the government for the kreppa (the Icelandic word for depression) and taking to the streets, toppling one of the oldest parliaments in the world and embracing the new left wing movement after overthrowing the entrenched Independent party.
Aside from economic and political turmoil, global warming threatens to melt and eventually eradicate Iceland's signature glaciers and challenges the profitability of industries, such as farming, aluminum and tourism. Here are our stories about the conflicts confronting Iceland as it redefines itself in coping with an economic, social and environmental global warning.