Unlike most of Europe, Iceland escaped the ravages of World War II. With the exception of Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun, who visited Ísafjörður and shot some ‘home videos’ that you can find on YouTube, the Nazis never showed up. Instead it was the British and then the Americans who occupied Iceland, bringing jobs and economic prosperity to a nation that had until then been living in turf houses and bathing once in a blue moon.
Modernity ushered in by the war was thus heavily influenced by American culture and values, which might explain why Iceland arguably became more capitalist than its Nordic brethren.