| Summary: | The 1986 Reykjavík Summit, where U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev held an impromptu meeting to discuss nuclear disarmament, suddenly thrust Iceland, a small marginalized island nation, into the world media spotlight. This article examines the way in which the summit as a global media event became a platform for a tremendous promotional effort where Icelanders, determined to make optimal use of this unique opportunity, performed and staged a variety of national narratives, emphasizing images linked to their heritage, their perceived exoticism, and uniquely Nordic and Northern traits. The article furthermore reviews the opportunistic mode and commercial imperative of the summit as a media event and analyzes a number of the conceptual configurations that the foreign press employed to encapsulate and represent Iceland as a symbolic host country for the peace negotiations of the summit.
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