Politics & Power Quote by Vigdís Finnbogadóttir

Nationhood isn’t being sold here as bloodline or battlefield glory, but as daily maintenance: language as infrastructure. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, speaking as a president from a small state with an outsized cultural footprint, frames linguistic protection not as nostalgia but as a modern civic project. The word “model” is doing double duty. It flatters the domestic audience with the promise of exemplary status, while signaling outward to the world that Iceland’s “smallness” is not a weakness but a laboratory - a place that can prove preservation is possible under pressure.

The subtext is defensive without sounding afraid. “Safeguard a language” implies threat: globalization, English dominance, media saturation, migration anxieties. Yet she refuses the bunker mentality. Instead of “purity” or “keeping others out”, she talks about “effort” and “help”, casting language policy as work that can be shared. That rhetorical move matters: it scrubs ethnonationalist overtones and replaces them with soft-power idealism.

The second clause sharpens the political aim. “Strengthen the self image” is the giveaway - this is about legitimacy and cohesion as much as grammar. A protected language becomes a mirror a nation can stand in without feeling peripheral. For postwar Europe, and especially for smaller countries navigating larger blocs and markets, this is a persuasive pitch: cultural confidence as a prerequisite for political agency.

Finnbogadottir’s intent, then, is both practical and aspirational: justify state attention to language at home while exporting it as an ethical, emulable strategy abroad.