In 2008 Iceland experienced the deepest and fastest economic crisis ever recorded in peacetime, which included the total collapse of its financial sector, as well as significant erosion of its currency. This paper concerns a localized protest movement that occurred in the wake of the 2008 crash in Iceland: the mobilization of protest to a settlement deal, known as the Icesave settlement. We conducted 30 interviews with a range of actors involved in the mobilization, including politicians, activists, and academics.

 
Our data show that both sides of the Icesave dispute drew on a set of  three interwoven narratives, or framings of the debate, that respectively drew on ideas around natural justice, citizenship, and nationalism. These narratives intersected dynamically with certain structural features of the Icelandic political and economic context in ways that had particular repercussions for the salience and credibility of the anti-Icesave campaign.

We end with a discussion of how these dynamic intersections created political synergies with implications for the role of contentious politics in shaping mechanisms of participatory governance in Iceland.