Upon the publication of Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, 28 November 2011, Dr. Tom Palmer of Cato Institute in Washington DC, gave a talk in the Icelandic House of National Culture on “21st Century Individualism”, followed by a reception hosted by Almenna bokafelagid. Palmer discussed Rand’s relevance today, in the light of the experience of capitalism and socialism, and the message in her main novels. Palmer was the keynote speaker the same night at a very successful “Freedom Dinner” at Hotel Holt where young entrepreneurs and intellectuals celebrated, under the guidance of asset manager Gisli Hauksson. Vidskiptabladid (The Journal of Commerce) published an interview with Tom Palmer 1 December 2011.

Upon the publication of The Black Book of Communism in the Icelandic translation of Hannes H. Gissurarson, Goran Lindblad, former MEP from the Swedish Moderate Party, gave a talk in Reykjavik 31 August 2009. He discussed the declarations of the European Council in 2006 and of the European Parliament in 2009, for the need to disclose and to assess the crimes of communism and to remember its victims. The European Parliament has called for 23 August (the day when the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin was signed in 1939) to be a European remembrance day for victims of totalitarian regimes. Bjorn Bjarnason, former Minister of Justice, chaired the meeting, and Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, responded to Lindblad’s talk.