Icelandic Independence
Iceland had been under Danish rule since the seventeenth century, gaining home rule in 1904 and then, under the Act of Union of 1918, recognition as a sovereign state sharing a monarch with Denmark, with the arrangement reviewable after twenty-five years. The German occupation of Denmark in April 1940 severed the connection in practice: Iceland's parliament, the Althing, assumed the king's powers, and the following month British forces occupied the island to forestall a German landing, handing over to American forces in 1941. When the review period expired in 1943 the Althing moved to terminate the union outright. A referendum in May 1944 produced overwhelming majorities for ending the union and adopting a republican constitution, and the republic was proclaimed at Thingvellir on 17 June 1944, the birthday of the nineteenth-century independence leader Jon Sigurdsson. Denmark, still occupied, was not in a position to respond; King Christian X sent a message of congratulation after the fact.
- Year: 1944 CE
- Category: Political
