Sveinn Bjoernsson

Sveinn Bjoernsson became the first president of Iceland because the king of Denmark was under German occupation and could not object. Iceland had been Danish for centuries and became a sovereign kingdom in 1918 in personal union with Denmark, sharing its monarch and its foreign policy but nothing else. He was a lawyer and its first ambassador to Copenhagen, and was in Reykjavik when Germany invaded Denmark in April 1940 and cut the connection overnight. Britain occupied the island the following month without asking, on the reasoning that a neutral Iceland was a gap in the Atlantic convoy routes and that whoever held it held the air and sea approaches; the United States took over the garrison in 1941, before it was formally at war. The Icelandic government protested both occupations and cooperated with both. He was elected regent in 1941, exercising the functions of an absent king. The full break came on 17 June 1944, when a referendum abolished the union by an overwhelming margin and the republic was declared at Thingvellir - the plain where the assembly had met since 930, which made the choice of site an argument about continuity rather than novelty. Christian X sent a telegram of congratulation; many Danes considered the timing opportunistic, and it was. He served as president until his death, keeping the office ceremonial and above party, which set the pattern it has kept. The occupation years had also transformed the economy - roads, an airport and full employment arrived with the troops - and Iceland joined NATO in 1949 while never raising an army of its own.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history