STOCKHOLM/REYKJAVIK, March 27 (Reuters) – For Iceland, there
was a sense of deja vu when Cyprus’s finance minister said
capital controls would probably last “a matter of weeks”. Five
years after a banking meltdown, the north Atlantic island has
just extended its own controls indefinitely.

When Iceland first announced those surprise plans after
market hours in November 2008, the Confederation of Icelandic
Employers director general rushed to parliament at night to try
to persuade bleary-eyed lawmakers to reverse course.

KANGERLUSSUAQ, Greenland, March 26 (Reuters) – On the Arctic
Circle, a chef is growing the kind of vegetables and herbs -
potatoes, thyme, tomatoes, green peppers – more fitting for a
suburban garden in a temperate zone than a land of Northern
Lights, glaciers and musk oxen.

Some Inuit hunters are finding reindeer fatter than ever
thanks to more grazing on this frozen tundra, and for some,
there is no longer a need to trek hours to find wild herbs.

NUUK (Reuters) – An Inuit woman brought up to skin seals looked set to become Greenland’s first female prime minister after a backlash against foreign miners and fears over environmental damage carried her party to election victory.

Aleqa Hammond’s Siumut party won 42 percent of votes and around 14 seats in the 31-seat parliament, meaning she will need to form a coalition. Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist won some 34 percent of votes, according to official results on Wednesday.

NUUK (Reuters) – The promise of a resources boom has Greenland’s locals both eager and anxious, while the European Union sees it as a battleground with China, but the island is still a long way from producing anything.

Retreating ice is exposing huge deposits of iron ore, rare earths and hydrocarbons, but it has yet to launch a single major mining project, and oil and gas production is a decade away at best.