Kristrún Frostadóttir

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597 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 26 Jul

Kristrún Frostadóttir’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 199. Is Trump's Chaos Pushing Iceland Towards the EU? (Prime Minister of Iceland, Kristrún Frostadóttir) · 26 Jul 2026 podcast

The biggest culture shock for me when I went into politics was just going into parliament, to be honest.

Because I came from the private sector.

I wasn't raised in the political setting.

I mean, I am who I am because of my family and my parents, and they were leaning in certain political ways, right?

But I wasn't sort of raised as a young professional in that setting.

And I found it difficult how slowly everything happened, right?

I felt people were wasting a lot of time.

Lots of very good people, smart people doing good things.

I don't want to be inappropriate about things.

But things took a lot of time.

There was a lot of delaying.

And I feel like once I became prime minister, you see it from a different setting, but at least you have more power to try to push things through, right?

You have like the executive power to put things on the agenda.

So the frustration that may have come or arose with shifting into this type of job, it was more associated with being a general parliamentarian than being a prime minister.

Yeah.

I think what surprised me the most, I mean, obviously I knew this, but when you're in the setting yourself, it's different, is how relevant and known Iceland is in the international world.

And sort of feeling that on your own skin, you have this country of around 400,000 people in what some people might say the middle of nowhere.

And at least over the last decade, I know things have changed a lot with situational awareness, tourism, just how people are talking about the Arctic.

But a lot of people know about us, about the country, about the culture, and they respect us.

And I think that's also a positive message for the Icelandic public, that you can have a tremendous amount of impact, even though you have a low population, because you have a seat at the table, because we are in NATO, because we were in the EEA.

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