Iceland summons the U.S. ambassador over Trump’s Stars and Stripes map

Iceland summoned the United States ambassador on 7 September after President Donald Trump posted a map that covered Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean with the American flag and labelled the whole mass "United States of America." The image went up on Truth Social on Monday with no caption. Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir called in Billy Long, who only formally took up the Reykjavik post last month.

The ministry told public broadcaster RÚV that it had made clear the post was "completely inappropriate" and "entirely inappropriate." On Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir spoke at a briefing on the new parliamentary session. "It is an insult to Icelanders, Canadians, Greenlanders," she said. "There is nothing funny or normal about making fun of the sovereignty of states." She added that sovereignty could not be taken for granted.

Gunnarsdóttir put the summons in a line she has used before. "I have been repeatedly advised by the U.S. administration that we should perhaps not take the current U.S. president literally, but we should take him seriously," she said. The State Department and the U.S. missions in Reykjavik, Copenhagen and Nuuk did not immediately answer Reuters requests for comment.

The map arrived in a week already loaded with Arctic politics. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was in Greenland announcing a €200 million package for 2026 and 2027. Trump has spent two years pressing a claim on the island, a Danish autonomous territory and NATO space. He has also spoken of Canada as a future state. Earlier this year he mixed up Iceland and Greenland in public remarks about tariffs. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied a mix-up. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later said the president had confused the two.

Icelanders voted on 29 August against restarting European Union accession talks frozen in 2013. The official No share was 52.8 percent on turnout of 82.5 percent. Only the two central Reykjavik constituencies backed Yes. Frostadóttir's government said it would stay in the European Economic Area. The referendum had been pulled forward after Trump's Greenland campaign. Voters still rejected Brussels. That leaves Reykjavik more exposed to Washington, not less, which is why a social-media map produced a formal summons rather than a shrug.

Long is a former U.S. congressman. After his arrival he joked about Iceland as a 51st state, a line that aged badly once the map appeared. Summoning an ambassador is the standard way a small NATO member records a protest without breaking military or trade ties. The United States operates radar and air facilities that matter to Iceland's defence. Iceland has no standing army. The relationship is old, unequal and still the security backbone of the republic.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Greenland's government and people had already made their position clear. Canada is in a live tariff fight with Washington. Mexico and several Caribbean states appeared on the same graphic. None of those governments can treat a presidential map as a legal instrument. All of them now have to decide how often to answer a joke that keeps arriving without text.

The useful fact for readers is not that Trump posted another map. It is that Iceland, three weeks after voting to stay outside the EU, used the heaviest ordinary diplomatic tool it has, named the new ambassador, and put the word "sovereignty" on the record the next morning. That is a different register from the Davos jokes of earlier this year. The post is still up. The summons has already happened.