Are some states too small to be sustainable? Do economies of scale apply to states as well as to economic products? Does the principle of national self-determination make any sense? Does the future belong to big and powerful federal states rather than to loosely-bound federations of small states? In this paper, I will explore these questions in some detail from an Icelandic perspective, but with special reference also to small states inside and outside the European Union, such as Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Estonia, the other two Baltic states and Slovenia.
