Nordicum-Mediterraneum becomes a grown-up. This year we publish the 18th regular issue of our pioneering Icelandic electronic journal, which thereby continues its online, free, open-access mission as a reliable scientific and scholarly source of information, understanding, communication and discovery across multiple disciplinary fields and geographic locations in the North and the in the South of Europe, which is as much a cultural construct as it is a specific place on the map. Thus, rather apropos, issue 18(1) opens with a new peer-reviewed article, penned by Kevin Perry and Mette Rasmussen, combining anthropology and business studies in the context of contemporary Greenland. We are then very happy to be able to include another new peer-reviewed article, written by Mikael M. Karlsson, who developed a study of Vilfredo Pareto’s legacy, mixing philosophy and economics. Given that 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of Pareto’s death, we are honoured to commemorate the event through the publications of this particular article and emphasise Pareto’s significance in the history of European social sciences, economics, and culture at large. The new regular issue continues with another original peer-reviewed article, authored by Rosella Perugi, who offers an investigation of Maria Savi Lopez’s 19th-century travel literature on Iceland, hence furthering the earliest chief theme and rationale of our journal, i.e., the many extant connections between Italy and the land of ice and fire. We also have a new peer-reviewed article focussing, this time, on the South, i.e., Zane Šime’s analysis of the European Union’s (EU) science diplomacy agenda, with special respect to those countries in the Mediterranean region that are not part of the EU, but that are nonetheless crucial partners of the same, especially with regard to the ongoing  and growing challenges to environmental sustainability. As usual, a substantial collection of book reviews concludes the new regular annual issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum.