The regular issue 14(1)/2019 comprises two new articles that underwent double blind peer-review, one conference paper, an additional essay written in Icelandic and a rich collection of reviews of recent scientific and scholarly books, many of which deal with Arctic-related issues. (One belated review concerns an older book, but is published nonetheless for the sake of respect to the book’s author and publishers.)

As regards the new peer-reviewed articles (by Birgir Guðmundsson & Baldur Sverrisson, and by Henrik Juel), both of them focus on recent political events from the perspective of rhetorical analysis and communication studies, whether applied on a national scale (i.e. Iceland) or an international one. The conference paper (by Nikola Tutek) deals instead with Iceland in contemporary Canadian literature and originates from the conference “Exploring Canada: Exploits & Encounters”, organised by the Nordic Association of Canadian Studies and held at the University of Akureyri in August 2018. The additional non-refereed essay (by Helga Guðmundsdóttir, Jónína Einarsdóttir & Geir Gunnlaugsson), which is published in the present issue of our journal for the sake of prompt and wide dissemination within Iceland, tackles instead the related topic of immigrant children’s welfare in Iceland and whether the existing institutional provisions within the nation may be adequate or not; it is their authors’ hope that this article may facilitate the local discussion and resolution of the problematic aspects identified by their research.

We thank most warmly all contributors for their good work and their collaboration with Nordicum-Mediterraneum.