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The Cod Wars (Icelandic: Þorskastríðin; also known as Landhelgisstríðin, lit. ’The Coastal Wars’; German: Kabeljaukriege) were a series of 20th-century confrontations between the United Kingdom (with aid from West Germany) and Iceland about fishing rights in the North Atlantic. Each of the disputes ended with an Icelandic victory.
Fishing boats from Britain had been sailing to waters near Iceland in search of catch since the 14th century. Agreements struck during the 15th century started a centuries-long series of intermittent disputes between the two countries. Demand for seafood and consequent competition for fish stocks grew rapidly in the 19th century. The modern disputes began in 1952 after Iceland expanded its territorial waters from 3 to 4 nautical miles (7 kilometres). The United Kingdom responded by banning Icelandic ships landing their fish in British ports. In 1958, Iceland expanded its territorial waters to 12 nmi (22 km) and banned foreign fishing fleets. Britain refused to accept this decision, which led to a series of confrontations over 20 years: 1958–1961, 1972–73 and 1975–76. British fishing boats were escorted to the fishing grounds by the Royal Navy while the Icelandic Coast Guard attempted to chase them away and use long hawsers to cut nets from the British boats; ships from both sides suffered damage from ramming attacks.
Each confrontation concluded with an agreement favourable for Iceland. Iceland made threats it would withdraw from NATO, which would have forfeited NATO’s access to most of the GIUK gap, a critical anti-submarine warfare chokepoint during the Cold War. In a NATO-brokered agreement in 1976, the United Kingdom accepted Iceland’s establishment of a 12-nautical-mile (22 km) exclusive zone around its shores and a 200-nautical-mile (370-kilometre) Icelandic fishery zone where other nations’ fishing fleets needed Iceland’s permission. The agreement brought to an end more than 500 years of unrestricted British fishing in these waters and, as a result, British fishing communities were devastated, with thousands of jobs lost. The UK declared a similar 200-nautical-mile zone around its own waters. Since 1982, a 200-nautical-mile (370-kilometre) exclusive economic zone has been the international standard under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
There was one confirmed death during the Cod Wars: an Icelandic engineer, who was accidentally killed in 1973 while repairing damage on the Icelandic patrol boat Ægir after a collision with the British frigate Apollo. Recent studies of the Cod Wars have focused on the underlying economic, legal and strategic drivers for Iceland and the United Kingdom, as well as the domestic and international factors that contributed to the escalation of the dispute. Lessons drawn from the Cod Wars have been applied to international relations theory.