Iceland has summoned the United States ambassador in Reykjavik over a social media post by U.S. President Donald Trump that showed a map of North America draped in the American flag, an image that also placed Canada inside the borders of a landmass labelled “United States of America.”
Icelandic Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir summoned U.S. Ambassador Billy Long over the image, Icelandic public broadcaster RUV reported. Iceland’s foreign ministry said its position was made clear in the meeting, describing the post as “completely inappropriate,” according to RUV.
Trump published the map on his Truth Social platform over the Labour Day long weekend without explanation, according to CBC News. The image showed the United States, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, Central America and the Caribbean shaded in the red, white and blue of the U.S. flag, with the entire area carrying a single country name.
The post arrives during the sharpest stretch of Canada-U.S. relations in years. Canada’s counter-tariffs on roughly $27.6 billion worth of American goods took effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, after Prime Minister Mark Carney instructed Canadian negotiators to walk away from trade talks rather than accept terms his government said would damage Canadian industry.
For Canadian readers, the map revives a theme Trump has returned to repeatedly. He first floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state in February 2025, arguing Canadians would benefit from lower taxes and American military protection. In January 2026 he referred to Carney as “Governor” while threatening 100 per cent tariffs over Canada’s economic relationship with China.
Carney has consistently rejected the framing, saying Canadian sovereignty is not for sale. On Sept. 1 he told the Trump administration to “stop doing memes, stop throwing shade and stop trying to be tough,” as reported by Spectrum News.
As of publication, no Canadian summons or formal diplomatic protest over the map itself had been reported. Global Affairs Canada has not issued a public statement specifically addressing the image, and it is not clear whether Ottawa intends to treat it as a diplomatic matter or, as Carney has done with previous 51st state remarks, decline to elevate it.
Iceland is not the first Arctic government to raise the issue with Washington. Denmark summoned the U.S. ambassador in Copenhagen in December 2025 over a renewed American push on Greenland, a self governing territory of the Danish realm, according to reporting by Axios.
Greenland and Iceland both sit on shipping and security routes that have grown in strategic importance as Arctic sea ice retreats, and both have featured in Trump’s public comments about extending American territory or influence northward. Canada, which has the longest Arctic coastline of any country, carries its own unresolved dispute with Washington over whether the Northwest Passage constitutes Canadian internal waters or an international strait.
What the map means in policy terms remains unclear. Trump attached no statement to it, no U.S. agency has described it as reflecting a policy position, and the White House has not said whether it was intended as anything beyond a social media post. Iceland’s foreign ministry, for its part, treated it as serious enough to call in an ambassador.
