"Freedom! It's a lot of freedom": The lived experience of foreign women entrepreneurs in Iceland

Abstract

This study focuses on foreign women who decided to establish a business in Iceland. Five interviews were conducted with women from Canada, United States, Brazil, Lithuania and Poland. The diverse background of the participants provided different perspectives towards entrepreneurship and how women dealt with various challenges. Seven main themes emerged during the analyzation of the interviews: “I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve known what I wanted to do”, “Freedom! It’s a lot of freedom”, “…slowly fill in those gaps”, “…the biggest challenge is making sure you have fish for next day”, “Support means the world to an entrepreneur”, “I feel like they don’t really like new things”, “I changed direction” /consequences of the pandemic. All women described the process of becoming self-employed as stressful and overwhelming at times. Most of them struggled with difficulties caused by the language barrier. Despite the challenges they all declared being self-employed as exciting and rewarding experience that enhanced their self-confidence, allowed them to gain valuable knowledge and improved their skills.