Iceland has been like the canary in the coalmine of the global economic crisis. The government was driven out of office, the banks were nationalized and Iceland's people will be bailing the country out for years to come. Reykjavik's next great experiment will be reinvention.

Hannes Holmsteinn Gissurarson, the man who gave Iceland the dream of one day becoming the world's finest country, is standing in the middle of his small office at Reykjavik University and, for a second, he is acting modestly. He now simply wants to be remembered as a man unjustly condemned by history even though he did everything right.

Fifty-six-year-old Gissurarson adores such attention. He wears black Nike trousers, trainers and a black T-shirt. He takes a deep breath, and perceptibly grows in stature.

Iceland, he says, reminds him of Icarus: The man who wanted to fly all the way to the sun but fell down to Earth. Gissurarson pauses briefly. Then he says, "It's a Greek tragedy, a tragedy of mythical proportions."

Gissurarson's book "How Can Iceland Become the Richest Country in the World?" was published in 2001. That was the expectation back then, albeit couched in a question. The people of Iceland were well-educated and wealthy. Now they wanted to become the richest country in the world. Gissurarson's book supplied the screenplay for this Icelandic dream.