BEYOND THE EU SERIES: As the debate about the UK’s membership of the European Union heats up and ahead of the June referendum, we examine four non-EU economies to see if they could provide a model for Britain’s post-Brexit future.

Part Four: Iceland

Thordur Oskarsson is in the departure lounge of Heathrow airport heading for Aberdeen.

Iceland’s ambassador to the UK is off to formally open Scotland’s second and Britain’s sixth direct air route to Reykjavik. Aberdeen will become the 60th and perhaps most improbable global destination offering round-trip travel to and from the Icelandic capital when it launches this week.

The four-weekly flights from Icelandair are evidence of the country’s new boom.

Eight years on and one $4.6bn bail-out later, the Nordic isle with a population smaller than Croydon, has cast off the demons of its banking meltdown.

An explosion in tourism is a large part of Iceland’s nascent bust to boom tale. More than 1.5m foreign visitors landed at the sleek Keflavik airport outside the capital in 2015 - five times Iceland’s entire population.