Winds sweep across a highland plateau featuring little but coarse grass and volcanic rock. Dirty patches of last winter’s snow cling to surrounding mountains awaiting replenishment as the short, cool summer yields to autumn.

It is not immediately clear why anyone would want to pay $9m for the desolate area of north-east Iceland known as Grímsstadir á Fj?llum, less still to invest another $100m or more building a luxury hotel and golf course.

Yet that is the intention of Huang Nubo, a Chinese tycoon and self-described poet and adventurer, whose provisional deal to buy 300 square kilometres of Icelandic wilderness has left many in the country searching warily for ulterior motives. Some suspect the former official in the Communist party’s propaganda department is a Trojan horse for Chinese strategic interest in Iceland. Halfway between Europe and North America, the country played a crucial role in north Atlantic security during the cold war and could take on renewed significance if global warming opens the nearby Arctic to oil exploration and shipping.