In the prolonged aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the public in Iceland twice rose in mass protest that was followed by early general elections. The 2008 bank crisis triggered the first episode. The 2016 Panama Papers scandal triggered the second episode. These episodes offer an opportunity to address a significant issue in research on protest and social movements: the role of crisis in mass demonstrations. I have conducted mixed-method research (surveys, interviews, discourse analysis, participant observations) to account for the dynamics of social context, activist initiatives, and popular protest participation during each episode. My work illustrates how the historical precedents of mass protest condition the dynamics of mass protest. When the banking crisis struck Iceland in 2008, such a precedent was lacking, and mass demonstrations broke out only after several months of escalating political activism. In contrast, as the 2016 Panama Papers scandal reawakened the themes of injustice and the shared memory of the first protest, mass protests emerged rapidly and spontaneously.