Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.08.2006, Blaðsíða 11

All in all, 1995 was a bad year for the inhabit-
ants of the northern Westfjords. January 15th,
following a long bout of heavy snowfall and
general bad weather, an avalanche struck the
small town of Súðavík, demolishing 20 houses
and killing a total of 14 people. The event
came as a shock to most Icelanders, serving
as a reminder of just how dependent they
still were on the mercy of nature. Much grief
and soul-searching followed, not the least by
inhabitants of the Westfjords, who now were
suddenly thrust into the position of having to
justify their living in what came to be seen as
an extremely unsafe, even uninhabitable, area.
The worst, however, was yet to come.
On the morning of October 26th that
same year, another avalanche struck, this time
devastating the equally small town of Flateyri
(now a mere 30-minute drive from Súðavík).
Some 500,000 tons of wet snow build-up
crept from the ravine Skollahvilft (literally:
“Demon’s gully”), destroying close to 30
buildings and killing 20 people.
Following the devastation of the town,
close to 100 people left for good, many not
able to cope with harsh memories of tragedy
and others suddenly left with no reason to
stay. A hundred people moving away may not
seem a lot for the average New Yorker, but for
a town that in its heyday counted about half
a thousand inhabitants, it was tantamount to
losing a limb.
Selfoss will be a relief
Flateyri’s inhabitants are known around Ice-
land for their jolly demeanour, hard-working
and partying attitude and resourcefulness.
One of the few (if only) Icelandic films en-
tirely shot and produced entirely outside of
Reykjavík was made by Flateyri folk (Í faðmi
hafsins, 2002), they’ve spawned several na-
tionally regarded musicians and writers and
have boasted of a cultural life greatly exceed-
ing the town’s tiny population.
Growing up in the neighbouring town of
Ísafjörður, which has more than eight times
the number of Flateyri’s inhabitants, I can
safely claim to have admired and at times en-
vied the people of Flateyri for the atmosphere
they managed to maintain for so long. Hav-
ing worked there as a professional fish-gutter
through two summers, half a decade ago, I
was used to thinking of Flateyri as a fun and
lively place, brimming with energy and ideas
and its surrounding Önundarfjörður as one of
the most beautiful fjords available to man.
Imagine my surprise when researching
this article. Visiting Flateyri for the first time
in two years, on a Wednesday afternoon in
late July, I was all but shocked by its seem-
ing deadness. The weather didn’t help; grey
skies and heavy clouds can become oppres-
sive when juxtaposed with the fjord’s massive
mountains and this, combined with the fact
that throughout the course of two hours spent
there, I did not observe a single person walk-
ing the streets, made for a bleak view of the
town. It seemed positively depressing.
Coming back a few days later did not
make for a better impression. Even though
the sun was basking the town in a warm glow,
painting it beautiful instead of grey, there still
was no one to be seen. Flateyri’s famous (and
only) watering hole, Vagninn, (“The Wagon”)
had been closed for over a year. I passed a
couple of Polish immigrant workers who
wordlessly and promptly ran away from my
greetings. A visit to the local gas station did
not raise my spirits. The attendant, a girl of
24, who was born and raised in the town, save
for a brief stint at beauty school in Reykjavík
and as an au pair in Montréal, stated in an
informal chat that she was moving to Selfoss.
“The town has changed,” she said, stating
that there was nothing left for her. Nothing to
do during the evenings. Not during the day ei-
ther, really. Way too many Polish and Filipino
immigrant workers who can’t be bothered to
learn the language and thus don’t participate
in the community. She understands them,
though, “[…] they don’t really need to blend
in with us, there’s so many of them.”
The only means of employment, save for
the school and kindergarten, are working at
the gas station, processing fish at the plant
Kambur or gutting fish at the Flateyri fish
market (my own previous place of employment
for the course of two summers).
“The town is dying,” the gas station at-
tendant told me, certain that in a few years’
time its population will be comprised of a
mixture of those too old to leave and the im-
migrant workers who keep to themselves.
According to her, summers are fun when the
former townsfolk come back to party for a
while, but mainly it’s drab and boring. Selfoss
will be a relief for her.
Although one person’s view seldom serves
to make up a complete horizon, the girl’s
thoughts made me wonder if the town, and
many others like it around the country (those
without plans for huge aluminium smeltering
plants anyway), were indeed a thing of the
past, doomed to suffer rapidly waning popula-
tion numbers, quickly turning into burgs of
nostalgia-addled summer cottages and mini-
mum-wage-immigrant-worker-powered fish-
processing plants.
The reason for the Westfjords (all of Ice-
land, for that matter) being inhabited in the
first place stems from a convenient proximity
to good fishing grounds; changing circum-
stances in the fishing industry (mainly due to
the advent of the god-awful quota system and
large freezer-trawlers) have effectively negated
it to a great extent. So why should anyone
choose to live there?
Couple that with the fact that the whole
of Iceland’s remaining fishing industry is in-
creasingly powered by immigrant workers who
will accept worse work conditions and lower
salaries than their Icelandic counterparts.
Some of my correspondents in the Westfjords
maintained that this could in part be traced to
a shift in values during the past few decades;
once, raising a family and providing for them
through hard work until old age was deemed
an acceptable and respectable pursuit. Now,
Icelanders are raised to desire upward mobility
and “making it”, whatever that means. “The
fact is, once you’re working manual labour
in the fishing industry, you’ve pretty much
gotten your post and you’ll stay there ’til you
either die or quit. There’s not a lot to work
towards,” maintained one Ísafjörður-based
Flateyri and the Fate of Small-Town Iceland
After a natural disaster, how does a fishing village cope with a modern economy?
by haukur magnússon photos by julia staples
feature
friend who’s worked for various fisheries in
the past, “People just want more these days.”
Hidden nation
Halldór Halldórsson has, on behalf of a
coalition of the Independence and Progres-
sive Parties, been the mayor of the town of
Ísafjarðarbær for eight years. The township
has encompassed the neighbouring towns of
Flateyri, Þingeyri, Suðureyri and Ísafjörður
ever since they united in 1996, following a
majority vote to do so. He maintains that
while the avalanche of 1995 has been a large
factor in the way the town has evolved during
the past decade, there are other equally con-
tributing ones.
“A year after the avalanches, in 1996, the
tunnel to Ísafjörður was formally opened,
cutting what was once a very unstable and
often blocked route between the places in half,
thereby redefining the whole area as one zone
of employment. That same year, the towns
were united. One of the effects of this whole
process was that most of the smaller towns’
commerce moved to Ísafjörður – people vote
with their feet and understandably opt to shop
at the cheaper Bónus store rather than their
local Kaupfélag – along with the town halls,
etc.
“By becoming part of a greater whole,
those small towns forfeited some of the job
versatility they used to have; what once were
full-f ledged towns with priests, town halls,
mayors and doctors effectively became what
may be regarded as ‘suburbia’ to the larger
whole. People in Grafarvogur or Breiðholt
do much of their commerce in downtown
Reykjavík, for instance. This change of course
affected Flateyri a great deal, for instance,
and altered the options its inhabitants had for
living and working there. These results were
entirely foreseeable when the tunnel-dig-
ging and unification processes went in hand
– had nothing been done, these smaller towns
wouldn’t be in any better shape; they might
even have been abandoned by now.”
I asked him about the effects of replacing
the diminished population with immigrant
workers.
“Well, we are having some problems get-
ting them to fully function and participate
in the community, something which ulti-
mately affects the quality of life in a place like
Flateyri. There are a lot of jobs available, for
instance the local factory Kambur produced
more than 8,000 tons of products last year
– in what’s now regarded as Flateyri’s golden
age the town’s record was around 5,000 tons.
So there’s a lot of work to be had in that field,
obviously, but there are problems manning it
– just the same as there are problems manning
much of the service industry in Reykjavík.
As a result, close to 90 percent of Kambur’s
workforce is comprised of immigrants. Every
house there is lived in. Such a large group
of non-Icelandic speaking immigrants is
however bound to group together and form a
community within the community, to isolate,
like experience has shown us. Some of the
immigrants who choose to stay to themselves
are raising funds for their families abroad and
would thus rather stay inside and save their
money, which is understandable. However,
this obviously has negative effects on those
who strive to maintain a social and communal
spirit in Flateyri.
“Integration has not gone as well as it
should, not because of anyone’s hostility or
closed-mindedness, but rather as an effect of
the circumstances. We are working on ideas
to solve this. Good work is being done in the
schools, integrating the children, but we are
having problems reaching the adults. As for
the future of Flateyri and all of Ísafjarðarbær,
I am confident that the unification process
was a necessary step for all of the towns and
that in time we will evolve into a strong and
single-minded base whose inhabitants work,
live and play wherever. For this to happen, our
populace will have to start growing again. I
am an optimist and am hopeful that in time it
indeed will.”
Yes, of course there are the immigrant
workers – what freelance journalist Páll Ásgeir
Ásgeirsson called “The hidden nation of the
Westfjords” in a rather bleak Mannlíf article
earlier this year. Some regard them as a prob-
lem for Flateyri and similar towns, stif ling the
locals’ sense of community by not wanting (or
being able) to learn the language and partici-
pate in their events. There are a lot of them,
too; although no definitive records exist – as
Páll Ásgeir duly notes in his article, the census
board regards them as Icelanders as soon as
they receive their citizenship – people specu-
late that immigrants comprise up to (some say
greater than) a third of Flateyri’s 300 inhabit-
ants.
Bryndís Friðgeirsdóttir, a former school-
teacher and Ísafjörður councilperson, cur-
rently heads the Westfjords district of the
Red Cross, overseeing charters spread all
through the peninsula. Through her work
the past decade, she has gotten to know many
immigrant workers, informing them of their
rights and duties, giving tips on how to work
the system and providing help with various
problematic situations that arise from time
to time. She’s still at it. She met us just after
assisting a Slovakian woman applying for a
job at the Ísafjörður hospital. She says that
resources for immigrant and migrant workers
have improved greatly these past few years,
especially due to the foundation and advent
of the Fjölmenningarsetur (the Multicultural
Centre) in Ísafjörður and its chairperson Elsa
Arnardóttir’s tireless work to integrate it with
local businesses and unions.
Still, there are problems in the treat-
ment of immigrant workers that she says are
“severely important to the native workforce
as well.” Most recently, for example, she ex-
plains a “troubling development that needs
to be dealt with is the advent of the so-called
manpower rentals, many of whom treat their
workers poorly and pay them badly. Not too
long ago, an Ísafjörður contractor company
discovered that their leased employees from
Portugal were severely underpaid by their
agency and were forced to take action.”
In our brief meeting, we discuss the pos-
sibility of employers requiring immigrants to
vote a certain way, and the difficulty of the
current system of binding work permits to
employers, putting the immigrants entirely at
the employer’s mercy. I ask what can be done
to prevent further deterioration in the Westf-
jords.
“Well, first off, I think it is absolutely
necessary that officials take measures to
ensure that as many immigrants as possible
learn Icelandic. I am not talking about forcing
anyone to do so against their will, but certain
resources are needed and it is important to
help newcomers see that it is to their utmost
advantage to speak the language. We need to
put greater emphasis on this, along with bet-
ter funding. Lest we forget, these immigrants
pay their taxes to the Icelandic government
– while someone like Björgólfur, (owner of
Landsbanki, one of the wealthiest men in the
world) does not. As for other options, the Red
Cross has a highly successful model for adapt-
ing refugees into their new hometowns, based
on “friend families”. When Ísafjörður received
several Yugoslavian refugees in the nineties,
we set it up so that each family was put in
contact with a similarly composed native one.
Most of them still keep in touch even after
all these years – I consider it a great success
and think that similar tactics could work with
worker immigrants in the smaller towns.”
It should be noted that while Westfjord
immigrant workers and the effects of their
presence were among the focal points of Páll
Ásgeir’s aforementioned Mannlíf article, even
to the extent of drawing its title from them, he
doesn’t seem to have interviewed or sought out
a single one. Bearing in mind that a “hidden
nation” is bound to stay hidden if no one ever
looks for it, the Grapevine met up with some
of them. They proved astonishingly visible
and easy to find, a mere phone call away.
Brothers Edilberto and Edelito Villaespin
(known to Flateyri locals as Berto and Lito),
immigrated to Flateyri from their native Phil-
ippines some six years ago to find jobs, at the
urging of their aunt who was working there.
Previously, they had mainly made a living
managing cock-fights, which are hugely pop-
ular in their hometown. They got jobs as fish-
gutters at the local fish market and have been
there ever since. I got to know them while
working a stint there some years ago and al-
though communicating with them was some-
times no mean feat (they speak in a mixture
of poor English and Icelandic, although their
skills have increased a whole lot since I shared
a gutting table with them). They are friendly
and fun to be around and welcome me to their
rented apartment in Flateyri near midnight,
after a long evening of gutting tons upon tons
of catfish, cod and haddock. Also present
is Lito’s girlfriend, one Steffell Lol Lissette
Parilla, who is in her twenties and moved to
Flateyri at the urging of her aunt last year. She
works at Flateyri’s fish processing plant, Kam-
bur, and has an invigorating smile, usually fol-
lowed by an infectious laughter. I am promptly
offered a glass of cola, which I happily accept.
Berto and Lito’s apartment is nice and
tidy and smells pleasantly of exotic cooking
(they are generally fond of Icelandic cuisine,
although Lito professes to hate lamb), and
I catch them during post-work relaxation,
watching the Discovery channel and sharing
jokes. They both look forward to next year,
when they will have stayed in Flateyri for the
whole of seven years, a feat which grants them
full citizenship. They tell me that they might
consider changing jobs afterwards, although
they like gutting fish (which they refer to by
the Icelandic word of “slægja” well enough,
especially since their (and my) previous boss
left.
“Now Kambur manages the plant much
better,” they tell me. “Old boss was always
stressed and we maybe never get vacation or
“pása”. Always “mikið slægja!” (more gutting).
Now is much more relaxed.” They inform me
of recent developments in my former place
of employment and complain a bit about the
Polish workers, who they say don’t gut fish
nearly fast enough, though some of them are
very diligent. “Always out smoking, always
pása!,” they say. “You remember Andrew?
Always taking breaks. Some are very good,
however. It is different.”
Upon first arriving in Flateyri, in Sep-
tember of 2000, they recall being unhappy
about all the snow, as is the case with most
arrivals from the Philippines, according to
them. They got used to it quickly enough,
however, and now consider themselves natives
of Flateyri and Iceland.
“This is our home,” Lito says. “We like
the smell of the air, the water is very good
and also it is very peaceful. No trouble here.”
According to them, there are now close to 20
Filipinos working in the Kambur plant, along
with the three of them working as fish-gutters
(the third one, Jerry, who can play any Beatles
song on the guitar and frequently does so at
parties, was busy this particular night). They
like to keep each other company, they tell me,
and frequently have huge dinner parties and
social gatherings within the group. They also
regularly convene for basketball in the Flateyri
gym and play ping-pong in the town assembly
hall, which was renovated by a group of eager
young Flateyri folk this winter, much to the
Filipinos’ liking.
They also claim a love of the town fes-
tivals of Fisherman’s Day and the Flateyri
street party (a legendary affair) and wish
there would be more. They haven’t been to
Reykjavík that much and do not seem ex-
cited about the place, their metropolitan af-
fairs these days being limited to visits to the
feature
“The fact is, once you’re working manual labour in the
fishing industry, you’ve pretty much gotten your post
and you’ll stay there ‘til you either die or quit. There’s
not a lot to work towards. People just want more these
days.”
“Having worked there as a professional fish-gut-
ter through two summers, half a decade ago, I was
used to thinking of Flateyri as a fun and lively place,
brimming with energy and ideas and its surrounding
Önundarfjörður as one of the most beautiful fjords
available to man.”
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