Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.07.2011, Side 9

Kraum of the crop
A shop dedicated to the best of icelandic design.
OPENING HOURS
Week days 9:00 - 20:00
Saturday 10:00 - 17:00
Sunday 12:00 - 17:00
Kraum is in the oldest house
in Reykjavík. Aðalstræti 10,
p. 517 7797, kraum.is
8
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 9 — 2011
Back in January I wrote
an article for The Grape-
vine about the bank-
ruptcy of the fish factory in
Flateyri, a tiny village in the West-
fjords of Iceland, where I happen
to own a house. At the time there
was a lot of drama: Distress flares
were being fired from the dock.
To some, it felt like this was the
first village to be sacrificed to the
kreppa, an entire community on
the verge of being abandoned by
a cost-cutting government.
Not much has changed. Needless to
say the village is still there, and so are
its people, for the most part anyway.
Some fish processing has resumed,
albeit there is a protracted and com-
plicated legal battle ensuing between
Lotna (a company allegedly backed by
Gylfi Sigurðsson, the Bundesliga foot-
baller), another fish processing com-
pany from Reykjavík, and the regional
development agency. It is a pretty much
unwanted and uninteresting saga,
which the Icelandic newspapers have
for the most part given up on reporting.
But the situation is no less serious.
What it means is this: In a village of 170
people, eleven are currently employed
in the fish factory. Last Friday, nine of
the eleven were told that they would
be made redundant next month. As re-
cently as five years ago, 120 people had
jobs in the fish factory. A large propor-
tion of the inhabitants of Flateyri have
been unemployed and on benefits. Ev-
ery couple of weeks there is another
meeting about 'the situation in Flateyri',
but there is a feeling in the town that
nothing is being achieved. The villagers
I spoke to fear another attempt by the
authorities to close down the village
school, following the recent closure of
the care home in the village, making yet
more people redundant.
My neighbour once told me that
the school is the heart of the village. I
never understood what he meant until
I climbed to the top of the mountain
above the village and looked down. In
the silence of the fjords you can hear
every sound, and the sound of the
kids playing reverberates around the
fjord, amplified by the wind and echo-
ing against the mountains. The school
is the heart in the sense that it pumps
new life in to the village, and makes
life here possible. No normal person
is going to want to bring a family up in
a remote, isolated settlement that in-
volves a twenty kilometre drive through
a mountain to the nearest school, no
matter how beautiful that place is.
If the school ever does get closed
down, the village will become little
more than a few abandoned buildings
and a collection of summerhouses, like
so many other abandoned places dot-
ted around the Icelandic countryside,
and particularly the Westfjords. Flat-
eyri is not by any means unique: It's
the same story across many of the tiny
fishing villages of Iceland. This is what
is going on in the Icelandic countryside
today.
The death of Flateyri would be the
end of a whole village, a whole culture,
a whole human community that was
until recently home to over 500 people.
And the crazy thing—from an out-
sider’s perspective—is that there is no
obvious reason why this should be the
case. There's a lot of fish in the ocean.
Indeed, the fjord has some of the best
fishing grounds in the whole of Iceland,
that is why hobbyist sea anglers travel
from all over the world come to the vil-
lage to fish there every summer. But the
village economy has completely col-
lapsed because the fisheries manage-
ment laws (the dreaded 'quota system’)
prevent people, for the most part, from
making a living from fishing in the sea.
And there are huge vested interests
amongst the largely Reykjavík-based
fishing industry in protecting the cur-
rent legal position. It's a uniquely Ice-
landic problem, and exactly the fight
that is currently being played out in the
intractable, untranslated, battles of the
'big' fisheries management bill current-
ly being considered by the Icelandic
parliament. That is what is going on be-
hind the scenes here, and it's a matter
that is of absolutely critical importance
to the future of towns like Flateyri, and
of Iceland itself.
Neil Holdsworth owns an apartment in Flateyri, which he rents out
when he’s not staying there himself. Read more about that here:
www.westfjords.wordpress.com
Iceland | Small Towns
The Fate Of Small-Town Iceland:
An Update From Flateyri
Words
Neil Holdsworth
Photography
Neil Holdsworth
Special | Best Of Reykjavík - Best place to enjoy a Zen moment
Reykjavík's Zoo: Unexpectedly Fun
One of the first things you learn about
things to do in Reykjavík is what isn't
available. You can't buy beer in the su-
permarket. You can't attend a boxing
match. And the city zoo doesn't have
any jungle animals.
But don't let a lack of tigers and
elephants dissuade you from visiting
the capital's zoo (actually called Hús-
dýragarðurinn, which refers to domes-
ticated animals rather than wild ones).
For those raised in the city, seeing pigs,
cows and the Icelandic horse for the
first time can be fun. My personal fa-
vourite place, though, is probably the
birdhouse. Chickens are hilarious.
Kids will of course enjoy this place,
and not just because of the animals.
There are a few carnival-esque rides
across this sprawling estate, none of
them too scary or outlandish for even
the smallest kids. You can take a little
train that snakes its way through the
grounds, or you can also take a little
boat around a pond on the grounds,
or relax with some grilled lunch at the
nearby café. For the nerdy child of all
ages, there's even a science tent, re-
plete with physics-based games such
as that one where you stand on a disk
while holding a spinning bicycle wheel.
The seals are probably the main ani-
mal attraction at the zoo, and they seem
to be flourishing so well that they're
actually running out of room for them.
But if the mayor gets his wish, and po-
lar bears are moved in, maybe that little
problem can be solved the natural way.
The zoo is a great place to go alone,
with friends, or with your kids. Don't let
it be said it's not a “real” zoo. You get
the zoo experience, and a lot more.
Húsdýragarðurinn
Laugardalur, 104
PAUL FONTAINE
JULIA STAPLES