Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Síða 22

When Grapevine started in 2003, we were in the midst of what at the time seemed like
a considerable tourism boom. The number of tourists per year was fast approaching the
number of the population as a whole, or 300,000. Earlier that year, Iceland Express (a
precursor to WOW Air) started flying to London and Copenhagen (soon branching out to
other destinations), making travel to the island more affordable. And yet the fledgling tour-
ism boom went largely unnoticed by most. Everyone was putting their money
in banks and aluminium plants to get rich quick.
a government agency established to
enhance Iceland's image abroad, and
managed by representatives of the
country's main industries, has surfed
the Eyjafjallajökull wave magnificent-
ly. Apart from the country's broken
currency and low wages, harbouring
the attention given to Eyjafjallajökull's
eruption may, reportedly, be the larg-
est single cause of the country's recent
tourist boom.
As long as eruptions are not physi-
cally catastrophic, these days they
provide Iceland with just the right
titillation for successful nation-brand-
ing. The population is well aware of
this, which is another decisive positive
factor in its volcanic attitudes. That's
2:1 for volcanoes, then.
Relief from humans
One of the foreign language-games
that never fully succeeded in Iceland
is the distinction between public and
private.
To take a recent example: During a
criminal investiga-
tion against a Min-
istry, the Minister
herself initiates nu-
merous conversa-
tions with the police
chief responsible
for the investiga-
tion. She asks him
whether seizing her
assistant's computer
was really neces-
sary, if the police
could please hurry
the interrogation of
her assistant, if they could please pro-
ceed a bit faster, and so on. To make a
long story short, this becomes public.
The Minister goes on TV to answer
for the accusations. During the inter-
view, in which she vigorously refuses
all blame, while not refuting any of the
accusations, she consistently refers to
the chief of police by his first name,
Stefán. There are even instances of
“Stefán and I.” She even utters this
line, in a verbatim translation: “Stefán
is a grown man. He is the Chief of Po-
lice in Reykjavík.”
If you find nothing peculiar about
that, you were raised in Iceland. For
a century, the state has enforced a
language policy against last names,
as a “foreign influence” that would
go against tradition. On its own, that
means nothing, but put in context I
tend to see it as symptomatic of a so-
ciety stubbornly resistant to the es-
tablishment of a viable public sphere.
If corruption is a word for mixing up
private and public affairs, it would
seem absolutely superfluous in a coun-
try where everyone is already on a first
name basis with everyone else.
In comparison with attempting to
run a democratic republic between
the 300,000 of us, an earthquake is the
lesser quake. No one expects a volcano
to distinguish between public and pri-
vate. In this sense, eruptions come as
a relief. At most, the topic leaves room
for speculation, as to when an eruption
might start and when it might stop, but
there are no heated debates about vol-
canoes. They are as easy to talk about
as football or a war against aliens.
When the opportunity presents
itself, news media enthusiastically
cover any and all conceivable sides of
a potential eruption—the number of
quakes today, their sizes compared
with yesterday’s quakes, how the com-
ing eruption might compare with his-
torical eruptions,
which flights might
be cancelled, which
flight routes might
be changed—head-
line after headline,
for weeks on end,
without anything
having actually hap-
pened. And, perhaps
no less importantly:
without any figure of
authority directing a
temper tantrum at
the reporters, trying
to get them fired and so on.
There is more to say about the mat-
ter, but in short, if I may verb a little:
Volcanoes fit the way we use language
like magma fits its magma chamber.
Which leaves this estimate of public
opinion at 3:1 pro-volcanist.
Feelings are mixed, for sure. Most
people would rather avoid apocalyptic
events. Volcanic eruptions have, how-
ever, come to be seen as some sort of
geophysical reverse-lottery, where,
if you play, you probably win. Not ex-
actly a win-win situation, this is the
win-win-win-apocalypse, win-win-
win-apocalypse variant.
Who would refuse those odds?
22
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2014
The Puffinisation
Of A Country:
Tourism Today
Words by Valur Gunnarsson
Photos by Axel Sigurðarson
"I know many of my
friends really enjoy
working a lot, and work-
ing has a lot of meaning
for them, and I’m happy
for them. But, it’s not all
good. The hotels being
built in the city centre
aren’t for Icelanders—
they’re for tourists."
Continues from P.21
A notable exception was Icelandair,
with their “Fancy a dirty weekend
in Iceland” campaign directed at
British males. Slogans such as “Free
dip every trip,” and “Pester a beauty
queen,” led to the Centre for Gender
Equality suing Icelandair, but the
case was dismissed on the grounds
that the campaign was intended to
appeal to the British sense of hu-
mour.
Tourism as a percentage of GDP
initially peaked in 2003 at 5.3%, but
then fell behind the aluminium and
banking craze. Those heady times
came to an abrupt end in the autumn
of 2008. In the same way that previ-
ous generations know exactly where
they were when they heard that Ken-
nedy had been killed or World War
II had broken out, everyone who was
living in Iceland on October 6, 2008,
can remember that moment when
they witnessed the Prime Minister
bizarrely asking god to bless Iceland
on live TV at five in the afternoon.
Not only were our chances of getting
immediately, horribly rich quickly
fading into the distance, it appeared
we were in fact totally bankrupt.
Foreign journalists started pour-
ing in to observe the mess, while the
duty free store at Keflavík airport
started advertising “half-priceland.”
Due to the collapse of the króna,
Iceland was suddenly a cheap desti-
nation to visit, relatively speaking.
But as the focus of ongoing economic
crisis moved on to warmer climes,
Iceland quickly dropped out of the
headlines again. It would take an-
other momentous event to return it
to the world’s attention.
Ben Stiller vs.
the Volcano
Just as Icelanders tend to exagger-
ate the rest of the world’s interest in
their banking collapse, they tend to
make too little of the Eyjafjallajökull
eruption. October 6, 2008, was sure-
ly a generation defining moment, far
outstripping the importance of the
volcano in Iceland’s national psyche.
But the economic collapse was a
mere blip in the international media
compared to the miles of newspaper
and hours of TV broadcasts dedicat-
ed to the volcano. And while money
was being poured into the massive
“Inspired By Iceland” promotional
campaign, it was perhaps all the free
volcano-related publicity that served
as the biggest catalyst in creating the
tourism boom.
As such, the eruption has already
cemented its place in Western popu-
lar culture. Ben Stiller’s ‘Secret Life
of Walter Mitty,’—one of many Hol-
lywood films made here in the past
decade (and incidentally one of very
few to actually be set in Iceland)—in-
evitably features a live volcano. And
the French romantic comedy ‘Eyjaf-
jallajökull’ from 2013 is about a di-
vorced couple on their way to their
daughter’s wedding in Greece, that
wind up spending far more time to-
gether at the airport than they had
intended due to the titular volcano.
Children of nature
In the long-term, however, the great-
est effects of The Eruption That
Touched Europe are probably felt
here in Iceland. It’s hard to measure
Feature | Tourism