Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Blaðsíða 22

Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Blaðsíða 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
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