Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Page 23

cause and effect when it comes to
public perception, but it’s not unrea-
sonable to suggest that the island’s
tremendous exposure following Ey-
jafjallajökull is at least partly the
reason for the tourist boom we’ve
experienced in recent years. The
timing fits. Even at half-price, the
number of tourists declined in the
years after 2008, dipping back to-
wards 400,000, and only returning
to the pre-crash high in 2011, when
it again topped half a million. The
numbers continued to grow by leaps
and bounds, according to figures
from the Icelandic Tourist Board.
During the banking boom, Ice-
landers tried very hard to present
themselves a modern, sophisti-
cated country with a sound grasp
of finance—the Switzerland of the
North. The collapse showed just how
far off the mark we were, but it was
the volcano that finally returned us
the image we held for the previous
200 years—a wild, magical, mystical
land, full of unpredictable natural
occurrences such as these. In other
words, exactly what people wanted
to see.
Today, Iceland is hardly cheap,
with prices creeping back towards
pre-2008 levels (for us who get paid
in króna it was always expensive, it is
now even more so). Yet tourism keeps
booming, with upwards of a million
tourists projected to visit Iceland in
2014—three times the local popula-
tion. So, just what are we to make of
all of this?
The Athens of the
North
The results have been largely ben-
eficial. After the economic collapse,
a decade or more of hardship was
expected, as appears to be the case
in Greece. But suddenly, everyone
seems to be doing well again. Vil-
lages in the countryside are no lon-
ger demanding their own alumini-
um plants for job-creation, instead
opening quirky little museums and
hosting cultural festivals. And peo-
ple are finally beginning to see the
value of untouched nature, now that
tourism has given them a way to put
a price tag on it. In Reykjavík, the
bars are packed every night, host-
ing live bands or DJs; the restaurants
are always full, and even if a store on
Laugavegur goes under, something
else pops up to take its place right
away. There are no bricked up win-
dows to be seen, and scant evidence
of a country suffering the fallout of
an unprecedented economic crisis.
Crisis? What crisis?
Culture is benefiting too. Local
record shops were on the verge of go-
ing out of business a few years ago,
but now stores such as Smekkleysa
and Lucky Records cater to the dis-
cerning tastes of music tourists. Ice-
landic music, literature and films are
doing remarkably well for a country
of this size. If we are an Athens of the
north, it’s more in a cultural sense
than in a financial one.
Puffin shops and
Palmolive
Iceland has been widely lauded for
putting its bankers in jail, for refus-
ing to allow its citizens to shoulder
debts to foreign venture capitalists,
for being a free press haven, and for
crowd-sourcing its new constitution.
But on closer inspection, this image
is at the very best an exaggeration.
We got off lightly from the economic
collapse not due to our own ingenu-
ity - it was mostly the tourism boom
that saved us. If volcanic eruptions
could be started the same way gey-
sers were in my youth—by pouring
soap into them—we would for sure
be passing around the Palmolive and
heading to the craters.
But life can’t all be Puffin shops
and woolly jumpers. The Iceland of
2014 is starting to feel suspiciously
like the Iceland of 2007. As if to prove
the point, last year we re-elected the
very parties that caused the collapse
in the first place. What has some-
times been called a “2007 attitude,”
in reference to the high-tide of the
banking boom, has manifested itself
once again in regards to tourism. As
with the banks, everyone wants in
on the action, with discretion never
being the better part of valour. Ev-
eryone with a spare room is renting
it out, or moving back in with their
parents so they can auction it off
to authenticity seeking travellers.
Hotels keep popping up all over the
place, sometimes obscuring the very
things that people come here to see.
It has become virtually impossible
for young Icelanders to find a place
to rent or buy, with property owners
instead preferring to rent out short
term during the ever-expanding
tourist season.
The Mallorca of the
North
So how much is enough then? Some
people prophesise (with euro or dol-
lar signs in their eyes) that we’ll see
1.5 to 2 million people arriving each
year by the end of the decade. But
how much footfall can our tradition-
ally untouched countryside actually
take? As we find out, the dark side of
the tourism boom
will become ever
more apparent. Off-
road driving tears
up moss that’s been
millions of years
in the making, and
thousands of hiking
boots leave visible
impact wherever
they go.
And for that
matter, how much
can the infrastruc-
ture of Reykjavík
itself take before
it becomes a Mal-
lorca of the North,
reduced to a sorry
collection of tour-
ist shops, bars and
restaurants that
locals stay well away from? My local
barber, to name but one example, is
being pushed out of the salon he has
worked in for decades as the building
owners want to turn it into a hostel.
And just this week, it was announced
that the owners of the JL House in
Vesturbær, which currently houses
an independent academic institute,
want to turn it into a hotel. Every-
thing from our haircuts to what goes
on inside our heads is in danger of
being sacrificed (and marginalized)
to the almighty tourist króna.
Some people, remembering 2008,
are afraid that the tourist boom is
going to end just as suddenly as the
banking one did. But this doesn’t
seem likely, at least in the immedi-
ate future. When a place has been
discovered as a popular tourist des-
tination, it very rarely disappears
from the map again. That said, the
number of tourists cannot keep in-
creasing exponentially—unlike the
banks, whose imaginary wealth had
no basis in reality, the things people
come to see here are very real and
aren’t going away anytime soon, even
despite the increasing threat to their
integrity.
There’s no sign of Iceland’s snow-
balling international profile slow-
ing down. More and more movies
are being made here, with the next
instalments of two of the world’s
biggest franchises, James Bond and
Star Wars, set to be partially shot in
Iceland. Icelandic culture continues
to do well abroad, with Of Monsters
and Men being our
latest musical su-
perstars; Icelandic
literature has be-
come fashionable
in France after the
success of Auður
Ava Ólafsdóttir, and
strongman Hafþór
Júlíus Björnsson
frequently appears
in Game of Thrones.
These successes
all serve to remind
prospective travel-
lers of the wonders
of Iceland, even
if the prospective
Bárðarbunga erup-
tion lets us down.
All we really
have to fear, then,
is ourselves. For the time being, the
most pressing question remains—
how much tourism a small country
can take? The gold-rush mentality of
old is now returning in a new form,
with predictable results—let’s just
hope we manage this boom better
than we did the last one.
“In Reykjavík, the bars
are packed every night,
hosting live bands or
DJs; the restaurants are
always full, and even if
a store on Laugavegur
goes under, something
else pops up to take its
place right away.”
Feature| Tourism
23
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2014