Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Blaðsíða 23

Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Blaðsíða 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
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