Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.08.2014, Blaðsíða 26

26 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 13 — 2014OPINION
ListoflicencedTour
OperatorsandTravel
Agencieson: 
visiticeland.com
Licensing and
registration of travel-
related services
The Icelandic Tourist Board issues licences to tour operators and travel agents,
as well as issuing registration to booking services and information centres.
Tour operators and travel agents are required to use a special logo approved
by the Icelandic Tourist Board on all their advertisements and on their Internet
website.
Booking services and information centres are entitled to use a Tourist
Board logo on all their material. The logos below are recognised by the
Icelandic Tourist Board.
It makes for great people-watching. Within
a few steps of each other, one can see an
ancient Japanese lady gamely clambering
onto one of the pedestrian-zone-sign fake
bikes for a photo-op; dreamy-eyed, hand-
holding Nordic couples floating by with
peaced-out smiles on their faces; well-to-
do Germans in matching specially-bought
and wildly unnecessary extreme weather
gear. Chinese tour parties seem increas-
ingly common, moving as a unit, sniping
off predetermined 101 highlights. Slow-
moving hippie oldsters meander through
the city with their practical sandals and
knapsacks, alongside hard-to-ignore
baseball-capped American buddies who
talk at carefree volume about their new
cars, old loans, future mortgages, wives
and kids and favourite beer brands. Awk-
ward teenagers mope along behind par-
ents of all nationalities, not quite old or
confident enough to be here alone; hipster
tourists with shades, tote bags and Mac-
Books haunt the coffee shops, indistin-
guishable from the
locals but for their
unfamiliar faces. As
the afternoon turns
to evening, the hen-
night and bachelor
party crews arrive,
along with raucous
pairs and packs of
Frenchmen, English-
men and Spaniards
hitting the 101 bar circuit early.
More and more of the world comes to
Reykjavík every summer, and with them
comes an enjoyable carnival atmosphere.
But over the last years, the tourists have
gone from being a trickle to a torrent,
becoming a dominant, impossible-to-
ignore presence. Almost without excep-
tion, change breeds discontent, with an
increasing number of locals voicing feel-
ings of frustration in conversation or on
social media. Whereas Londoners have
known for years to avoid Oxford Street at
all costs during the summer months, lest
they become trapped in a traffic jam of
frustratingly slow-moving, photo-snap-
ping visitors, little old Reykjavík is new to
this game. As such, some are struggling
to deal with the change, and increasingly
ragging on incomers, spitting out the word
“tourist” with resignation or even con-
tempt.
Tourists are ruining everything
To be fair, there are a variety of legitimate
grievances to choose from. Iceland, and
especially downtown Reykjavík, is in the
midst of an unprecedented and seem-
ingly unmanaged tourism gold rush, with
destructive consequences. Landlords are
converting downtown apartments from
homes into tourist flats (there are currently
1,000 Airbnb listings for Reykjavík alone),
muscling locals out of coveted city-centre
properties and making house-hunting a
frustrating and borderline traumatic expe-
rience. Local cultural landmarks such as
Nasa and the Smiðjustígur concert venue
that once housed Grand Rokk and Fak-
torý have closed, to be redeveloped into
hotels by Icelandic businessmen eager to
accommodate demand. The best bars are
crowded, the top restaurants are regularly
fully booked, and for
those sensitive about
privacy it’s hard to
step out of the house
without being the
background of a holi-
day snap.
And, inevitably,
there are oddballs
and wildcards in the
crowd, reported with
a kind of rubber-
necking amusement by local media, The
Reykjavík Grapevine included. From the
“glacial picnickers,” to the Prime Minis-
ter's-lawn streaker who had his clothes
nicked, to the disoriented old dude who
took a dump in the street for some rea-
son—all become anecdotes that inadver-
tently feed a subtle swing towards the
perception that “tourists are stupid.”
Tangle all of the above together, and
it’s plain to see why Reykjavík’s traditional
attentive curiosity towards newcomers
might be eroding somewhat. Whereas
just a few years ago, an overheard foreign
accent might attract bar conversations,
today visitors are ten-a-penny, and often
greeted with reflexive disinterest. At the
more fierce end of the spectrum, there
have been Facebook statuses, tweets and
shared anecdotes from locals that seem
to move past discontent and towards a
less wholesome, generalised brand of xe-
nophobia—blaming things like bike theft,
burglary and property damage on im-
migrants and tourists, on evidence slim
enough to suggest prejudice.
Not so fast!
It’s important to note that bad behaviour
is the exception rather than the rule. For
every thoughtless off-the-path footprint
at a hot spring, there are thousands of
people who respectfully stayed on track.
For every inexplicable street-pooper, there
are hundreds of thousands of people who
elected to use the bathroom. And for ev-
ery over-entitled asshole who tried to
grope or bother a pretty girl or guy in a bar,
there's the less talked-about majority with
a healthy interest in getting to know the
locals. Tourism brings with it a flow of fresh
faces, new ideas, different backgrounds
and alternative perspectives, all of them
adding valuable variety to the cultural life
of the capital.
And after all, it isn't the tourists who
are knocking down music venues. Ice-
landic business owners are at the back of
the queue when it comes to complaining
about the boom, and it's evident to anyone
who plays music, works in a bar, mans the
desk at a hotel or waits tables at a restau-
rant that tourism brings a much needed
shot in the arm to local businesses and
their employees. And with an increased
demand for activities such as street per-
formance, weeknight DJs and live music,
the tourism boom is enabling Reykjavík’s
young creative class to sustain themselves
in a way that was much more difficult be-
fore.
Tourists themselves are, on an indi-
vidual level, largely blameless for the is-
sues that this surge of Icelandophilia has
brought. Whilst occasionally annoying
if you're in a rush, most of them are just
wide-eyed explorers and holiday-makers
with no desire to bother anyone. But like
Lake Mývatn, Reykjavík's accepting and
carefree social ecosystem is delicate—one
only hopes it'll weather the changes better
than the marimo.
Laugavegur, running as it does directly through the heart of 101 Reykjavík, becomes a
very cosmopolitan street in summertime. Temporarily pedestrianised, it transforms into
a lively boulevard filled with music, street food, public art, craft stalls, picnic tables, sun-
loungers, and rails of lopapeysur (or raincoats and scarves, just in case). An international
throng of happy campers appear out of nowhere. It can be plain bewildering just how
busy the street is, compared to the rest of the year.
Photo
Magnús Andersen
Words
John Rogers is a writer, artist and music person who has spent inordinate amounts of time
in Reykjavík since 2007. His first book, 'Real Life,' came out via Habitat in January 2014.
Is 101 sleepwalking
towards xenophobia?
"Well, It Was Probably
A Tourist That Did It..."
“Tourists themselves
are, on an individual
level, largely blameless
for the issues that this
surge of Icelandophilia
has brought. ”