Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.07.2019, Qupperneq 14

Árneshreppur (pop. 53), a village on
the northern shore of the Westfjords,
has for the past year now been a flash-
point for some of the bigger questions
facing Iceland as a whole: the nature of
democracy, how urbanisation contin-
ues to eclipse the countryside, and
balancing industrial progress with the
preservation of the nation’s unique and
unspoiled wilderness.
Hvalárvirkjun,
a project involv-
ing multiple dams
being constructed
on the Hvalá river,
is either a bless-
ing that will bring
power, infrastruc-
ture and jobs to this
struggling commu-
nity, or a needless
money sink that
would benefit a
foreign company
but do nothing to
save Árneshreppur.
It depends on who
you ask.
When the Grapevine visited this
community last year, opinions were
sharply divided. Over the past month,
however, opposition to the project has
been growing, and has even manifested
itself in the form of direct action.
The show must
go on
Construction of the project falls mostly
upon the shoulders of VesturVerk, a
contracting company owned by the
power company
H S O r k a a n d
t h e i n v e s t m en t
company Gláma
(HS Orka, in turn, is
majority controlled
by Magma Energy
Sweden A.B.). As
H v a l á r v i r k j u n’s
fruition depends
on VesturVerk, the
company has been
a focal point.
O n e o f t h e
most contentious
subjects surround-
ing the project
is the question
of what the landowners where the
construction is to take place have to
say. In point of fact, the majority of
landowners in Drangavík, where the
bulk of the development has been
slated, filed an appeal to the Ministry of
the Environment
to halt construc-
tion. Snæbjörn
Guðmundsson, a
spokesperson for
these landown-
ers, told RÚV that
their ownership
of the land can
be traced back
to 1890, and that
they will never
allow VesturVerk
to go ahead with
construction.
T h i s w o u l d
s e e m t o s c u t -
tle any plans for
development but,
as history often
teaches us, it is
m o n u m e n t a l l y
difficult to halt
development once
a company has
set their sights
on completing a
project. True to
form, it was then
unsurprising when RÚV later reported
that VesturVerk had opted to go ahead
with construction anyway.
Country roads
While many international read-
ers associate protest in Iceland with
Reykjavík in particular, there is in fact
a long history of direct action in rural
Iceland as well, from the mysterious
dynamiting of a small dam on the Laxá
river in 1970 to local resistance to the
Kárahnjúkur dam project in the early
21st century. Continuing this sacred
tradition is Elías Svavar Kristinsson.
This man, who lives in Árneshreppur,
believes that Hvalárvirkjun will destroy
the natural beauty of the region, and
so when he learned that VesturVerk
was ignoring due process and moving
forward with construction, he took
matters into his own hands.
Part of this involved physically
putting himself between construc-
tion equipment and the area where
the backhoes and bulldozers want to
go. He had a surprisingly courteous
exchange with a backhoe driver, who
eventually did stand down, with Elías
telling Stundin, “He took this with an
incredible amount of calm. He said:
I don’t intend to work tonight, so I’m
stopping and maybe it’s best that I stop.
He was a polite guy, but I was maybe
more wound up.”
What do the people want?
When a development project of this
scale is pitched as something that
will benefit the community, it stands
to reason that what the people actu-
ally want should matter. However,
who counts as “the people” can be an
entirely different story.
A Gallup poll from last May showed
that 40.9% of respondents favoured
the project, while 31.4% were against
it. However, this was a national poll,
with many (if not most) of these opin-
ions coming from people who do not
even live in Árneshreppur.
As mentioned above, the major-
ity of local landowners are against
the project. In addition, in late June
representatives of the Icelandic
Environment Association submitted
a petition of over 5,400 signatures
to the Ministry of the Environment,
calling upon the institution to expe-
dite the declaration of the Dran-
gajökull glacier region, where the
construction is slated to take place,
as a protected area.
What good
will it do?
The benefits of the project are diffi-
cult to calculate
definitively, but
the National Plan-
ning Agency did
weigh in on the
subject.
By their esti-
mation, Hvalár-
v i r k j u n w o u l d
increase revenue
for the region.
Beyond that, the
agency painted
a f a i r l y g r i m
p i c t u r e . T h e y
determined that
the project would
have a negative
i m p a c t o n t h e
environment, an
uncertain effect
on plant and sea
life, create zero
jobs, and have a
negative effect on
tourism.
We must bear
in mind that there
is considerable
support for the project in Árneshrep-
pur. Some of these locals regard
opposition to being the work of out-
of-towners imposing their romanti-
cised view of the countryside onto the
people who have to live there; people
who desperately need a stable source
of power to keep the community alive.
That said, the regional will of the
people of Árneshreppur is anything
but unanimous, and as it stands now,
whether the project will continue to
go forward is in the hands of national
institutions.
“When a
development
project of this
scale is pitched
as something
that will benefit
the community,
it stands to
reason that
what the people
actually want
should matter.”
One of the many beautiful falls which may disappear
Words:
Andie Fontaine
Photos:
Art Bicnick
14 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11— 2019News
A struggling community
Songs Of The
Dammed: Reprise
A community grapples with
the meaning of “progress”