Reykjavík Grapevine - jún. 2020, Blaðsíða 36

Travel distance
from Reykjavík:
377 km

Roads travelled:
Route One

Car provided by:
!ocarrental.is
Hotel provided by:
Fosshotel
Glacier La!oon
islandshotel.is
It was 2010 when Eyjafjallajökull erupt-
ed. A few weeks after the eruption, I
went with a group of friends from
work to climb Hvannadalshnjúkur,
the highest mountain in Iceland. We
took a bus there and Iceland was how
it always was in 2010: dramatic, a little
dangerous—I mean, there was an ac-
tive volcano in our way—and largely
abandoned. There were comparatively
few tourists then.
Sure, you would pass another car
every once in a while, but it was most
likely locals. Oftentimes you would
pass some sweaty cyclists battling the
hills and feel bad for them—you knew
the weather would not be kind. But
those extreme athletes had been stop-
ping by Iceland since the 80s, returning
to the island every year like the Arctic
tern. It was nothing out of the ordinary.
In the whole of 2010, 495,000 tour-
ists visited Iceland. Though we didn’t
know it then, it would be the last year
of empty streets.
Not that high
For hikers, Hvannadalshnjúkur is
not that high. It stands 2,100 meters.
In fact, the top itself, Hvannadalsh-
njúkur—is actually only a white blimp-
shaped boulder plopped on the top of
the glacier—is but 200 meters high. It’s
the glacier that’s the true challenge.
But this is often the trick about Icelan-
dic mountains, they are not that high
but can be risky in other ways. They are
secretly brutal.
My group made it to the summit and
in the distance saw the roaring Eyjaf-
jallajökull spewing millions of tons of
ash straight up to the sky, polluting
the air and disrupting air traffic. The
crisis was suddenly much more real
and majestic. We, along with the rest of
the world, were in awe, watching how
the nature of a small island could stop
everything, even if for just a moment.
There was no wind in the air nor
clouds above us as we stood on the
mountain. The beautiful weather con-
trasted sharply with the destruction
that felt almost too near. But at that
time, we didn’t realise that we were
watching a volcano that would change
everything for Iceland.
The world finally noticed
The effects of having Iceland’s name
in the world news every day for some
weeks resulted in tourism on the is-
land soon exploding to more than one
million visitors per year. A few years
later, this number jumped to over two
million. For reference, that’s over five
times the population of Iceland. All of
a sudden, our nature was not only ours.
The empty black beaches became
crowded with colourful Goretex Gull-
foss and Geysir became a cliché. It was
no longer possible to soak naked in the
geothermal pools after a refreshing
hike, sipping on cognac. And trekking
the nature trail Laugavegur, was, well,
like walking down Reykjavík’s biggest
shopping street, Laugavegur.
Although Icelanders welcomed tour-
ism, something felt lost. We were shar-
ing our previously ignored paradise
with the world.
The south revisited
I recently climbed Hvannadalshnjúkur
again, venturing up the mountain with
the Grapevine’s trusty, but quiet photo
editor Art Bicnick. We visited Jökul-
sárslón, Skaftafell and Vík í M!rdal to
shoot videos for our Abandoned Ice-
land series, which you can find on our
YouTube channel.
It was stunning to see the country in
the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nature had taken back its land, but this
time it was not a volcano that stopped
the world, it was (most probably) a bat
on the other side of the earth.
The roads were as empty as they
were on my fateful drive in 2010. In
fact, they were more empty—no cy-
clists zoomed by on the roadside. We
slept at Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon and
all of the guests were Icelanders, there
to hike or just take in the scenery.
A quiet destruction
Although travelling these empty roads
felt familiar, it was odd to know that
even if the weather was sunny and
good, we were stuck in the middle of a
storm once again. Empty roads meant
destruction, and though the source was
abroad, the effects domestically were
still the same.
Around 50,000 Icelanders are, in
one way or the other, at the mercy of
the Directorate of Labour because of
the loss of tourism. We have never
seen such steep economic troubles,
and don’t forget: We are a country that
once faced the complete destruction of
our banking system in just a matter of
weeks. We are used to crises, but noth-
ing prepared us to have the whole of
Icelandic nature back in our hands, the
36The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04— 2020
Revisitin! The Past
A decade after Eyjafjallajökull, a new crisis is takin! over
Words: Valur Grettisson Photos: Art Bicnick & Bjarki Sigursveinsson
Travel
Hvannadalshnúkur, our former intern Josie, and a t-shirt
Eyja"allajökull, 17th April 2010. Photo by Bjarki Sigursveinsson.
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