Reykjavík Grapevine - jul. 2022, Qupperneq 8

8 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07— 2022
Instagram vs Reality
How The Digital Age Of Tourism Changed
Iceland Forever
WORDS: Josie Anne Gaitens PHOTOS: provided by influencers
It’s an image you’ve seen before: the
dark basalt columns, lined up in
almost unnatural uniformity, shaded
soft grey and black from passing rain
squalls. A person is perched on top,
their bright orange jacket contrasting
with the monochrome background.
Around them; nothing. They are alone,
a sole vivid spark in the vast expanse of
Icelandic nature.
Except, of course, they’re not. The
image is captured—sometimes repeat-
edly, until the exact correct angle is
achieved—and then immediately the
subject’s place is filled by another
person, and another almost identi-
cal photo is taken. And so it goes on.
In fact, the beach is crowded. People
queue, jostling each other for a spot to
pose on the stones. Behind them others
take selfies, Facetime their families and
send up drones, dodging the encroach-
ing waves that continually batter the
shoreline.
This is the reality of travel in the era
of social media. Reynisfjara, the site
of these iconic rock columns—which
feature heavily on Instagram’s #Iceland
feed—has already received more than
100,000 visitors this year, according
to statistics collected by Visit Iceland.
What’s more, it’s also the location of a
number of recent tragedies; a man in
his 80’s was killed after being caught
by a so-called ‘sneaker wave’ just last
month. In total there have been five
deaths—as well as numerous near
misses—at Reynisfjara in the past
seven years. All of them were tourists.
INTRODUCING: INFLUENCERS
Tourism has changed substantially
since the turn of the century, and this is
in no small part due to our burgeoning
relationship with—and increasing reli-
ance on—social media platforms such
as Instagram. While individuals might
previously have engaged the help of a
specialist travel agent to assist them in
planning and booking their holidays,
nowadays more and more of us are
turning to the photo and video sharing
app to get inspiration and knowledge
about our intended destinations.
However, it turns out that despite
the internet generation’s aversion to
in-person commercial interactions
(see also: the rise of supermarket self-
checkouts and online clothes shop-
ping), when it comes to travel we are
still looking for figures to guide and
inform us. These modern-day equiva-
lents to travel agents are social media
‘influencers’, individuals who craft
curated feeds and attract thousands,
sometimes millions of followers. Their
power to shape and change the way
that people travel cannot be down-
played, especially in a small country
like Iceland where changes to trends
and norms can be felt very quickly.
MILLENNIAL GO-TO
Kyana Sue Powers admits she was
not an avid Instagram user before
she started planning her first trip to
Iceland.
“Before coming here I lived under a
social media rock,” she explains, laugh-
ing. “I didn’t know that everybody had
Instagram, I just followed family and
friends.”
D e s p i t e n o t
c o n s i d e r i n g
herself a particu-
l a r l y e n g a g e d
Instagram user,
Kyana felt it was
an obvious choice
when it came to
planning her first
visit to Iceland. “I
went to Instagram to research because
that’s just where Millenials and younger
people go these days to get inspired for
their next trip, or to know where to go
once they arrive at their destination,”
she says. “I basically started following
any account that had to do with Iceland,
and that’s when I was opened up to this
world of travel influencers.”
FINDING A VOICE
By the time Kyana arrived in Iceland she
was hooked—both on social media and
her love for the country. After spend-
ing a week travelling the Ring Road,
she vowed she would return to make
Iceland her home. For her, building a
social media presence was a natural
progression in her journey to creating
a new life in Iceland.
“Because of everyone I was following
on Instagram, I didn’t see people with
normal jobs, like doctors and construc-
tion workers,” she says. “I only saw
people travelling and taking pictures
and being photographers. So of course
I thought, well I need to go and do that
too.”
After spending months researching
photography and social media market-
ing skills, Kyana saw her following on
Instagram steadily start to grow. But it
wasn’t until the launch of ‘reels’—short
format video clips, often with music,
that is Instagram’s answer to TikTok
or Vine (RIP)—that she really found
her particular niche. She began making
videos on the theme of “my daily life
in Iceland”, many of which have been
watched over a million times.
“I really found my own voice through
social media,” Kyana confides. What’s
more, it’s a voice that clearly resonates
with her audience. Kyana has heard
from many tourists that her content
is responsible for encouraging them
to plan a trip to Iceland. Today she
has 32.4K followers on Instagram, and
almost 50K on TikTok.
THE CULT OF AUTHENTICITY
At its core, tourism is an incred-
ibly strange phenomenon. Every year,
millions of people leave their comfort-
able homes for other spaces and reali-
ties. Tourism is experience produced
on an industrial scale. It fuels econo-
mies, builds cities, and shapes how all
of us—whether resident or visitor—
live our lives.
But the concept of tourism has
evolved and shifted in the context of
Instagram, and the digital age more
broadly. In this time of online-enlight-
enment, tourism has become embroiled
in the ugliest internet debate of them
all: the inescapable cult of authenticity.
The impassioned hunt for experiences
which can be considered ‘authentic’ is
one of the most significant drivers of
postmodern tourism, and it’s an arena
in which countries like Iceland, which
would have once been considered unde-
sirable as holiday destinations, have
excelled. Even Syria—still battered and
burying its war dead—has been met
with a marked increase in requests for
tourist visas in recent years.
DEGREE OF INFLUENCE
Jewells Chambers, who has a popular
Youtube channel, podcast, and vari-
ous other media platforms under the
umbrella name “All Things Iceland,”
recognises that the idea of authenticity
can sometimes feel like a trap.
“There’s this whole “Instagram
vs Reality trend,” she says. “Up until
the past couple of years, I don’t think
people would have really been into it.
But recently it’s been much more, ‘give
me the raw’—along with ‘I want it to
look really beautiful.”
Jewells, who like Kyana is originally
from the US, moved to the country to
live with her Icelandic partner in the
mid 2010s. She has a background in
digital marketing and has worked with
multiple companies alongside produc-
ing her own content, but says that the
perception other people have of her
work is not always kind.
“There is a huge misconception
of what [influencer] means,” Jewells
explains. “A lot of people think of Kim
Kardashian—a huge figure in terms of
pop culture. But they also think of sell-
ing or pushing things that you might
not ever have had experience with, or
that you don’t really believe in, or that
it’s all just for the money.”
Jewells is quick to contradict that
opinion: “For me one of the most
important parts of my sharing is that
it comes from an authentic place, and
that I have experience of something,
whether that’s an activity or a particu-
lar circumstance,” she clarifies. “Every-
one has influence to a degree, whether
it's to a lot of people or just within your
immediate circle. I think of it as, you
trust that person and their advice or
recommendations—and so I take it
very seriously.”
THE TOURIST BOOM
Before the early 2010s, Iceland did not
know large-scale international tour-
ism. But a perfect storm of factors
conspired to change the situation—
and rapidly. Firstly, Iceland suffered
hugely in the financial crisis of 2008.
While on paper that might not seem
like an ideal incubator for tourism, the
reality is that prior to the crash, Iceland
was not a feasible holiday destination
for most people because being here was
just too damn expensive.
The second reason was environ-
mental, and probably only slightly
less anticipated than the recession:
Eyjafjallajökull. The volcano erupted
in 2010, throwing huge amounts of ash
into the sky and grounding air traffic
across most of the globe. Suddenly, tiny
Iceland was on every news station on
the planet, simultaneously. Sure, the
coverage was not overwhelmingly posi-
“Recently it’s been much more, ‘give me the raw’—
along with ‘I want it to look really beautiful.”
Tourism was the unex-
pected saviour of the
Icelandic economy after
the financial crisis of 2008,
and since then social media
platforms like Instagram have
facilitated a huge boom in visi-
tors. Fourteen years later, with
tourist numbers expected
to return to pre-pandemic
figures rapidly and infra-
structure struggling to keep
up with demand, is it finally
time to face up to our relation-
ship with tourism in the age of
social media?