Atlantica - 01.12.2006, Qupperneq 56

54 AT L A N T I CA
a
ICELANDa
Into the West
The remote town of Sudureyri defines the middle of nowhere.
But one local businessman is quietly trying to
transform the small fishing village in
northwest Iceland into
a tourist hub.
BY EDWARD WEINMAN
PHOTOS BY SPESSI
“You can’t leave Sudureyri without feeding the
cod,” says Elías (Elli) Gudmundsson, an entre-
preneur who owns the only guesthouse in this
remote fishing village, located in Iceland’s rug-
ged West Fjords.
I’m standing just off the side of the one road
leading into Sudureyri (pop. 300), along the
rocky shoreline. Mountains on either side of the
fjord box me in. Elli’s business partner Benedikt
Bjarnason bends down on one knee, picks up a
small rock and bangs it against a massive stone.
“You need to call them for dinner,” Benedikt
says as he smacks the stone, bite-sized pieces of
frozen mackerel by his side.
Within moments, a small school of about ten
cod circles in the shallows like bees returning to
their honeycomb hideout. Benedikt tosses in the
bait and the fish excitedly flap about, putting on a
show only a tourist could truly appreciate.
THE TRUMP TOWERS OF THE WEST
The West Fjords is a collection of fjords in
Iceland’s northwest, where scattered hamlets are
connected by narrow roads and tunnels burrow-
ing through snow-packed mountains. Before a
tunnel was blasted through three mountains in
1996, connecting Sudureyri to the region’s larg-
est town, Ísafjördur (pop. 4,000), village residents
often became stranded after a heavy snowfall,
unless they had a boat.
Today, the drive to Ísafjördur takes about ten
minutes. The tunnel not only decreased the
locals’ isolation, but also opened a floodgate for
tourists who dare to venture away from the pubs
and restaurants of Reykjavík to the West Fjord’s
vast, depopulated wilderness.
Elli’s working hard to ensure those tourists
spend a few nights – and more than a few
Icelandic krona – in Sudureyri.
“Elli’s making money out of nothing,” says
Önundur Pálsson, a musician from Flateyri, the
small enclave located in the next fjord. Önundur
knows a little about the entrepreneurial spirit.
He’s trying to convert a crumbling whaling sta-
tion into a state-of-the-art music studio that will
attract bands to Flateyri, a town also surrounded
by mountains and the north Atlantic.
“Some call him Elli Trump,” Önundur says.
Elli laughs at comparisons to Donald Trump,
the New York City billionaire, but it’s a knowing
laugh, implying that there might just be more
to this town in the middle of nowhere than the
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