Iceland review - 2013, Síða 52

50 ICELAND REVIEW
ni n e t e e n - h u n d r e d - a n d -
sixty-three was the year Bjarni
Benediktsson was elected Prime
Minister of Iceland. The same year two spy-
ing diplomats at the Soviet Embassy were
expelled from Iceland. A massive underwa-
ter volcanic eruption started off the south-
ern coast of Iceland, 130 meters (426 feet)
below sea level, and reached the surface on
November 14, 1963. The eruption lasted
four years, creating a new island, Surtsey.
It was also the year the first issue of Iceland
Review came out.
In 1963, 17,239 foreign tourists visited
Iceland—this year they will likely exceed
800,000. The population of the Republic of
Iceland was 183,991 and has almost doubled
in 50 years, now standing at 321,857. The
biggest change in population is that close
to one out of every ten persons living in
Iceland are foreign-born. Half a century ago
they were zero-point-something percent.
Fifty years ago, herring was our main
export product, fishing and agriculture was
the backbone of the economy. Now the
economy is more diverse but still fisher-
ies remain one of the three pillars of the
Icelandic economy, alongside aluminum
production and tourism. Reykjavík has
changed from a sleepy village to a cosmo-
politan capital with an art scene, nightlife
and restaurants on par with big cities on
both sides of the Atlantic. Close to three
out of four Icelanders live in the capital
region.
And 1963 was the year Icelandic pop
music changed forever. The Beatles
released their debut Please Please Me, mas-
sively influencing the Icelandic music
scene which until then had been fairly
local. Young people in Iceland became for
the first time part of a global revolution. A
revolution that is even stronger today now
that we live in a small global village with
google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
at our fingertips. 
BY PÁll STEfÁnSSon
PHOTOS froM THE CollECTion of
THE rEyKJavíK MuSEuM of PHoTograPHy
MCMLXIII
President Ásgeir Ásgeirsson with his
wife dóra Þórhallsdóttir walking from the
reykjavík airport Terminal.
photo by ingimundur Magnússon