Iceland review - 2016, Page 6

4 ICELAND REVIEW
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I like numbers. The population of Iceland is
now 332,751. The number of tourists who
dropped by last year was 1.4 million or 4.3
times the population of this island. Most of
those people came here for the first time.
Word of mouth told them about the volcanoes,
the lava fields and the black deserts of the
central highlands. And many come back,
again and again. Thrilled by the northern
lights, frozen waterfalls, and the unassuming
beauty of Bakkafjörður, in the northeast (page
68).
Others came here knowing very little about
the country, or the dangers of climbing the
glaciers, driving the country’s icy winter roads,
or playing with the untamed waves along the
South Iceland coast. Sadly, a few visitors
have succumbed to Iceland’s wild nature,
most recently a man who was swept away by
the waves off Reynisfjara beach.
A few of the recent arrivals are invited
refugees from Syria, set to stay here as long
as they wish (see Zoë’s article on page 36).
Before receiving the invitation to resettle in
Iceland, they could not find Iceland on a world
map. Now one of the families, from Aleppo,
has made a new home for itself in Akureyri.
Speaking of Akureyri, we visit the young
fashion designer Aníta Hirlekar (page 18)
who, when not in London, calls Akureyri
home, too.
We meet another powerful young woman:
Eygló Ósk (page 14), the Icelandic Sportsperson
of the Year 2015. Halldór Lárusson takes us on
a tour of Reykjavík (page 56), we taste traditional
Icelandic food with a twist (page 64) and see
new works by two fresh female photographers
(pages 8 and 48). Hugi Ólafsson (page 42) tells
us how Iceland is responding to climate change.
And, of course, we take a yoga class (page 53),
discuss Icelandic relations with Mother Russia
(page 60), as well as take a look at how water
shapes the Icelandic landscape (page 24).
But that’s not all: we go back to the year 1900
(page 74), when Iceland was one of the poorest
countries in the world, with fewer than 100
tourists a year paying us a visit. One of them,
Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, a reporter from the
Danish newspaper Politiken, wrote about
Iceland that year: “…. the lack of European
civilization, roads, trains, and good restaurants,
was a fact. All other countries populated by
snow-white people surely are civilized.”
The country’s population that year was
77,967.
Iceland has since been transformed, in part
thanks to increasingly looking outward and
welcoming the outside in.
Páll Stefánsson
ps@icelandreview.com
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EDITOR
Páll Stefánsson
DEPUTY & WEB EDITORS
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