Iceland review - 2016, Qupperneq 47

ICELAND REVIEW 45
heads in the sand and hope things turn
out well,” he said in an interview with
RÚV. In the wake of the fatal accident,
the issue of tourism and safety dominat-
ed local headlines for weeks.
The photographer and I visit the
beach in late February. When we arrive
in late afternoon, we count around 100
tourists on the beach. Some are taking
selfies, others have their tripods lined
up along the shoreline, a few run down
to the water to dip in their hands. In a
period of just ten minutes, we witness
at least five people fall down as they try
to turn and run from the approaching
water. During the hour we spend there,
several other tourists are caught out by
the incoming swell, putting themselves
in danger.
The day before our visit, a second
multilingual warning sign was erected
at the beach in response to complaints
that the original one was not sufficiently
clear. Police also cordoned off the park-
ing lot’s perimeter to discourage people
from taking a shortcut to the beach and
thereby bypassing the path and sign.
Police patrolled the beach as an emer-
gency measure following the drowning,
but due to a lack of funding, that only
lasted two weeks, at the end of which the
new sign was set up.
GETTING THE MESSAGE ACROSS
Only two of the ten tourists we spoke
to on Reynisfjara that afternoon had
neither seen the warning signs nor
heard of the dangers. Three had seen
the signs but were clearly choosing to
ignore them, as well as our warnings,
and repeatedly put themselves in real
danger. A group of four tourists had
not seen the warning signs but had
heard of the recent drowning. Despite
this, one member of the group told
us that they did not believe the beach
was that dangerous. The tenth indi-
vidual said she had been told about the
dangers, and was clearly taking them
seriously. Several other visitors on the
beach also stood well clear of the waves.
However, there were many who walked
right down towards the water, including
those who had been warned by their
guides not to do so.
“That lady is going too close [to the
water] again. I can’t watch, I’m going
back to the bus,” Ujwala Warek, who
is visiting from the US, says to her
guide, Erla Margrét Gunnarsdóttir. I
ask Warek if she feels that traveling in
Iceland comes with particular dangers.
“I’ve traveled quite a lot and there are
dangers everywhere,” she says; adding
that she would compare the experience
to traveling on a safari in Kenya. “You
don’t feed the lion. Everyone knows
you don’t feed the lion. It’s the same
here, you don’t go too close to the
waves. You guys need to do something
but it would be a shame to put signs
everywhere.”
Putting signs up everywhere in
Iceland is something most people seem
to be opposed to, but getting the safety
message across is proving difficult. Erla
emphasizes that although people may be
Reynisfjara beach, South Iceland.
TRAVEL