Iceland review - 2016, Page 83

ICELAND REVIEW 81
day visit Geysir—the equivalent of 60-70 large buses. The
same goes for Þingvellir national park, where we used to
shiver in the pouring rain on a Sunday family outing. Only
a few people knew about Þingvellir’s best-kept secret, the
Silfra fissure where you can dive in the clearest water in the
world with underwater visibility of more than 100 meters
(328 feet). Last year, 30,000 people took a dive in Silfra.
Houses that have been left unlocked and open to all can
no longer remain so. This includes old churches in the
countryside which are used by tourists as free accommo-
dation. The same goes for rescue shelters scattered around
the country which have always been left unlocked and hold
a ready supply of gas and food for emergencies. Members
of hiking associations book their huts in the highlands
long in advance, only to find them full of people when
they arrive. Last summer I arrived at the tiny old library
on Flatey island, a protected wooden building, only to
find that a Dutch tourist had set up camp, and was in the
process of heating noodle soup on a primus stove and had
laid her sleeping bag on the floor. Apart from the risk of
burning down a historic building, the rudeness to others
who have come to explore this tiny place was infuriating.
Hot natural baths around the country are no longer the
sanctuaries they used to be—their charm has always been
that they have given the impression of being ‘discovered’
by each traveler and enjoyed in the peace and quiet of
isolation. The feeling of taking a bath in one of these is
completely different when it’s overcrowded.
DIFFERENT COUNTRY
It must be said that the locals are also more than capable of
doing stupid things. Local tour operators sometimes break
rules to impress foreign clients, and off-road obsessed
Icelanders also cause irreparable damage to sensitive nature
with their big jeeps. Early in June, local derelicts were
discovered holed up in a rescue hut, several-days drunk,
shooting seals and Arctic foxes and generally making a
nuisance of themselves in the Hornstrandir nature reserve
in the West Fjords. At least their stupidity had a historical
reference—this is the area where one of our great anti-he-
roes, Þorgeir Hávarsson of Fóstbræðra saga (The Saga of the
Sworn Brothers), committed his most heroic acts, which
included urinating in the water supply of the local farmers.
Many of these formerly isolated places also suffer from
an acute lack of toilet facilities. Although this was never a
problem in a sparsely-populated country, it
has become one of the defining issues of the
tourist boom, and it’s astonishing that the
authorities have not managed to improve the
situation now that we face another bump-
er summer. Building proper facilities is an
admission that the country has fundamentally
changed, and that we cannot have it both
ways. We cannot have both a pristine country
full of secret places to be discovered as if for
the first time, and a huge tourism boom that
benefits our economy.
On the positive side, we place a much
higher value on unspoiled nature since it is no
longer seen just as empty space, but rather as
a natural resource; although we still haven’t
taken this fully on board. We are, for exam-
ple, ruining Arnarfjörður in the West Fjords,
the most pristine fjord in the country with
stunning white beaches, by allowing salmon
farmers to place large floating pens in the
fjord. The visual pollution is immediate, but
the waste from these farms could gradually
ruin the fjord. There is also a real danger that
farmed salmon will escape the pens and breed
with the wild stocks of nearby rivers, thereby
causing irreparable damage.
For tourism to be a positive experience,
both for us and our visitors, we need to do
a few things. First, we need to accept with-
out conditions that unspoiled nature is our
biggest resource. We need to charge tourist
operators for access to the resource they use.
We need to build proper facilities around
the country and we need to discuss the
possibility of limiting the number of people
who can visit some sensitive sites. We also
need to appeal to locals and tourists to show
consideration, to tread carefully, to respect
nature and the rights of others to enjoy
nature. Many tourists tell us that we need
to get our act together. They can see that
what brings them to Iceland is in danger of
being destroyed. We should listen to them.
Otherwise we face the dystopian future that
is often referred to as Orwellian. George
Orwell, as so often, said it best: “Society has
always to demand a little more from human
beings than it will get in practice.” *
Halldór Lárusson is an entrepreneur. He has degrees
in economics, philosophy and history of science.