Iceland review - 2017, Qupperneq 44

the buildings, fences and her vast land,
Heiða has herself to depend on—and
some help from family and friends. Sheep
farming is not a profitable business. “I
could maybe make it work if I didn’t
buy anything, or maintain anything, just
let [the farm] run down… but I’d rather
build it up.” To make ends meet, Heiða
relies on her income from counting
fetuses. However, with the price of lamb
in decline, she is concerned about the
future of farming. “I think it’s remarka-
ble with all these tourists who come to
Iceland that we can’t sell more of our
lamb.” She puts it down to bad market-
ing. “At the nearby Hótel Laki, local food
is on the menu and there’s a picture of
the farm from which it originates: the
potatoes, yellow turnips [swedes]—and
lamb. And it works.” The Icelandic Sheep
Farmers’ Association is keen to export
more lamb but Heiða is not on board
with them. “I’d rather not increase our
carbon footprint,” she says. A fair price
must be paid for Icelandic agricultural
products in Iceland, she reasons. “Food
is being imported and sold at a lower
price than homemade products—like
beef from New Zealand. We often don’t
know where it comes from or under
what conditions it was produced. Food
production is getting harder and we will
reach a point where cheap agricultural
products become unavailable. If at that
point we’ve driven local farmers out of
business, it’ll be difficult to start over.”
Many farmers have been tapping into
tourism and Heiða has taken visitors on
tours from her farm in the summer. “I
take them hiking for three to six hours
up along the river Tungufljót, up to the
waterfalls.” There are four waterfalls in
Tungufljót and its tributaries, which cas-
cade into a canyon, and people can walk
behind one of them. Heiða’s land is close
to the border of Vatnajökull National
Park and she is on the park’s board,
along with other locals. Her responsi-
bilities include protecting the sensitive
vegetation by making sure that sheep
only graze in highland pastures which
can handle the strain. Heiða’s love of the
land is obvious. She has stated that she
doesn’t consider herself the owner of
the land, rather that the land owns her.
For generations, it has sustained people
and animals, and it’s her responsibility
to hand it over to future generations in
no worse shape than it was in when she
took over.
FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE
A few years back, private energy com-
pany Suðurorka made a bid on a piece
of land belonging to Ljótarstaðir and
other farms in the region, with the inten-
tion of damming the glacial river Skaftá
to power a hydroelectric plant, build-
ing a 10-km2 (3.9 sq. mi) reservoir on
Heiða’s land, flooding her best pastures.
Determined to see their plans through,
the company’s agents didn’t take no for
an answer. Had the majority of land-
owners agreed, and had the legislature
decided that public interest was at stake,
they could potentially have seized the
land from those reluctant to sell. These
maneuvers caused Heiða and other locals
much distress. “The odd thing is that
it’s the landowners who have to defend
themselves. These people get paid for
doing their job, but for us it comes on
top of everything else,” she points out.
Heiða eventually hired a lawyer to look
after her interests and in March 2016, the
power plant was placed in the ‘protection
category’ of Alþingi’s (the Icelandic par-
liament’s) framework program for energy
exploitation. To Heiða, it was a relief. “It
will take a lot to resurrect the plans now,”
she says.
The fight against Suðurorka thrust
the inherently reserved Heiða into the
limelight. She gave speeches at public
meetings, got involved in local politics
as a representative for Skaftárhreppur’s
municipal council, and ran for parlia-
ment for the Left-Green Movement in
2016, ending up as a substitute parlia-
mentarian for the party, representing the
South Iceland constituency. Her fight for
justice also caught the attention of author
Steinunn Sigurðardóttir, who published
a book based on interviews with the
spirited farmer late last year. “I only
agreed to it because of Búlandsvirkjun
[the planned power plant],” Heiða stress-
es. The book has sold around 7,000
copies and was among the most popular
books of last year’s Christmas season.
The reaction has been overwhelmingly
E N V I R O N M E N T
42 ICELAND REVIEW
Heiða’s farm, Ljótarstaðir,
in late March.