UNSETTLED

Around the turn of the 10th century, a man named Þórólfur Mostrarskegg sailed from Norway to escape the tyranny of King Haraldur Fairhair, establishing his new farm on Þórsnes, a spit of land on the north coast of the Snæfellsnes peninsula. Þórólfur came ashore, and having surveyed the lay of the land, he walked along his new settlement with fire, marking the boundaries between his byggð (dwelling) and óbyggð (wilderness).

This distinction between the secure, built-up world of civilisation and the chaotic, unsettled realm of nature is the key to understanding Icelanders’ view of the world and their land. In fact, the relationship between the human community and nature lies at the heart of many myths, religions, and art traditions throughout civilisations around the world. Despite this universal concern, the case of Iceland remains unique; the settlement of Iceland is the only historically documented colonisation of genuinely empty land.

These conditions also account for much of Iceland’s popularity as a tourist destination – in a world in which urban sprawl has developed entire landscapes and pushed wilderness out to the edges of the map, the very distinction between wilderness and settlement seems to be collapsing. In Iceland, however, the wilderness is still there – the land where no one lives. Right?

WILDERNESS AS CAPITAL

In the years leading up to the banking collapse of 2007-2008, Iceland went through a period of unprecedented growth. Unlike the petro-fueled greed of other countries, the expansion of Icelandic capital went hand-in-hand with green technologies like geothermal and hydroelectric power. Iceland has become internationally recognised for its commitment to environmentalism, and the current administration’s goal to reach carbon neutrality and complete the energy transition by 2040 is one of the most ambitious climate policies in the world.

It may come as a surprise to outsiders that Iceland’s green expansion has been a subject of controversy, with environmentalists saying that Icelanders treat green energy like others treat fossil fuels – a source of infinite expansion in a finite world. According to some, the goal of such “green capitalists” is to make sure every drop of water powers a turbine before it reaches the sea. Such a worldview sees the powerful currents of Gullfoss not as a confrontation with the sublime but as a failed investment, a faucet left running.

These tensions came to a head during the planning and construction of the Fljótsdalsstöð hydroelectric dam in Kárahnjúkar, an area within Vatnajökull National Park. Completed in 2009, the reservoir required an area of formerly pristine wilderness about the size of Manhattan island to be flooded. The project was highly controversial and polarised Icelandic society to an unheard-of degree. The Kárahnjúkar controversy was a defining event for the political consciousness of modern Icelanders and can likewise be considered to represent a sea change in Icelandic attitudes towards wilderness. According to the developers, the land to be flooded was empty; a wasteland. Ecologists disagreed, pointing out that where construction crews saw empty space, the scientist saw a delicate, precious ecosystem.

Nevertheless, the developers were, in some sense, correct. Vatnajökull’s highland is about as sparse and desolate as it gets in our sublunary sphere.

Kárahnjúkar forced Icelanders to confront a very basic question: what is the value of empty land?

EUROPE’S LAST FRONTIER

In December 2020, Iceland’s parliament debated a bill to designate 40,000km² [7,700mi²] of Iceland’s interior as a national park. The proposed legislation, debated by parliament until midnight, would have united several nature areas, including Vatnajökull National Park and popular hiking destination Landmannalaugar, under one administrative framework, establishing it as Europe’s largest protected wilderness. Despite having been touted as a keystone of the current administration’s environmental policy and a major part of the coalition agreement between the LeftGreens, Independence Party, and the Progressive Party, the bill floundered in debate and is not expected to pass.

Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, Independence Party MP and current Minister of Environment, Energy, and Climate, has the Icelandic highland in his bones. In fact, he tells me he doesn’t even know the first time he was in the highland, as he was too young to remember. All that remains with him is a story his mother told him about a leaky jeep, a river crossing, and an infant Guðlaugur who was made a little too wet for his liking.

The Highland National Park and resistance to it has often been framed as a classic case of urban vs rural: environmentalist bureaucrats in Reykjavík imposing their plans on the municipalities, who want nothing more than the autonomy to live their lives and use their land as they see fit. “Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately,” Guðlaugur says, “it’s not as simple as that.” Guðlaugur points to the case of Snæfellsnes National Park. Established in 2001, this park has proved tremendously successful, not just from a conservation perspective but also for the locals. “They have been supportive of the park since day one,” Guðlaugur says. “It’s a great example of the municipalities and state working together. No one there would ever want to return to how things used to be.” The only way forward, according to Guðlaugur, is if all parties benefit from conservation and that the municipalities are taken into consideration as well.

The Highland National Park may have failed, he tells me, but this is far from the total story of land conservation in Iceland. Iceland has a total of 113 protected areas, giving it one of the highest percentages of legally protected land in the world. “Some 30% of Iceland is already protected,” he explains. “But we haven’t worked out a plan for these protected areas.” Currently, there is no national framework for protected wilderness areas in Iceland. Notably, this means that different regulations and laws apply to Iceland’s three national parks: Vatnajökull, Snæfellsjökull, and Þingvellir. Þingvellir, in particular, rests in a special position, its unique historical and political importance placing it under the administrative umbrella of parliament.

For Guðlaugur, the next frontier in Icelandic wilderness conservation is the working group recently commissioned by the government which is compiling a “green book” on wilderness, land use, and biodiversity in Iceland, to be submitted this autumn. Debates around conservation often devolve into conflicts around deeply entrenched ideological positions – on the one hand, the environmentalists who oppose any and all encroachment on undeveloped land, and on the other, those who see Iceland’s wilderness as something merely to be exploited. “So far, there’s been no basis to discuss these things,” the Minister states. “It’s important to know what we disagree on.”

PARKS AND IDENTITY

Yellowstone was established in 1872 by an act of the United States Congress and is widely regarded as the first national park in the world. As American urban centres expanded and as other natural wonders of the Americas, like Niagara Falls, became increasingly developed and commercialised, Yellowstone was set aside for

“ICELAND CANNOT SIMPLY DEVELOP FOR THE SAKE OF ENDLESS GROWTH.”

conservation and recreation. Western Europe largely lacked comparable national parks, but in recently unified or liberated colonial states, the establishment of national parks became a point of pride.

Iceland, also a colonial nation at the time, established its first national park at Þingvellir in 1928. In Iceland’s case, the connection between the establishment of parks and a growing national identity is even stronger than elsewhere, Þingvellir being the traditional assembly site for Alþingi, Iceland’s parliament. Though Þingvellir is by no means a wilderness, it shows us that when we choose to set aside land as a park, in addition to whatever good intentions we have, we are also saying something about ourselves.

Wilderness only exists in comparison with settled land. To call something a wilderness is a choice we make, to designate it outside our little world of settlement. And if we make it, isn’t it our prerogative to unmake it as well? Are wilderness areas simply there for recreation, oversized mountain bike trails, and beaches? Is Iceland’s highland a form of capital, a resource that ought to be invested in and developed? Maybe wilderness is a vital link in the global ecosystem – a precious store of biodiversity? Or does the highland have nothing to do with us, standing remote at the edge of our maps, the silent negation of our built-up settlements?

SEEING GREEN

In 2017, then-graduate student and now-researcher Jukka Siltanen published findings in his M.S. thesis that confirmed what many suspected: national parks in Iceland were big business. Jukka’s thesis sought to dispel an attitude often heard in government administration – that parks simply incur costs with no tangible benefits. When Jukka sat down and crunched the numbers, he found something remarkable: the economic impact, essentially the return on investment, of Snæfellsjökull National Park was figured to be a staggering 58 to 1.

The study compared the economic impact of Snæfellsjökull National Park to the National Parks system in Finland. In the Finnish context, the parks were found to return a “mere” 10 to 1 economic impact, including direct spending at the sites, hotel and hostel accommodations, meals at restaurants, travel expenses, jobs created, and other secondary effects. In comparison, Snæfellsjökull was a goldmine, with every króna invested yielding 58 in return.

However, Jukka’s study also provided a warning: unmanaged tourism would ultimately decrease the profitability of the national parks, as decreasing quality of experience would lead to less time in the park, less money spent, and ultimately fewer trips to the region and to Iceland. Some 70-80% of tourists that come to Iceland cite nature as the primary reason for their visit, and should that feeling of solitude, authenticity, and purity diminish, it is unclear whether tourists would still choose to come.

Such findings gave an empirical basis for what might be called a “third way” in conservation, dissolving the old distinction between fussy environmentalists and unsentimental investors. National parks, it seems, can satisfy both.

A proponent of such an approach is Minister Guðlaugur, who has

advocated for profitable climate solutions throughout his political career. Embedded within Guðlaugur’s job title as Minister of Environment, Energy, and Climate is a tension; some might say that the environment and energy stand at odds with one another in a zero-sum game. Any concession to one is a loss to the other. Perhaps the recently renamed Ministry is a statement of optimism that these elements might be brought into harmony.

NATURE FOR ITSELF, BY ITSELF

Climate solutions can be profitable, and conservation can certainly benefit a community. And yet, is there perhaps bad faith behind this optimistic moderation? Can we really have it all?

Some environmentalists might say that a powerline running through the highland changes the nature of the highland. A hydroelectric dam across a river is not merely a construct of steel and concrete, a pit stop for the river on its way down the land. In harnessing the river for power, for us, we change it, not just in the course of its flow, but at a more fundamental level. The dammed river has become a storehouse, a reserve of energy that stands at the ready, for us, for our use. The dam kills the river that once flowed from time immemorial and replaces it with a battery. As the settler Þórólfur might think of it, to dam a river is to turn even the wilderness into byggð, another part of the farmstead.

One environmentalist sympathetic to such a view is Auður Önnu Magnúsdóttir, managing director of Landvernd, or the Icelandic Environment Association, the oldest and largest such organisation in Iceland. Given this pedigree, it is fitting that Landvernd was the birthplace of the Highland National Park bill.

With the Highland National Park on hold, I ask Auður what’s on the horizon for Landvernd. “I know it sounds really boring,” she begins. I lean in: little does Auður realise my interest in wellwrought policy. “But the most important thing right now is that we make sure that the decisions we make are professional, and they’re taken with the interest of nature and the general public in mind.” The tourism industry has exploded over the last decade in Iceland, and with no general framework for development and conservation, it is all too easy for decisions to be made largely in reaction to problems as they arise. “Iceland cannot simply develop for the sake of endless growth,” Auður tells me.

Already producing more energy per citizen than any other nation, Iceland must consider instead how to use its energy resources more efficiently. The constant growth mindset, Auður says, runs up against a fundamental problem: we live in a finite world.

Still, some development is inevitable. Playing devil’s advocate, I mention the lava fields between Keflavík and Reykjavík. These fields are not idyllic woodlands, and the words that come first to most visitors are “wasteland,” “martian,” and “desolate.” And the highland contains many such places, stretching for miles and miles. What, exactly, is lost when we develop empty land?

No such thing as wilderness

“I don’t know what empty land is,” Auður responds. “Nobody lives there. But the highland isn’t empty.” It turns out, unsettled doesn’t equate to untouched. “We have a lot of desert in the highland, but it wasn’t always like that. As a result

of sheep grazing and climate change, it has become more desertified.”

She holds up Þjórsárver, a region between Hofsjökull glacier and the Sprengisandur desert, as a jewel of conservation. This region is unique in Icelandic ecology, separated from the rest of the highland by glacial rivers. “The region is over 600 metres [1,970 feet] above sea level,” Auður explains. “Fifty per cent of all the plants that are found in Iceland are found there. And there are so many flowers, so many different flowers.” Besides beautiful and diverse plant life, Þjórsárver also plays an important role in the global ecosystem, as it serves as a vital breeding ground for many migratory bird species that summer in Iceland. One-third of the entire world population of the pink-footed goose, for example, has its breeding grounds in this little corner of the highland.

The highland certainly serves an important role, and there are very good reasons why we should conserve it, both for our own future interests and for the ecosystem more generally.

Nevertheless, when it comes down to it, I notice that both Auður the environmentalist and Guðlaugur the practical realist hit a wall when discussing the highland. All of these explanations, justifications, and policies seem to be beside the point. When pressed on the importance of the highland, both hesitate for a moment and wax spiritual in their own ways. The highland is worth money, but also something more.

For Guðlaugur, it is expressed as a swell of patriotism, bearing a “high price in the heart of all Icelanders.”

For Auður, it surfaces as something mystical, a connection to a source of power bigger than humanity. “You see nobody, and you see no roads, and you see no power lines, you see nothing constructed by the hand of man,” she says. “And you feel very small, but at the same time a part of something extremely big. You just know that something is right there.”

Yoga in the highland

When travellers sit down on an Icelandair flight, they will watch a two-and-half-minute safety video starring a young backpacker with a Macbook. Images of aeroplane safety are juxtaposed with romantic experiences of the landscape: as she fastens her life vest onboard the plane, the scene is transfigured into a kayak adventure tour.

The safety video could be said to present the “tourist ideology,” a glimpse into the ideal Icelandic experience. The video description on Youtube asks us: “Have you ever camped under the northern lights? Jumped off of a waterfall? Hiked to a volcano?” The ideal Icelandic experience, according to the video, consists of an individual, alone, having an encounter with nature.

The video, seen by nearly every visitor to Iceland, trains us to see the landscape in a certain way. Implicit in it is a set of values, not necessarily wrong, and also a theory of what the wilderness is. One theory of many.

Locale for recreation, bioreserve, profit centre, spiritual sanctuary – the highland is all of these things and none.

As I spoke with Auður, she paused, apologising: “But I’m a scientist after all. Björk is much better at talking about these things than me.”