Why We Light Fireworks: Remembering Sigurður Kristófer McQuillan Óskarsson

The quiet selflessness of Search and Rescue

On December 31, countries throughout the world will literally light money on fire to pretend to have a sense of community. You can line up all your devices on your lonely couch and watch Boston, Shanghai, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro, London, all light up fireworks purely for public spectacle.

If you’re in Iceland, however, you’ll see a staggering number of fireworks on New Year’s Eve. And they’ll mean something entirely different.

Almost average Sunday

“Sunday started with two accidents in the Northwest near the town of Blönduós, with so many people involved that they put in motion the plan for mass rescue… Twelve people were injured in total. There was another call-out incident south of the town. And this was the beginning of the day,” Jón Þór Víglundsson, public contact for Icelandic Search and Rescue, is attempting to answer my simple question of “how was yesterday.” It is Monday morning, and I have been trying to contact him for more than a week, always missing each other.

“Actually, our day started earlier because in the morning there was a ship outside of Skagaströnd that had an engine failure and needed to be towed to shore. One of our rescue ships went out at 10:00 and didn’t return until 18:00, an eight-hour mission. And then in the afternoon, on two different locations people had difficulties on their mountain hikes… The one in Skessuhorn took well into the evening. We put drones into the air with a searchlight. They flooded the mountain with light so the rescue team could choose their path and see it almost as in the light of a day. Finally, in the afternoon, there was another car accident in the southern part of the Westfjords. It didn’t make the news.”

There is only so much news that can be printed on Search and Rescue, and these are five extraordinary, at least for any other location on Earth, rescue missions performed by a volunteer organisation. In Iceland, this is literally an average Sunday. “There were no eruptions or major events, but there it had rained and then gotten very cold,” Jón Þór states. He then corrects me when I say it sounds like an average Sunday, “It was a little bit more than average.”

Deeply inhospitable

There is a zone of danger for hypothermia, it is a sweet spot. Exactly between five degrees Celsius and minus five. “Iceland is inhospitable. The renowned climate of Iceland is shitty and crappy… Plus five minus five, it is impossible to keep dry. We have a lot of expedition type people that come. They’ve done Greenland, they’ve done Norway, they’ve done, you know, the South Pole. And what do these climates have in common? They’re quite stable. We have anything but stability in the weather here. This is the range where the moisture stays in the air, and you will get wet, you will be unable to maintain your core temperature. We have rescued adventurers who have hiked Antarctica, and it is here they get in trouble.” Guðbrandur Örn Arnarson, project manager at Search and Rescue, is sitting with me at the understated Reykjavík office in the shadow of BSÍ. He has informed me, with a grimace, that Iceland is deeply unsafe, in the most unassuming way possible.

I attempt to change focus to the heroics of this volunteer organisation. “We don’t do hero talk. We’re quite adamant about that,” Guðbrandur tells me. “We frown upon any discussion in regards to heroism because that really kills people. Dedication, that’s okay, but hero talk… we don’t like heroes.”

Professor of Philosophy Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir of the University of Iceland will later explain to me that a sheer lack of egoism is the basis for the fundamental character of Search and Rescue, the quality that makes this organisation a national treasure.
“We don’t do hero talk. We’re quite adamant about that.”

However, during my meeting with Guðbrandur and my later meeting with Jón Þór, the scale of Search and Rescue’s mission leaves me baffled. There are 4,000 active volunteers on a call-out roster, meaning volunteers able to work any time of day right now. Jón Þór details to me the number of call outs, or times volunteers were deployed. In 2025, 34,000 hours on call outs throughout the year. Total hours of service, when you include training and vehicle maintenance, 300,000 man hours. If you had full-time employees working instead of volunteers, you’d be looking at 1,200 full-time employees. For scale, there are under 800 police officers in the entire country.

All of this volunteerism is paid for by four days of selling fireworks. Only four days. There is a small amount of income provided by a lottery, not the lottery with the big payout that funds the University of Iceland, the smaller lottery, and then there is something called a neyðarkall, or emergency call.

The neyðarkall

In our house, we had ordered a neyðarkall without thinking. We don’t use fireworks, we don’t gamble, but every keyring has a neyðarkall. Having been out of the country, we had no idea the significance of this year’s plastic totem.

A concerning news story then caught our attention. This year’s neyðarkall was celebrating the life of Sigurður Kristófer McQuillan Óskarsson, a Mosfellsbær local who died in a training accident on November 5, 2024. The news story dated November 7, 2025 in Vísir noted that members of Search and Rescue were shocked by comments about Sigurður Kristófer’s skin tone during the sale of the commemorative neyðarkall.

By November 9, 2025, the tone had changed completely. Vísir reported the news that this year’s neyðarkall sold out in four days. Jón Þór was quoted saying, “It is our feeling that the people of Iceland have joined forces, and many even bought more than one, to silence these negative voices. For that we are very grateful.”

What followed was one of the more remarkable pieces of journalism I’ve come across. Þóra Tómasdóttir, first on the radio show Þetta helst on Rás 1, and then in print on RÚV’s website, put together a detailed history of Sigurður Kristófer’s life with his adoptive parents, conveying his charisma, energy, and the loss felt in the community with this accident. The love and loss is clear, as Sigurður’s mother told Þóra of the adoption experience, “I was so happy. I waited eight years for a child. He was just mine at first sight.” The loss described is staggering.
“He was very enthusiastic, and he became the captain of the team.”

I spoke with RÚV reporter Þóra Tómasdóttir regarding her reporting. She described the experience of reporting this as “very emotional.” The response to the story, she says, was “enormous.” “Our social media took off. I haven’t read a single negative comment. How could you possibly say a negative word?”

“Siggi was one of my rookies,” Guðbrandur tells me, using the nickname for Sigurður. “I did part of his training as an instructor. I trained him in at least three disciplines. He was very enthusiastic, and he became the captain of the team,” he goes on, taking a break to compose himself. “Of course, you know, it was a big blow, both to the team and personally for me. It really, yeah, quite a shock. But the good thing that happened was that Siggi was quite a character, and he was very positive, and he had a very good effect on the people around him.”

This is the takeaway I get throughout my research. Deeply charismatic and beloved, the 36-year-old Sigurður Kristófer’s memory is cherished, and understood, somehow, as the unfortunate consequence of a rescue-based service.

The specifics of Sigurður Kristófer’s accident don’t change the impact. Guðbrandur, obligingly, explains what happened. During a training exercise for rapid-water rescues on Tungufljót, Sigurður Kristófer’s leg got caught in rocks as he was mid-river. The consequences were immediate. “The water level was rising, but it did not affect or cause the outcome. The outcome was just pure, well, he was just unbelievably unlucky.”

Moving away from fatalism

“In 1918, the first Icelandic rescue team was founded, and it was mainly driven by the fact that the female population in Iceland saw a lot of young men or sailors perishing at sea. So they thought that we would need two things. We would need rescue teams, we would need accident prevention. Yeah, this is societal development that starts where [you move away from] the individualism, you get more pressure for teaching people how to swim. We’re going away from the fatalistic culture, or lack of culture, where people, you know, it was just assumed that, you know, the ocean giveth and the ocean taketh away,” Guðbrandur tells me.

The change that took place in 1918 was from a fatalistic culture, to a community that supports personal agency. Guðbrandur further defines the fatalistic culture in which some of us were raised: “The outlook was ‘Why teach people how to swim? Why have the life jackets on? Because you are just prolonging the suffering of somebody who falls into the icy cold water.’”
“It was just assumed that, you know, the ocean giveth and the ocean taketh away.”

The change to a more progressive society often comes with a basic nudge on the shoulder, Jón Þór tells me. “If you move to a small village, you soon enough get a knock on the shoulder from a local. Welcome to the village. We need someone in the choir and we need someone to join the rescue team. That’s how those small societies work. We are few, we don’t have the money to buy everything, so we have to work together.”

Of course, beyond just agreeing to volunteer, a staggering amount of effort is required. As noted above, the man hours alone are incredible. Beyond the number of volunteers, each requiring 300 hours of training a year, there is, separately, the mental toll of each and every rescuer is a wholly different kind of math. There have been relatively few fatalities among Search and Rescue members; however, when you read about a tourist dying in a mountain or drowning off of a black-sand beach, it is a volunteer who locates the body, or attempts resuscitation.

In my interviews, I am reminded again and again of how much precaution should be taken. We have the obvious reminder of “Better to call 112 early than too late.” Separately, we have the relatively banal fact that Search and Rescue has invested enormous resources, paid for by fireworks and charity, to give tourists and locals basic travel information.

“For our visitors, when there [are] bad conditions, and yellow or red alerts, it goes right over their heads. It is understandable that they can’t follow the radio, given the language. [Safe travel] is the most important and efficient way to get information to our guests. We would like for them to start the morning at breakfast to check what conditions are like today. You will be able to see conditions on the road, and web cameras,” Jón Þór tells me. “If you’re planning on hiking the highlands, you can register your trip with us. That you’re going to start on this particular day. If you haven’t checked in or out, we’ll start making preparations. The first is to make a call to make sure you’re okay.”

The Safe Travel Iceland App, and safetravel.is, is indeed everything it’s cracked up to be. In my time covering this story, I am alerted to road closures, wind warnings, icy conditions.

Light them up

Every year, the fireworks start about December 27, just before they are legally permitted. The noise goes from tedious, to joyous, to tedious again as New Year’s comes and goes. But in this country of inhospitable climate and natural disasters, understanding that each krónur you light on fire supports people who do genuine good makes the sulphuric odour of the pyrotechnics pollution almost sweet.

This year, please enjoy the fireworks. Use safetravel.is. Buy a neyðarkall. Volunteer if you can. And if you have kids, and if you can imagine the experience that Sigurður Kristófer’s parents went through, give them a hug.