There aren’t ten people on this island who would send a friend to look at Sun Voyager (Sólfar), the roadside art on the Sæbraut highway. I use the English title for it first, because, God bless Jón Gunnar Árnason, this isn’t for Icelanders. If it were, it would be in a museum, not along a highway that lacks any drainage, almost custom built for splashing mobs of tourists following strange Google results. The wind off Sæbraut is strong, the Land Cruiser is the most popular car in Iceland, and that highway is meant for people zipping from east to west Reykjavík. There have been two fatalities on this stretch of road in the last five years alone.
We had been asked, in the last few months, to explain why so many tourists stand on a highway instead of visiting museums, galleries, coffee shops, parks, anything worthwhile. Then, this week, I received an itinerary from an American engineer visiting our household, and lo and behold, Sun Voyager was top of the list for something to do in Reykjavík. Not a single museum was on the list.
The list was too dumb to imagine. No human, even trying to be dumb, could dumb this hard. I grabbed my laptop, and typed in “three-day itinerary for Reykjavik” into Google, and clicked that much-reviled AI icon. Every word matched our American guest’s itinerary.
Google doesn’t share information about how many people have obtained itineraries for Reykjavík, but, again, no human source would send a human they cared for to this specific location. There’s a Chicago saying, “Walk east until your hat floats.” It’s a way of telling people to fuck off politely because Lake Michigan is east, and Midwesterners love politely telling you to fuck off. Walk north until you see Sun Voyager is somehow more mean-spirited, but it means the same thing. Except Google has taken a missive literally.
This is all to say, Iceland allows you objective proof that Google provides bogus results that ruins vacations and sometimes kills people. Great news though, Google and Facebook also kill newspapers.
This month, Statistics Iceland revealed that advertising on Google and Facebook topped 15 billion ISK in 2024. What do you get with that ad spend? For one thing, Icelandic companies pay no taxes to advertise using Google or Facebook. Unlike our neighbours in Europe, Google and Facebook have no obligation to pay a surcharge toward the local media. They also face no liability for things like promoting tourism in lethal deathtraps, (by algorithm, not intention), for example, the bucket list item of standing on a black beach with sneaker waves and taking a selfie. Advertising on Google and Facebook gets you metrics and ROI that you can show your boss. Bullshit metrics but tax-free.
Throughout this issue, you’ll note that we are coming to terms with our digital age, specifically Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet (Google and YouTube). You’ll read about an Iceland-only alternative to Facebook, called Slapp, about our local pop star, Laufey, a Berklee-trained musician who rose to fame using social media, and our mayor, who appears to have been displaced by a political machine reacting, I believe naively, to the Manosphere. We don’t present easy solutions, but the fallout of this digital culture does become more and more of a focus.
If you’re here three days, get to the National Museum of Iceland, get to Árbæjarsafn, get to the National Gallery, at a minimum. Get out to the D Gallery at Hafnarhús and see Hugo Llanes’s exhibit. Our Best of Reykjavik magazine dedicates a large portion to museums, and we honestly researched the hell out of this. So if you live here or want actual insight, check that. Do not stand on a highway staring at skidding Land Cruisers. When you’re done with your vacation, having discovered that Google is a tepid, toxic turd, consider finding other sources of information so that you don’t waste your life. Alternatively, walk north until you find your own true Sun Voyager.
