An observant and very disappointed Icelander has posted multiple photos of Helgafell, a volcano located near Hafnarfjörður, and not for the peak’s natural beauty. Rather, it was to highlight rampant defacement of several faces of the mountain, apparently committed by Icelanders.
“Stebbi and his friends were very pleased with themselves for having climbed Helgafell,” María Elíasdóttir wrote as a status with the photos. “If anyone knows these people, please point out to them that the guestbook is at the peak.”
As can be seen by the photos, several people scrawled their names and some phallic imagery into the mountain at a large enough scale to be seen from a distance.
MBL reports that The Environment Agency of Iceland has filed a police report about the matter.
“This is naturally a very environmentally damaging,” María told MBL, referring to the extensive amount of time it takes for Iceland’s fragile topsoil to recover from damage of this sort. “This kind of graffiti is a clear violation of natural protection laws and shows extreme disrespect for Icelandic nature, as it could take decades or centuries for the wind and weather to erase the damage.”
In case it needed saying, it is illegal in Iceland to damage topsoil in any fashion, let alone at such a grand scale.
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