Over 2,000 Sign Petition To Repair East Iceland Road

Many Icelanders around the country are showing their support for a small east Iceland village, and their struggle to repair the one road connecting them with the rest of the country.

So far, just over 2,000 Icelanders have, at the time of this writing, signed a petition calling upon relevant authorities to repair a road connecting Borgarfjörður Eystri, a village of under 100 people, with the rest of Iceland.

The 70-kilometre stretch of road connects Borgarfjörður Eystri with Egilsstaðir, the closest town, but 28 kilometres of the road is not only unpaved but also riddled with potholes. Villagers have long asked for help from national authorities, without any meaningful response, and have begun taking matters in their own hands, filling some of the potholes with cement purchased from their own pockets.

East Iceland news service Austurfrétt reported that while the Icelandic Road Administration had done an initial estimate of 1.5 billion ISK to renew the road and make it eight metres wide, villagers have proposed making it 6.5 metres wide, saving up to half the money required.

Despite this, the road has been left neglected by national authorities.

“We seem to be too far away from North Iceland for parliamentarians of that district to have any interest in us,” the petition text reads in part. “And so we are waiting on our country to help us. We are few. We do not want to be abandoned.”