Editorial: 100+ Places Of Solitude

Icelandic weekly Heimildin used the phrase “tourism fatigue” in a recent article focusing on the small town of Vík, where fewer than 700 inhabitants receive more than 5,000 tourists each day during summer, overloading the town’s sewer system, buying up all the groceries and interrupting funerals. Parking fees have been introduced by many popular sights, annoying tourists who often do not feel like the meagre facilities nor the queues to the sights justify the parking fees, which aren’t necessarily used to upgrade said facilities. In July, a Spanish report outlined that one of Iceland’s most popular hiking trails, Laugavegurinn, was at risk of dying of success. The calls for the government to pen and enact a comprehensive policy for tourism grow ever louder.

Iceland is vast. It is 30% bigger than Ireland, with roughly 7% of that country’s population. So much of this island is “empty”. Unpopulated fjords are numerous, the highlands are all but empty. If you want solitude, it’s everywhere. You only have to walk a few hundred metres in almost any direction from a popular tourist destination and find yourself alone. Unlike the Vatican, we’ve got space and options. We can nudge tourists to other parts of the country, channel international flights to the north or east, build up infrastructure in a more cohesive way, limit access to some places, and so forth. It takes planning and foresight — two things we are not known for excelling at. But something needs to be done, otherwise this problem will solve itself; tourists will go elsewhere.