Hear someone say they are going to Iceland and you can assume they are taking refuge in Reykjavik, the country’s largest city with easy day trip access to scenic natural attractions and hundreds of service providers to match. Less often you will hear someone board the ring road, which forms a complete 828-mile loop around the coast of the country. But you will rarely meet someone heading straight for a connecting flight to the eastern region of Iceland, which is northeast of Reykjavik and is home to some 15,000 residents who share more than 8,700 square miles of land.
However, the remote location of the region is not the only thing that is holding back tourism development in eastern Iceland. The truth is that the people of East Iceland are deliberately taking their time to carefully consider how they would like to present their home to the world, a process that is evident in all attractions, destinations and processes in the region.
The likely leader of what can be recognized as the ‘slow’ movement of eastern Iceland is Djupivogur, a small coastal town in the eastern fjords that officially became ‘Cittaslow’ in 2013.
Cittaslow, an Italian movement focused on food and slow life, allows cities around the world with fewer than 50,000 residents to meet a percentage of certain criteria, such as encouraging home composting, providing easily accessible public toilets, and preserve historic areas, to obtain certification within the movement.
In Djupivogur, this translates into a focus on supporting local producers, providing abundant services to local parents, educating young people about local history and nature, and thoughtful use of public space. “In short, it’s a bit about being comfortable in your own skin, trying to stop globalization,” said Gauti Jóhannesson, Djupivogur district manager. “Out in town there are no global trademarks like Coca Cola or something like that, we try to keep that absolutely to a minimum.”
The city has witnessed that the designation itself has been a bit difficult.
“I think it’s an ideology that a lot of people can relate to,” Jóhannesson said. “I think uniqueness is more or less what people are looking for. You want to be able to feel that you are really somewhere other than your own hometown.
But Jóhannesson emphasizes that Djupivogur’s participation in Cittaslow is not a marketing tool for tourism and, in fact, establishes strict barriers to many activities that can harm the environment or the community. “Cittaslow is primarily aimed at people who live in the communities that are Cittaslow members and tourism comes after that,” Jóhannesson said. “We had a travel agency interested in ATV tours of the beach. We said no. We have had cruise lines asking us if they can bring their own ships to the island of Papey.
And the answer has been no. “
Next on the list of projects in Djupivogur? Things may be speeding up to accommodate the tourism boom in other parts of Iceland, but Djupivogur will only get slower and slower. The unique gas pump in the city center is being taken out of focus, as are the parking lots used primarily by tourists. “The idea is that we get the cars out of the city center, so we can keep the idea that we live in a small fishing village on the coast of Iceland,” Jóhannesson said.
“It used to be that everyone wanted the (gas) pumps to be in the village to draw traffic through traffic; We are not looking for that… We would like to have something here for people to see or do, what makes them want to come to the village in those terms «.
Djupivogur’s confidence and commitment to the »slow« lifestyle is spreading to other attractions in the region. In nearby Vallanes, Modir Jord farm is one of the few organic farms in Iceland. The husband and wife team Eymundur Magnússon and Eygló Björk Ólafsdóttir focus primarily on growing barley, a grain that was once predominantly grown in the country but has more recently disappeared from Icelandic menus.
The acreage is crisscrossed with walking and skiing trails and is home to a charming church, an Icelandic specialty, but the real treat here is enjoying a meal in the country’s first house made entirely from local Icelandic wood (from the farm, of course). .
Inside the cozy log cabin, Ólafsdóttir serves rustic lunches of farm-fresh (or once fresh, now fermented) produce on a perfect table. A wood stove burns in the background, and snow falls gracefully outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
That rush to get to the next destination evaporates with the beetroot soup, barley bread, and sauerkraut.
Further inland from Vallanes, filmmaker Denni Karlsson and historian Arna Björg Bjarnadóttir recently opened the Wilderness Center, a historic home on the edge of the Icelandic highlands that also showcases the region’s “slow” lifestyle. “Authenticity, adventure and respect for nature are our keywords,” Karlsson said of the couple’s commitment to embracing and introducing the “slow” movement to visitors. The husband and wife team collaborated with organizations such as the National Museum of Iceland, the Icelandic Art Institute and Vatnajökull National Park, to ensure that the four-bedroom house, home to a family of 14 siblings in the early 1900s , it would be presented accurately. to today’s visitors.
“The Wilderness Center is designed so that guests have to park their cars a bit away from the buildings,” Karlsson said. “When you cross the old wooden bridge from the parking lot, you walk into the past.”
It took them five years to create the restored Icelandic farm – the property’s details are meticulous and period appropriate, right down to the shape of the nails. I used to fasten the local wooden planks to the walls in the shared rooms. The original family’s belongings continue to furnish the home and the newly created Icelandic history exhibit that brings together the respective talents and interests of Karlsson and Bjarnadóttir in a comprehensive, detailed and artistic look at the country’s magical history.
The local tourism board recognizes that the “slow” lifestyle of eastern Iceland has the potential to be contagious. The stories of the region are being carefully selected by the group as they prepare to receive the influx of tourists who have already arrived in other parts of the country. “We have witnessed that other regions of Iceland did not have time to prepare,” said Maria Hjalmarsdottir, Project Leader in Promoting East Iceland. “It was very important for us to carefully analyze the lifestyle of our region to attract people who want to experience that.”
Since 2014, Hjalmarsdottir has been methodically working with Swedish destination designer Daniel Byström to collect the region’s local stories and attractions and connect them with a strong and central narrative.
“We are working on guidelines on what to do, where to eat, what kind of accommodation to look for and how each lifestyle in East Iceland lives,” said Hjalmarsdottir. “We want… clear values and a place that people can be proud of and talk easily to others. By doing so, we also have an easier way to keep our “promises.”
The aim is for us to be a first-class destination both to visit and to live in, ”said Hjalmarsdottir. And that commitment to maintaining the local quality of life while nurturing a new tourism industry sums up the slow movement of eastern Iceland.
The region will not change its identity to cater to the coming crowds. Local tour companies will not offer popular activities in other parts of the country that do not yet exist within the lifestyle of the region. Eastern Iceland will remain a unique destination… one worth stopping and stopping for.
