Saving Iceland

Activists Attilah Springer (left) and Lerato Maria
Maregele (center). SI conference July ’07.

Mimi Sheller is a visiting associate professor in the sociology and anthropology department at Swarthmore College. She attended the Saving Iceland conference in 2007.

I grew up in an aluminum-sided suburban house. I carried a colorful aluminum lunchbox to school, with a sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil. Like everyone I know, I drink from aluminum cans, travel in cars, planes, and bikes full of aluminum parts, and cook in aluminum pots and pans. This versatile, ubiquitous material is all around us, all the time, but seems almost invisible because it has become, literally, part of the furniture (even the kitchen sink). The surprising story of this mercurial metallic fabric of everyday life – in our homes, skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, utensils, fasteners, cosmetics, space ships, and bombs – encapsulates the making of global modernity, the creation of multinational corporations, the rise of the U.S. as a world power, the modernization of warfare, and the invention of suburbia, science-fiction futurism, and the American Dream.
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Interview with Siggi by Kristin Burnett
Strip Las Vegas Magazine
August 2007

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Töfrafoss, now ‘unexpectedly’ underwater

Saving Iceland

What a surprise! After five years of listening to news of delays, accidents, deaths and so on at the Kárahnjúkar worksite, who would ever have imagined that there was something strange about Landsvirkjun’s portrayal of the whole affair?

In Morgunblaðið on the 28th of November Völundur Jóhannesson, tourist industry pioneer in the east of Iceland, spoke about Töfrafoss (the magic waterfall) dissappearing under Hálslón. Read More

Update: check out the new ‘Potatoes for Heavy Industry’ film on YouTube. [In Icelandic and English]

On Saturday nine ‘jólasveinar’ wandered into the Hellisheiði Powerplant by Mount Hengill, expressing their opposition to the rise of heavy industry and other nature devastating activities in Iceland, as well as solidarity with human nature conservationists. (The jolasveinar are 13 Icelandic santas, born of a child-eating troll mother, who descend from the mountains in the days before christmas to sneak through the houses, stealing, teasing and causing mischief.) Read More