Saving Iceland

Join us from 18th July to resist the industrialisation of Europe’s last remaining great wilderness and take direct action against heavy industry!

The Struggle So Far

The campaign to defend Europe’s greatest remaining wilderness continues. For the past four years direct action camps in Iceland during the summer have targeted aluminium smelters, mega-dams and geothermal power plants.

After the terrible destruction caused at Kárahnjúkar and Hengill, it is time to crush the ‘master plan’ that would have seen every single major glacial river dammed, every substantial geothermal field exploited and the construction of aluminium smelters, oil refineries and silicon factories, as well as a significant increase in Iceland’s greenhouse gas emissions.

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This summer Saving Iceland will be converging in Iceland from the 18th July – join us to take action against heavy industry!

Keep watching this space for updates and info point locations and write to us on savingiceland [at] riseup.net to let us know you’re coming!

How to get to Iceland:

The financial crisis has taken its toll on ferry routes in the North Sea, so this summer the only ferry from mainland Europe to Iceland goes from Hanstholm in Denmark to Seyðisfjørður in Eastern Iceland. Go to http://www.smyril-line.com/ for ferry time tables and prices.

From the UK, Iceland Air and British Airways fly from Glasgow and Gatwick to Reykjavik.

What to bring:

Come prepared to live inside a convergence space and to camp. And please remember that even in the summer weather conditions can be harsh in Iceland – good camping gear is essential if you want to stay warm and dry.

From The Reykjavík Grapvine – Dreamland is the result of collaboration between documentary filmmaker Þorfinnur Guðnason and author, playwright and poet Andri Snær Magnason. It is based on the latter’s best selling, award winning 2006 non-fiction book, ‘Dreamland: A self-help manual for a Frightened Nation’ (available in English translation through Amazon.co.uk and at local bookstores). The book stirred a lot of controversy in Iceland, as it shed new light on some of the issues surrounding the conflict between environmental preservation and the build up of heavy industry in Iceland. It furthermore examined the government’s hope to sell cheap energy from hydroelectric power plants in order to place Iceland among the world’s biggest aluminium manufacturers – and why on Earth we’d aspire to that.

The film goes even further, using the full potential of the medium to conjure up a truly chilling vision of recent events. And it’s effective. As we exited a screening of the film, my friend Geiri summarised the experience perfectly, saying: “Most of the time, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or vomit in disgust.” That somehow says it all. A scathing indictment of Iceland’s recent “all in” industrial and environmental policies, Dreamland combines archival news footage, exquisite nature shots and select interviews to achieve its goal of waking Icelanders up to the very real, very serious consequences of selling off some of the last bits of pristine wilderness remaining in Europe. Read More