Photo credit: Alldor Kolbeins / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via NYTimes.com Excerpt from nytimes.com
“Sometimes it can feel like Iceland is just one big tourist attraction.”
Helga Gudrun, a waiter at a family-owned restaurant in Vik, a scenic village in South Iceland, had just placed a bowl of warm Icelandic lamb soup on the table. Home from college to work the summer season, she was reflecting on the ways tourism had changed the place where she grew up.
Visitors had spurred job growth and helped revitalize the area, but not all tourists follow the rules, Ms. Gudrun said. Farmers have complained about tourists parking on their land and feeding horses without permission. “One horse even died,” she said. And in July, a local paper reported that Vik’s septic system had been overwhelmed by the “sheer number of tourists.”
It hadn’t always been this way. In fact, one event in particular had set it all off.
“I remember the summer everything just — changed,” she said.