There is fury in a European country where locals blame tourists for “eating the city from the inside”.
Iceland sees thousands of visitors a year – 1.7 million in 2022 – but the impact of tourism is changing the country’s cities.
Music venues in the county’s capital, Reykjavík, are paying the price with numerous spots closing to make way for hotels.
Many, such as Nasa, Sirkus and Faktory, were beloved by locals and even played host to some of Iceland’s biggest musical exports including Björk and Sigur Rós.
“It’s been a theme here since the tourist boom started,” Óli, who worked at now-closed Kex, where artists like The Sonics and Ólafur Arnalds played, told the Guardian.
“Nasa closed because they had to make a hotel in the same building and then it’s been going on. More and more places just stopping.”
The closing of Kex, Óli said, “is the clearest we have seen that tourism is affecting our venue because it is being torn down for more hotel rooms”.
The closing of such venues has led to locals changing their opinions on tourism, feeling visitors are ruining their city’s culture.
Journalist Elías Þórsson said: “People who love downtown Reykjavík and love the cultural scene, they are very unhappy about this.
“Driving out what has made this city what it is – music culture, what made it a cool place. What you end up with is Regent Street (London) everywhere.”
María Rut Reynisdóttir is the director of Iceland Music, a body that promotes the country’s music output and distributes government grants.
She noted that much of Reykjavík’s appeal to both local residents and visiting tourists is dependent on a thriving cultural scene.
“When tourism starts to eat the city from the inside you won’t have that appealing city any more,” Rut Reynisdóttir said. “That’s definitely not something that you want. You don’t want the city to become that we only have tourist shops and hotels.”