What is a responsible tourist in this day and age? And is there such a thing?

Text: Tina Lam, webeditor

Photo: Tony Nguyen

On our last day in Iceland they held a funeral for the glacier Ok. Cause of death: climate change. They made a plaque to commemorate it. On it was a letter to the future, not as much a warning because we had plenty of them – but rather as a sombre reminder that this will not be the last one to cave under due to a warmer planet. The number 415 ppm CO2 was carved on the bottom of the plaque. It was the record level of carbon dioxide measured in the atmosphere last May. This was a national occasion; many people took the hike up to where the glacier used to be. The prime minister was there and international guests as well as natives. Iceland’s most renowned author Andri Snær Magnusson held a eulogy. Much of Magnusson’s authorship addresses environmental issues from the perspective of someone who has an intimate relation to nature and the landscapes through his ancestors.

I have never been to a more stunning place. Perhaps it was the other-worldly landscapes, or the joy of not seeing any humans for days. Or was it the pure simplicity of the whole trip that left an impression? Simplicity as in the act of just staring and listening to a waterfall or the ever-lasting excitement of seeing an animal roam freely. Simplicity as in the absence of man-made distractions such as screens, sounds from loud speakers and pushy advertisements. Perhaps it made the dichotomy of my urban lifestyle so obvious, that I somehow was not aware of this acute need to set the dial on pause for a while and look at this natural landscape until it was in front of me.

While this was a trip to remember, the news about the funeral left a bitter taste. An afterthought that has been lingering around since the last few vacations. How does one navigate between supporting a place versus destroying it? Of course we made sure to respect the nature and landscape wherever we went while also respecting the people that lived there. No littering, no stacking of rocks, no AirBnB, no American food chains- and we made sure to support local businesses. Were we really any better than the crowds of people jammed inside those big buses? Those who we sneered at because they were loud and littering wherever they went, those who only wanted to take that one nice photo for their Gram and then leave for the next photo op?

Somewhere between Vik and Kirkjubæjarklaustur

At the end of the day we all flew to Iceland to see the authentic. That’s what we all paid to see, but what is left of the authentic when the industry is trying to accommodate for people like us by making things too accessible and neglecting the very things we came there to see? And what about our responsibilities as tourists? The death of Ok demonstrates how growth is destroying very things we desire. In turn, our increased wealth is facilitating the destruction of the authentic experiences we are so willing to pay for.