" Kárahnjúkar!? It’s only gravel and sand.”
Siv Friðleifsdóttir, ex-Minister of Environment

HELP! NATURE UNDER ATTACK!
STOP THEM KILLING ICELAND!
Stop the Icelandic government and arms manufacturers Alcoa, Alcan and Century Aluminum destroying Europe’s largest remaining wilderness for aluminium plants! Be aware of the ‘master plan’ to ‘develop’ Iceland’s beautiful nature into a heavy industry hell servicing the greed of aluminium corporations! It has already started. A whole world is being drowned right now in the eastern Icelandic highlands. But the Kárahnjúkar dam project is only the beginning of a much wider destruction. These multinational vandals - willingly helped by the Icelandic government - are about to produce an environmental catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. It is not too late to stop all the other energy projects that are in the pipeline and drive heavy industry out of Iceland!

This S.O.S. introduces the issues, industrial plans and protests in Iceland. Updated March 2008

A summer of International dissent and action against Heavy Industry - swarming around Iceland from the 12th of July 2008! Watch this space for new updates on the next direct action camp to save the largest remaining wilderness in Europe.

Saving Iceland
8 May 2008

Nine farmers and landowners by Thjorsa River (Þjórsá) have now written a letter to Landsvirkjun, the national energy company, and the Ministries of Finance, Environment and Industry, where they announce that they will not take part in any further discussions about use of their land for a dam in Urridafoss waterfall.

Saving Iceland
20 April 2008

Fréttin á íslensku

On Monday 21st April 2008 Saving Iceland Founder, Olafur Pall Sigurdson, will appear before the District Court of East Iceland charged with property damage. The charge relates to an incident at Snæfell Mountain protest camp in the end of July 2006.

All the civilian witnesses recount that a police 4x4 was deliberately driven into Sigurdsson at a potentially fatal speed. The driver, officer 8716 Arinbjorn Snorrason, a high ranking officer in charge of operations at Kárahnjúkar, also attempted to run over other protestors on multiple occasions that same summer, at Lindur (now submerged location of a SI action camp) and at an action on Desjarárstífla dam construction site.

Click here for a video from the demonstration

A letter from our friends in Switzerland
GENEVA 26TH MARCH 2008

Motivated by other actions that have taken place all over Europe against heavy industry and by the inspiring presentations of Saving Iceland made by Icelandic activists this winter in Switzerland, we organised a demonstration, creating a new group of this international campaign in Geneva.

Construction of this beauty now started

20th March 08

After months of confusing and conflicting information in the media, the local authorities of Reykjanesbær and Garður have issued a building permit for the Nordurál smelter at Helguvík, on the Reykjanes peninsula. Bulldozers are already flattening the earth at the proposed site, despite the fact that any building here is illegal under Icelandic law.

Saving Iceland
Friday March 14th 2008

Tilkynningin er á íslensku hér

This morning Saving Iceland built a small dam in front of Landsvirkjun's office entrance so the workers had either to step over the dam to get inside or use a different entrance. With this peaceful demonstration Saving Iceland wanted to protest upcoming three dams that Landsvirkjun, the national energy company, hopes to build in lower Þjórsá river (pronounced 'Thjorsa'). At the same time SI sends support and solidarity to all the people fighting this destruction.

Greetings from the Aluminium Banana Republic

Saving Iceland
7 March 2008

Not that this should be much of a surprise but finally its official that the cost estimates of Landsvirkjun, the National Power Company, were false and that the numerous economists and even the National Planning Agency, who criticized Landsvirkjun for massaging their economic data were dead right.

March 2nd 2008

Last Tuesday, Verne Holdings, a joint venture by General Catalyst and Novator, signed a 20 billion Icelandic krónur (306 millions USD) agreement with Landsvirkjun, the National Energy Company, Farice and Keflavík Airport Development Corporation on establishing a data center by Keflavík International Airport.

Green stuffed shirts, really?!

According to the contract Landsvirkjun will be providing electricity for the data center, around 25 MW per year and the energy is supposed to come from Landsvirkjun´s three planned dams in Þjórsá river. These 25 MW are less then 10 percent of what Landsvirkjun plans to create with the Þjórsá dams.

The Gospel of Corruption?

February 29th 2008

The worlds third biggest Aluminium corporation, ALCOA is being sued for at least $1 Billion by a Bahraini metals company. Alba (the 10th largest Aliminium producer in the world) claims 'massive, outrageous fraud' perpetrated by ALCOA, who bribed officials in an enormous fraudulent scam to overcharge Alba for Alumina by $65 million per year for 15 years.

The case was held in Pittsburgh federal court on the 27th February. Experts claim an out of court settlement is likely as this could be very embarrassing for ALCOA if it is taken to trial. ALCOA has an exceedingly poor track record with environmental disasters, human rights abuses and corruption and will be very keen to keep its vulnerable insides out of the public eye.

The people of Iceland awaken to a stark choice: exploit a wealth of "clean" energy or keep their landscape pristine. *

By Marguerite Del Giudice
Photograph by Jonas Bendiksen

Aldeyjarfoss in Skjálfandafljót river, now targeted by ALCOA for a
second smelter near Húsavík.

One of the main things to understand about Iceland is how tiny the population is and what it can be like to live here because of that. There’s the feeling that everybody on this isolated subarctic island knows just about everybody else, or at least can be associated (through family, friends, neighborhood, profession, political party, or school) by no more than one degree of separation. Imagine a country of 310,000 people, with most of them jammed in and around Reykjavík—a hip European capital known for its dimly lit coffeehouses, live music, and hard-drinking nightlife. That’s where all the good jobs are, and the chances of running into somebody you know are so high that it’s hard, as one commentator mused, to have a love affair without getting caught.

Saving Iceland
Brussels
11 February 2008

This text was distributed by activists whilst disrupting this conference.

GREENWASH CONFERENCE OF METALS INDUSTRY

The conference Metals: Energy, Emissions and the Environment (11&12/02/2008 in Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Brussels) is a fine example of pure greenwash.

A talk which opened a panel discussion at the 'Reykjavikur Akademia' with the topic 'What are the Fundamental Values of Society' 20 November 2007. Panelists included Reykjavik Chief of Police Stefán Eiríksson, historian and Left Green MP Guðfríður Lilja Grétarsdóttir and philosopher Viðar Thorsteinsson.

Erindið í íslenskri þýðingu.

For those of you who don´t already know me, my name is Miriam Rose, and I am an activist and environmental scientist from the UK. I have been asked to speak today on my experience of the basic values of Icelandic society, based on an interview I did on Kastljos in October, after I was threatened with deportation from Iceland for my part in actions against the heavy industry policy of your government. The letter of requested deportation which I received explained that I may be expelled from Iceland for a minimum of three years as my behavior constitutes a 'threat to the fundamental values of society'.

Saving Iceland
26 October

Dettifoss, Europe's most powerful waterfall

In an interview on the radio program 'Spegillinn' on 23 October geophysicist Páll Einarsson said that an eruption in Upptyppingar would probably disrupt the flow of the immense glacial river Jökulsá á Fjöllum. Upptyppingar volcano lies on the bank of Jökulsá á Fjöllum. Einarsson said that the first effects of the eruption would be that the river would evaporate from the heat of the lava. Running lava would block the course of the river so that when the river would materialize again it would collect in a lake that would then overflow with unknown consequences.