The little country that could

At first, most of the country appeared to be behind the dam and smelter that would save the east—it would be good for Iceland, progressive, modern. As far as Icelanders are concerned, Iceland is the greatest country on Earth and everything Icelandic is the best. “We are like Tarzan, a proud island nation,” remarked a man who directs a whale museum. They pride themselves on the sagas, the absorbing, rambling, medieval narratives of early Norse and Icelandic society that are generally considered among the Middle Ages’ finest literature; a Nobel laureate for literature (Halldór Laxness in 1955); three Miss Worlds; four climbers of Everest; the oldest parliament extant; and the world’s first democratically elected female president, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who served for 16 years before she’d had enough.

In any event, the national power company was spending 1.5 billion dollars on the hydroelectric part of the dam-and-smelter project, most of it borrowed from international banks—the biggest construction investment little Iceland had ever undertaken and probably ever would. The energy expected to be generated annually (4,600 gigawatt-hours) was about half what the entire nation was then using, and the scale of it was intoxicating: a huge tangle of dams, tunnels, power stations, and high-tension lines, including one rock-and-gravel dam 650 feet high.

All this to service the single aluminum smelter being built on the other side of the country from Reykjavík, in the eastern fjord town of Reyðarfjörður, which is pronounced something like “radar-f ’your-dur.” There’s an unremarkable mountain out there named Kárahnjúkar, and that’s where they got the name for what they were doing: the Kárahnjúkar Hydroelectric Project. You say it “KAR-en-yoo-kar.”

As the project progressed, it gradually became clear that Kárahnjúkar was bigger than anyone had imagined. Even Jóhann Kröyer, project manager for the dams and tunnels, remarked over dinner at a work-site canteen: “I think maybe people didn’t realize how huge this project is.”

But as the months passed, a growing and significant minority did realize it, and a kind of national family feud erupted—ostensibly framed around the irreversible impact on the land of the gigantic dam, the blocking of two glacial rivers, and the resultant flooding of the highland wilderness for the reservoir. Iceland had obtained an exemption from the Kyoto Protocol pollution limits, which would expire in 2012, adding an element of urgency, and future smelters and expansions were on the drawing board. Was the government going to take one of the world’s cleanest countries and offer it up as a dumping ground for heavy industry?

Did the people really want this—did they even understand what it meant?