Use/Re-use

So I've been thinking about Skagastrond and the economy of isolated communities, a strong part of Iceland's history. As it's an island nation far from everything else, Icelanders are used to being resourceful and they are attentive to staying connected. There's wifi almost everywhere, even in remote places where you would think it was impossible, and it's a very tech-savvy country. At the same time, almost everything here comes from somewhere else, often at great expense.

There are very few trees, but it was not always that way. Early settlers cut the trees for fuel and building materials, and overgrazing by sheep took care of returning seedlings. The landscape is so bare that it is hard to imagine the forests that were once here. I learned in my visit to the Skogar Folk Museum that villagers developed their own "mark", kind of like a brand, to mark driftwood so they could come back to claim it later, as it was a particularly precious resource. There were some houses built entirely of driftwood, but very few remain. The materials of choice now seem to be corrugated metal and stucco, often painted in vivid colors.

In Skagastrond as in other towns, I have begun to notice an economy of repair and re-use in evidence. If a door is damaged, in the US we would probably go off to Home Depot and buy a new one, most likely taking the old one to a landfill. Here they patch it instead, so preservation of resources takes precedence sometimes over the public face of things. Over time some buildings develop a patchwork quality that can be quite beautiful in color and texture, a kind of wabi-sabi of re-use. Our throw-away, everything-new, give-me-hundreds-of-choices culture could learn a lot from this.

When one of the artists wanted to do some oil painting, he needed a space where the smell would not bother the other artists. He worked with some folks from the town and in a few days a little old house appeared behind the studio! It is now his painting house...

spare parts

The painting house...

An artist re-using found materials