Tell me about it. Painfully relatable right now.

On a summer afternoon at Iceland’s Skogafoss waterfall, the path to the viewpoint can feel more like a waiting room than a hike. Visitors wait their turn for photos, tour buses idle nearby and the sheer volume of people is hard to ignore.
Scenes like this have become a familiar part of travel in Iceland, where visitor numbers surged from fewer than 500,000 a year before 2010 to well over two million today.

A 100% how I think about it, too... give the plebs and the masses level-1, leave the goodies for the rest of us:

The classic short Iceland trip still works: Reykjavik, the Golden Circle, the Blue Lagoon or another geothermal spa, and a south coast day trip. For first-time visitors, that itinerary offers a powerful introduction, but it is also the most crowded version of Iceland.

Brought up considerations of (over?)tourismBrought up considerations of (over?)tourism

On the one hand, these stunning natural landscapes belong to everyone and nobody. I'm as much a foreigner to these lands (well, maybe slightly less) than the camera-wielding bus tours shuttled there on a day tour. And backtrack a little over a thousand years, no human was here. So it's kind of our metaphysical responsibility in life to make them accessible to others.

Plus, these people bring the dough. Iceland's economy (and the livelihood on which its people live good lives) is, largely speaking, aluminum smelting plus fishery plus tourism.

As an econ aside: of those, there's heavy political opposition to (more) smelters, so that's a stagnant industry, and the fishery is strictly capped via politically imposed quota system so there's no growth there. No wonder, basically, that all this hedge-fund of a country (pension fund assets are about 2x GDP, compared to Norway's gigantum Oljefond at 4x GDP) has done is blow up their housing market... and bring a bunch of rich tourists to see wonderful waterfalls.

On the other hand, it's fucking annoying to tread between camera-wielding Asians (sorry) or noisy Americans (def not sorry) just to take in the breathtaking views of some of our falls. Nobody comes here with enough reverence or respect... so what's a devotee supposed to do?!

For years, that growth was not just welcomed, but actively encouraged. Tourism helped drive Iceland’s economic recovery after the 2008 financial crisis and quickly became one of the country’s most important industries. But as the crowds grew, so did the pressure.
Now, while Iceland’s tourism boom shows little sign of disappearing, the country is shifting its approach. The focus is no longer on attracting ever greater numbers of visitors, but on managing where they go, how they travel and the impact they leave behind.

The visitor counts have plateaued -- reasonable, given how expensive it is and all the influencers and their hang-abouts have already been -- but still remain in the millions (about 6x the country population, spread out across the year but heavily in the mild-ish summer months).

The most visible change is practical rather than philosophical. Popular natural attractions increasingly rely on improved parking, marked paths, safety infrastructure and visitor flow management.

For a while there, we saw heavier emphasis on rich-af, exclusive, luxury-type tourism: that's fewer people and less crowds but in total about the same money... _Ca-ching!_

OK; sure:

The lesson here is not to avoid Iceland. It is to plan with flexibility. The best Iceland trip today is not necessarily the one that covers the most ground or collects the most famous photos. It is the one that respects distance, weather, local communities and the fragile nature of the places being visited. Its tourism boom is not over, but the era of treating Iceland as a quick, easy checklist to complete should be.

also, wth... editors AI-generated a waterfall?? (The caption suggests it's Skógafoss; it's not.)