VG reports Grindavík remains empty after 2023 disasters

A report by the Norwegian daily VG, cited by Icelandic news site mbl.is, describes Grindavík as silent and empty nearly three years after the natural disasters that transformed the town. Residents are still not allowed to return.

“It is incredibly quiet in Grindavík. The only sound in the town centre is the wind howling between empty houses,” VG writes, saying the silence contrasts sharply with footage broadcast around the world when the volcanic activity was at its height.

VG spoke to Páll Erlingsson, a 60-year-old Grindavík resident who opened his home to the reporter. The house has subsided one metre into the ground. Páll lived there for 20 years, and his son grew up there. When the crisis reached its most serious point, he had only a few hours to leave.

“It is an overwhelming experience. I mean, you do not move, you flee. Everything you knew as your life changed. Everything you considered safe vanished,” Páll said.

It remains uncertain when Grindavík residents will be allowed to return. “Nature is one thing, the authorities are another,” Örn, a caretaker, told VG.

Páll visits his house every two weeks to check its condition and reflect. Nearly three years after the worst phase of the disasters, he still does not know whether he will ever be able to live there again.

“We are simply in limbo, with such an uncertain future,” he said.

VG writes that many Icelanders want to make their own decisions, noting that this was also a central argument when the country rejected negotiations on European Union membership in a recently concluded national referendum. In Grindavík, the newspaper says, the dispute is partly about the same issue: many residents want to return home, while the authorities say no.

Many residents are growing tired of living in temporary accommodation for nearly three years. Meanwhile, their traumatic experience has become a tourist attraction, with visitors arriving to see the destruction stretching from the Blue Lagoon almost to the island’s southern coast, VG writes.

The authorities cannot say whether it is safe for residents to return. The disasters in Grindavík are comparable to only one other event in Iceland, according to VG: the Heimaey eruption of 1973. Reconstruction began after that eruption, and residents of the Westman Islands were gradually able to return home.

VG also spoke to Pétur Pálsson, managing director of Vísir in Grindavík. He said bringing children back would be the key to rebuilding the town.

“If the school does not reopen, the families will not return,” Pétur said, arguing that families themselves should decide whether to return rather than the authorities claiming to protect them nearly three years after the disasters.