Potatoes to Heavy Industry — Xmas blockade in Iceland with video

24 Decem­ber 2007
On Sat­ur­day nine ‘jólasveinar’ wan­dered into the Hell­isheiði Pow­er­plant by Mount Hengill, express­ing their oppo­si­tion to the rise of heavy indus­try and oth­er nature dev­as­tat­ing activ­i­ties in Ice­land, as well as sol­i­dar­i­ty with human nature con­ser­va­tion­ists. (The jolasveinar are 13 Ice­landic san­tas, born of a child-eat­ing troll moth­er, who descend from the moun­tains in the days before christ­mas to sneak through the hous­es, steal­ing, teas­ing and caus­ing mis­chief.)

Jule Lads action24 Decem­ber 2007
On Sat­ur­day nine ‘jólasveinar’ wan­dered into the Hell­isheiði Pow­er­plant by Mount Hengill, express­ing their oppo­si­tion to the rise of heavy indus­try and oth­er nature dev­as­tat­ing activ­i­ties in Ice­land, as well as sol­i­dar­i­ty with human nature con­ser­va­tion­ists. (The jolasveinar are 13 Ice­landic san­tas, born of a child-eat­ing troll moth­er, who descend from the moun­tains in the days before christ­mas to sneak through the hous­es, steal­ing, teas­ing and caus­ing mis­chief.)

“We decid­ed to take a stroll by there before com­ing to town, and give out rot­ten pota­toes to the naughty indus­tri­al­ists, and maybe a gift or two to the work­ers that do their jobs bad­ly” said Pot­taske­fill (Pot scraper) on behalf of the group. Naughty Ice­landic chil­dren such as these tra­di­tion­al­ly get a rot­ten pota­to in their christ­mas shoe.

–
The Jule Lads, Nordic trolls who’s tra­di­tion pre­ceed Father Christ­mas, descend­ed upon a geot­her­mal pow­er sta­tion which is being enlarged to pow­er the enlarge­ment of an alu­mini­um smelt­ing fac­to­ry by RUSAL/Nordural. Hengill was once a beau­ti­ful moun­tain range, at the edge of a high­ly vol­canic area in Ice­land, a ski resort pep­pered with nat­ur­al hot pools and steam­ing rocks. Now it is noth­ing but a scream­ing fac­to­ry.

The Jule lads join up for a spe­cial direct action with the Sav­ing Ice­land col­lec­tive as they left to town… the video can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfY5Ou31SWE

Please con­sid­er com­ing out to Ice­land for our 2008 action camp, we need all the help from activists we can get. This island is Europe’s last wilder­ness and with huge dams, geot­her­mal pow­er plants, pow­er lines, tar­mac roads, pol­lut­ing fac­to­ries, not to men­tion all the ter­ri­ble affects on the sur­round­ing sea, and a whole host of oth­er forms of destruc­tion.

More pho­tos at:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/1077