40 years since Laxá Dam was sabotaged, Iceland

Yes­ter­day, August 25th, 300 peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed that 40 years ago, peo­ple opposed to the build­ing of dams in Laxá in Mývatnssveit, sab­o­taged a
small­er dam that had already been built.

The local peo­ple had opposed this project through legal means but it did not seem to be work­ing. August 25th 1970, most of them were in a funer­al, where the rumour was spread amongst peo­ple – the dam was going to be sab­o­taged. The orig­i­nal plan was to destroy it with tools but short­ly after the work start­ed, peo­ple real­ized they would need some­thing stronger. They knew of dyna­mite, owned by the ener­gy com­pa­ny
Laxávirkjun… so, what a bet­ter way to use that dyna­mite!? “We bor­rowed it” was the answer of one of the bombers, in the evening news yes­ter­day.

More then 120 peo­ple claimed their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sab­o­tage – 65 of them were lat­er sen­tenced to prison on pro­ba­tion.

Yes­ter­day, a memo­r­i­al stat­ue was put up by the riv­er, where the dam used to stand. The local church choir sang some songs and speech­es were held. The sab­o­tage is remem­bered as a very impor­tant event in Ice­land’s his­to­ry
of nature con­ser­va­tion.

Not every­body agrees with this; Jakob Björns­son, ex-ener­gy direc­tor of Ice­land, said that the cel­e­bra­tion is shame­ful. Well, fuck him!

Here is a video from the evening news, show­ing pho­tos from the day of the sab­o­tage: http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4498095/2010/08/25/14