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Working Efra Sel: Change on a Family Farm in Iceland
| Article
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10642 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1993 |
3,153 Words |
| Author
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E. Paul Durrenberger
E. Paul Durrenberger is professor of anthropology at Penn
State University. |
In the summer of 1985, my wife, Dorothy, and I both wanted to be in a context where we would hear and speak only Icelandic. One of my students at the University of Iceland, named Hjorleifur, volunteered that his aunt Asta Gudny and her husband, Halldor, might be willing to put up with our attempts to speak Icelandic and take us on as helpers on their farm, Efra Sel.
In the intervening summers we have returned several times to this farm. By lending a hand where we could, we have learned about the farm's day-to-day operations and witnessed firsthand a number of adaptions to changing circumstances. Some of these changes had to do with Iceland's national economy and consumption patterns, some with changes in agricultural policy, and some with the demands of world markets.
An example of such change followed our first visit. Demand for fox and mink furs dropped in the late 1980s. When the world price plummeted, those Icelandic farmers who were raising fur animals had to determine whether or not it was worth their effort and expense to continue. Halldor and Asta Gudny struggled with raising foxes and mink for several years. (We helped them outfit two barns with cages in 1985.) They participated in a cooperative that provided food for the animals at farms in the area. Every winter they would prepare the skins and sell them to Scandinavian dealers. The market was uneven at best. Finally, Halldor and Asta Gudny decided that the cost of feed and the intensive labor involved in breeding and caring for the animals and preparing their skins meant that raising mink was no longer cost effective.
Farmland to summer houses
Efra Sel is located near Fludir, a small crossroads town in southern Iceland that serves the surrounding countryside with a school, bank, community center, swimming pool, and convenience store/filling station. Reykjavik, Iceland's capital and only really big city is about ninety kilometers away. More than 128,000 of Iceland's population of 360,000 live in the city.
The farm sits in a patchwork valley dotted with the public buildings and houses of Fludir, an airstrip, the single road that connects all the farms, the ever-increasing areas of arable land, and the greenhouses--heated by thermal springs--used to grow vegetables. But what distinguishes Efra Sel from the other farms is its golf course.
When Asta Gudny's brother Helgi left the
...
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