The Icelandic Pledge

Before you go off on your dream vacation in Iceland, take the Icelandic pledge and be a responsible tourist.

When you have been researching Iceland for your next holiday destination, you are bound to have bumped into articles of tourists here behaving, well, not so well.  The latest incidents is for example some people ripping up moss (that takes decades to grow), to “write” so words on a mountain slope. This is nothing but pure vandalism.  It took 10 people to work steadily for 3 days to repair these damages.  The latest incident took place a few days ago when 9 American tourist in motor homes decided that they want lamb for dinner and consequently went out and chased a little lamb and killed it. Fortunately, these people were caught and fined.

It’s fortunate that those people are few and far between but they are many enough for the good people at “Inspired by Iceland” to come up with a strategy to encourage and inspire our guests to behave better, to respect nature and other people while driving round the country.  Their program is called “The Icelandic Pledge”.  The only thing you have to do is to take the pledge and keep your word.  This is what you pledge to do:

Take the Icelandic Pledge

I PLEDGE TO BE A RESPONSIBLE TOURIST.

WHEN I EXPLORE NEW PLACES,
I WILL LEAVE THEM AS I FOUND THEM.

I WILL TAKE PHOTOS TO DIE FOR,
WITHOUT DYING FOR THEM.

I WILL FOLLOW THE ROAD INTO THE UNKNOWN,
BUT NEVER VENTURE OFF THE ROAD.

AND I WILL ONLY PARK WHERE I AM SUPPOSED TO.

WHEN I SLEEP OUT UNDER THE STARS,
I’LL STAY WITHIN A CAMPSITE.

AND WHEN NATURE CALLS,
I WON’T ANSWER THE CALL ON NATURE.

I WILL BE PREPARED FOR ALL WEATHERS,
ALL POSSIBILITIES AND ALL ADVENTURES.

You can take the pledge here!  At our offices you can have a pamphlet with the pledge in English, German, French and Chinese. You can also download it here below:

The Icelandic Pledge in English
The Icelandic pledge in German - Das isländische Versprechen
The Icelandic Pledge in French - L'engagement islandais
The Icelandic Pledge in Chinese - 冰岛承诺

Being a tourist in a foreign country is a luxury and comes with responsibilities we all have to abide, also here in Iceland.  Nobody wants to explore a new country, only to find tracks and trash from others.  We all are fully aware that Iceland hasn’t been able to build up the infrastructure with the wave of tourists, like with rest stops along the Ring road with bathrooms and trash cans but that is not a reason to misbehave.  Doing “number 2” in inappropriate places seems to land in the news here with regular intervals like last week when a middle aged couple decided to do their number 2’s in downtown Reykjavik, in a bush. Who does that? We know most of you would never do that. Would these people do that in their hometown? Most likely not so why here? We don’t know.

Our colleagues at Rent.is has taken the pledge a step further. If you take part of their CamperStories competition when you are renting a camper van. Take the pledge, send them proof (like a screenshot of the confirmation) together with your story and they will add the Icelandic pledge logo to the cover photo for your story.

Let’s all take a stand, take the pledge and preserve the Icelandic nature, keep everyone safe so we all can have fantastic vacations, wherever in the world we go!

Happy travels!  #IcelandicPledge

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