
The Burning Man of Birding: Inside Iceland's Puffin Festival - nkurz
https://www.audubon.org/magazine/november-december-2015/the-burning-man-birding-inside
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valdiorn
extremely disingenuous title. I'm an Icelander, and please note the following
facts:

* This festival has very little to do with puffins, it just happens to take place in a location where they live. In fact, this is the first time I've ever seen the two tied together.

* There's nothing artistic about this festival, so don't even try to compare it to Burning Man - It's a drink-until-you-drop hillbilly event, with some unprotected sex and possibly some rape added on top, in a cold tent. Local media has always loved the festival, as they get to publish a mix of feel-good stories about how the people are having fun, followed by the current rape and assault count.

* Vestmannaeyjar is a windy little shithole island (sorry folk fra Vestmannaeyjum, en tetta er satt :) ... it's pretty, though.

If you like being drunk, in a tent, singing folk songs in a wet wool sweater
while having sex with passed out drunk chicks, this is totally your scene.

PS: Puffins are bullshit to sell tourists. they only come up in the context of
tourism. There's a very, very small set of people who eat or hunt puffin in
iceland. Granted, a lot of that small subset lives in Vestmannaeyjar.

This has been a reality check from Iceland.

~~~
feelgood
* Years ago the festival had more ties with puffins when they were served in the tents. This is very hard to do today because of prices and changing democratic as the older people are more into eating puffin. But I recommend it if you can get your hands on it, it is very good.

* I agree its not like Burning Man but totally has its own atmosphere which is unique to it. There is a lot of drinking as many teenagers go there for an escape to drink and have fun. And as in any big festival there is a mixed bag of apples who come there to ruin it for everyone. This is not something that is unique to this festival in my experience.

* I wouldn't call it a shithole by any means. It's like any other fishing village in Iceland in a beautiful unique surrounding.

I don't know why you are getting up in arms how this is represented. But this
is a festival that has diffidently evolved through the years with the huge
increase in people attending it is hard to keep that local friendly atmosphere
when almost 6% of the country is there.

Puffins have been something that people from Vestmanneyjar eat and of course
that is something that characterizes the place and is brought up when tourists
visit.

It's like saying Oktoberfest is bullshit because now they tourists who visit.

~~~
valdiorn
>I don't know why you are getting up in arms how this is represented

Because for decades it has, for some obscure reason, been romanticized and
presented as "good", while reality is more blunt. A large part of the
partygoers are underage or young people while there is _extremely_ excessive
drinking, it's notorious for being violent, and riddled with sexual assaults.

I don't know if you're an Icelander or not, but looking at Thjodhatid from the
inside, and looking at its history for the last 100 years or however long its
been going, it may look a lot different.

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arethuza
Puffins are definitely a tourist attraction here in Scotland - so I was pretty
appalled at the idea of people eating them but it turns out that they were
eaten here:

[http://scottishfood.tumblr.com/post/9415330365/the-puffin-
on...](http://scottishfood.tumblr.com/post/9415330365/the-puffin-once-an-
important-source-of)

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splitbrain
We took a birdwatching tour in Iceland a few years ago. IIRC they told us that
Puffins don't taste especially good and that really only the 2 to 3 year old
ones are close to edible at all. Puffins were a poor men's food.

