How the 2008 Financial Crisis and 2010 Volcano Eruption Led to More People Visiting Iceland Than Ever

Travel vlogger Johnny Harris and his wife travel vlogger Iz Harris visited the breathtaking sites of Iceland for 72 hours. While traveling the beautiful country, Johnny began wondering why an increasing number people have visited Iceland over the past few years. He points out two important events that led to the downfall of the Icelandic GDP, the 2008 worldwide financial crash and the series of eruptions of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. These events brought the country into the public eye as well as making it that much more accessible to tourists.

In 2008 huge crash. The entire world was affected by the meltdown, but Iceland was perhaps hit the hardest of any country. Because of that the currency took a huge hit suddenly your dollar or your euro could stretch a lot further…So the financial meltdown could have started this push for tourism but something happens in 2010 that explodes this trend of ours. …There was just tons of footage and coverage of this volcano in this place …it kind of put Iceland on the map of the global consciousness in a really significant way that it really hadn’t experienced.

The black line is Iceland's population over time, the orange is the number of tourist who come to Iceland each year. I was in Iceland last weekend and made a little video explaining why this line shot up, check it out: https://t.co/pL6QBOM8XK pic.twitter.com/X51pVb4zKT

— Johnny Harris (@johnnywharris) January 25, 2019

The Harris’ did more than just ponder the increasing temporary tourist population. They took in many of the country’s pristine sights during the 72 hours they were there. These sights included the waterfalls, sulfur pools and the black sand beaches. Iz captured all of this in a beautiful video travel log.