Time has changed Jökulsárlón, the glacial lagoon located in South-East Iceland. When the James Bond film A View to a Kill was filmed there in the summer of 1984, the film crew needed to sail across the icy waters. Locals set up boat tours, which in turn lived beyond the film and are to this day among the most popular tourist attractions.
As can be seen in Stöð 2‘s report, the lagoon itself contains a lot more water, and the ice is much smaller. Today it is the deepest lake in Iceland.
Up until the year 1933, the nearby Breiðamerkurjökull glacier reached all the way to the ocean until it began to melt at a rapid pace. This is when the lagoon itself began to emerge.
According to geologist Oddur Sigurðsson, Breiðamerkurjökull shortens by roughly a hundred meters every year. This isn‘t mainly due to global warming, however. The ocean flows into Jökulsárlón, which contains warmer waters that increase the melting process by twofold.
Filming movies such as James Bond in Iceland has a positive influence on the nation’s tourism industry. According to Regína Hreinsdóttir, a ranger at Skaftafell, a number of tourists visit locations such as Jökulsárlón just to see them with their own eyes. “We’ve noticed that this is a different group of people from our regular tourists.”
