The camper rental KúKú Campers has found itself at the centre of a controversy over some of the “advice” they have been offering to their customers. Some local guides argue the company encourages illegal or immoral activity, for example suggesting to visitors they can fish for free in any river or lake.
Encouraging illegal fishing?
The company, which rents budget camper vans which permit customers to drive around and sleep in the car, offer their customers various advice on how to behave and what to do in Iceland. Some of the advice seems to encourage poaching or illegal fishing:
As a mesure to keep travelers alive in Iceland, there is a law here that allows anyone to eat anything of any goverment land property. You can´t take anything with you but you can eat as you want. We´ve challenged many of our customers to live off nature for a week. … We know you are fed up with the urban life and want a genuinely natural experience. No problem, rent our KúKú van or tent along with a BBQ set and you can avoid super market shopping for as long as you want.
Taken at face value this advice seems to suggest KúKú Campers is encouraging their customers to catch fish in lakes or rivers without buying fishing permits, based on some questionable legal advice.
Read more: There is no continuity to the landscape; it is all drama, all punctuation marks
A screenshot of this advice found its way to a local Facebook group dedicated to discussions within the Icelandic tourism industry, where it caused an immediate firestorm of criticism and outrage. Local media also picked the story up, contacting landowners and guides who stated that since you always needed a fishing permit to fish in lakes and rivers, the company was obviously encouraging its customers to break the law.
Fishing without a fishing permit is illegal
A guide in the salmon fishing river Langá in West Iceland, one of the best and most expensive salmon fishing rivers in Iceland, told the local news site visir.is that in 2015 he had on four occasions had to stop travellers driving KúKú Camper cars who thought they could fish in the river. In an interview with another local news site, stundin.is he added that in every case he had stopped travellers, they had responded well when they were told they could not fish without a permit. However, he had heard of cases where foreign travellers had refused to listen, stubbornly continuing to fish without a permit, thus breaking the law.
Needless to say, you need a permit to fish in any lake or river in Iceland. It is also illegal to fish near the mouth of rivers where they enter into the ocean. However, it is legal to fish in the sea, if you stand by the coast or on a pier.
Tongue-in-cheek “advice”
Steinarr Lár, one of the owners of KúKú Campers told Iceland Insider the “advice” on the page is obviously tongue-in-cheek: “People who take all the advice on our page at face value need to have their sense of humour examined. It’s obviously all in jest.” In fact, the entire web page of KúKú Campers is very light-hearted, making subtle fun of Iceland and Icelanders as well as tourists and tourism. For example, when prospective customers click on the “Golf Map” they get this message “There is no Golf map, Golf is for losers who can't get results in real sports!“
Obviously, this is not to be taken too seriously, Steinarr told us:
“I had spent ten years of my life in a suit and a tie, so when we set up this company we wanted to have some fun. The text on the web-page reflects that! A lot of the text on the page was actually written when we founded the company, half-jokingly, and has remained there since then. Perhaps we need to take a closer look at some of this stuff now. We were just making a joke about the 27th paragraph of the conservation law, which states that you can eat berries and other edible plants on public lands, we were not trying to encourage illegal activity!”
Steinarr points out that when the web page was written the company had a handful of cars, now there are more than 200 vehicles in its fleet. “The business has changed since we started out, and we might need to review some of the text, especially if people are taking some of these things too literally.”
He also points out that although you can rent a grill with the car the company has never rented fishing poles.
“It was something we were thinking about when we started out, but we have never actually provided customers with fishing gear, so it’s absolutely clear we have never encouraged anyone to break the law!”
The camper rental KúKú Campers has found itself at the centre of a controversy over some of the “advice” they have been offering to their customers. Some local guides argue the company encourages illegal or immoral activity, for example suggesting to visitors they can fish for free in any river or lake.
Encouraging illegal fishing?
The company, which rents budget camper vans which permit customers to drive around and sleep in the car, offer their customers various advice on how to behave and what to do in Iceland. Some of the advice seems to encourage poaching or illegal fishing:
As a mesure to keep travelers alive in Iceland, there is a law here that allows anyone to eat anything of any goverment land property. You can´t take anything with you but you can eat as you want. We´ve challenged many of our customers to live off nature for a week. … We know you are fed up with the urban life and want a genuinely natural experience. No problem, rent our KúKú van or tent along with a BBQ set and you can avoid super market shopping for as long as you want.
Taken at face value this advice seems to suggest KúKú Campers is encouraging their customers to catch fish in lakes or rivers without buying fishing permits, based on some questionable legal advice.
Read more: There is no continuity to the landscape; it is all drama, all punctuation marks
A screenshot of this advice found its way to a local Facebook group dedicated to discussions within the Icelandic tourism industry, where it caused an immediate firestorm of criticism and outrage. Local media also picked the story up, contacting landowners and guides who stated that since you always needed a fishing permit to fish in lakes and rivers, the company was obviously encouraging its customers to break the law.
Fishing without a fishing permit is illegal
A guide in the salmon fishing river Langá in West Iceland, one of the best and most expensive salmon fishing rivers in Iceland, told the local news site visir.is that in 2015 he had on four occasions had to stop travellers driving KúKú Camper cars who thought they could fish in the river. In an interview with another local news site, stundin.is he added that in every case he had stopped travellers, they had responded well when they were told they could not fish without a permit. However, he had heard of cases where foreign travellers had refused to listen, stubbornly continuing to fish without a permit, thus breaking the law.
Needless to say, you need a permit to fish in any lake or river in Iceland. It is also illegal to fish near the mouth of rivers where they enter into the ocean. However, it is legal to fish in the sea, if you stand by the coast or on a pier.
Tongue-in-cheek “advice”
Steinarr Lár, one of the owners of KúKú Campers told Iceland Insider the “advice” on the page is obviously tongue-in-cheek: “People who take all the advice on our page at face value need to have their sense of humour examined. It’s obviously all in jest.” In fact, the entire web page of KúKú Campers is very light-hearted, making subtle fun of Iceland and Icelanders as well as tourists and tourism. For example, when prospective customers click on the “Golf Map” they get this message “There is no Golf map, Golf is for losers who can't get results in real sports!“
Obviously, this is not to be taken too seriously, Steinarr told us:
“I had spent ten years of my life in a suit and a tie, so when we set up this company we wanted to have some fun. The text on the web-page reflects that! A lot of the text on the page was actually written when we founded the company, half-jokingly, and has remained there since then. Perhaps we need to take a closer look at some of this stuff now. We were just making a joke about the 27th paragraph of the conservation law, which states that you can eat berries and other edible plants on public lands, we were not trying to encourage illegal activity!”
Steinarr points out that when the web page was written the company had a handful of cars, now there are more than 200 vehicles in its fleet. “The business has changed since we started out, and we might need to review some of the text, especially if people are taking some of these things too literally.”
He also points out that although you can rent a grill with the car the company has never rented fishing poles.
“It was something we were thinking about when we started out, but we have never actually provided customers with fishing gear, so it’s absolutely clear we have never encouraged anyone to break the law!”
