Assessing the adaptive resilience of twentieth-century post-industrial fishing landscapes in Siglufjörður, Iceland

Over the last 130 years, the landscapes of northern Iceland’s fishing villages have experienced repeated reconfigurations based on changing technology, cultural developments, and ecological shifts. However, the interconnected nature of these changes and their role in enabling industrial success have not been systematically assessed. This project aimed to evaluate the ecological and cultural histories of the herring industry of northern Iceland vis-à-vis the built environments in Siglufjörður in order to understand how changes in the built environment facilitated resiliency or increased vulnerability in the adaptive cycle through the spatial and temporal analyses of maps and aerial photographs of the landscape. This paper utilises an adaptive cycle framework to better understand how communities responded to disruptions in the fishing industry. Understanding the relationship between the built environment and the adaptive cycles of industrial communities can help illuminate the factors that cause settlements to succeed or fail.