The Systemic Risk of COVID-19 in Small Remote Communities: A Case Study from Iceland

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unforeseen and catastrophic crisis, with decision-makers the world over forced to implement strategies to limit its incidence below levels that would overwhelm healthcare systems. Due to its multifaceted and multi-scale implications, the COVID-19 pandemic exemplified the system nature of risk, severely affecting not only discrete components of socio-economic systems but also challenging the functioning of the entire system. This chapter draws on the findings of 42 semi-structured interviews with local community actors in the Westfjords of Iceland, focusing on a group of isolated towns and villages in and around Ísafjörður, the de facto regional capital. A local community crisis and risk management framework was utilised to evaluate the impacts of COVID-19 on actors within these communities and how these were mitigated through various interventions. The interviewees affirmed that in the earliest phase of the pandemic, the healthcare system in the Westfjords came close to collapse, with a severe outbreak leading to the need for additional workers to fly in to serve a local nursing home. At the same time, there were lengthy periods of isolation for many residents as national restrictions were imposed, and the absence of a local quarantine hotel also led considerable strain being placed on housing, which was already in limited supply in the area. Despite this, the interviews revealed that the resilience of the communities was strong, underpinned greatly by closeness to nature and previous experiences of natural disasters in the Westfjords and dealing with the complexities of living in remote, isolated settlements. A flexible approach to local governance and rapid responsiveness to new restrictions imposed nationally helped to prevent a systemic risk crisis for the region.