In 2019, approximately 2 million tourists visited Iceland, a country with a population of 366,425 (2020). In a place of such natural beauty and so few people, visitors can travel the whole country and interact only minimally with Icelanders. Instead, for many recent tourists, hashtagging and posting "Instagrammable" snapshots has become a focus of their travel. Thousands of images of the same glaciers and volcanos ricochet within the closed loop of Instagram, creating a repetitive visual world.
Instaland disrupts this world by embedding portraits of Icelanders within it. Using the IG profile @iceland_instaland, this digital intervention combines common hashtags such as "#icelandadventure" with hashtags of names, information and impressions drawn from the interactions that were had as each portrait was taken. In linking these elements together, Instaland celebrates the people who spend their lives within the incredible beauty of the land, as opposed to those who spend a short time passing through it.
