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[LOOKING FURTHER]

NoN Fund

Aerial close-up of moss-covered lava field cut by pale drainage channels

[the non fund]

One issue at a time, until something changes.

Every North of Normal trip puts money into a fund we do not control the story of. We publish what goes in, what goes out, and who received it. If a year's work fails, that gets published too.

close-up of weathered wood grain used as a texture panel.

By SIGRÚN ÁSGEIRSDÓTTIR

HÖFN Í HORNAFIRÐI

may

A man in a denim shirt holds a green tomato in a greenhouse full of tomato plants

BY ELIN H. JÓNSDÓTTIR

REYKJAVÍK, ICELAND

JUL 2026

Partners and suppliers (74%)

Roughly three quarters of what you pay leaves us almost immediately. It goes to the guides, drivers, hotels, farms, boat operators, kitchens and mountain rescue-trained crews who actually run the days we have written down.

We buy from these partners at net rates — their market rate, less our commission. We do not run a markup on top of a markup. What that means in practice is that the money reaches the operator at close to full value, and that the operator can afford to pay properly.

That last part is not a small thing in Iceland. Wages here are set by collective agreement, not by whatever the market will tolerate. Entry-level pay in tourism under the 2026 agreements sits in the region of ISK 483,000–498,000 a month before overtime, and a guide with glacier or highland qualifications earns well above that. A cheap trip in Iceland is almost always a trip where someone in the chain is being squeezed. Usually it is the guide.

We travel the country to find these people and we go back. If a partner does not hold up on safety, on quality, or on how they treat the place and their staff, we stop selling them. That has happened.

A note on tips. Tipping is not customary in Iceland and no one on your trip is depending on it to make rent. If someone has been exceptional, say so, and tell us — it carries further than cash.

Partners and suppliers (74%)

Roughly three quarters of what you pay leaves us almost immediately. It goes to the guides, drivers, hotels, farms, boat operators, kitchens and mountain rescue-trained crews who actually run the days we have written down.

We buy from these partners at net rates — their market rate, less our commission. We do not run a markup on top of a markup. What that means in practice is that the money reaches the operator at close to full value, and that the operator can afford to pay properly.

That last part is not a small thing in Iceland. Wages here are set by collective agreement, not by whatever the market will tolerate. Entry-level pay in tourism under the 2026 agreements sits in the region of ISK 483,000–498,000 a month before overtime, and a guide with glacier or highland qualifications earns well above that. A cheap trip in Iceland is almost always a trip where someone in the chain is being squeezed. Usually it is the guide.

We travel the country to find these people and we go back. If a partner does not hold up on safety, on quality, or on how they treat the place and their staff, we stop selling them. That has happened.

A note on tips. Tipping is not customary in Iceland and no one on your trip is depending on it to make rent. If someone has been exceptional, say so, and tell us — it carries further than cash.

Partners and suppliers (74%)

Roughly three quarters of what you pay leaves us almost immediately. It goes to the guides, drivers, hotels, farms, boat operators, kitchens and mountain rescue-trained crews who actually run the days we have written down.

We buy from these partners at net rates — their market rate, less our commission. We do not run a markup on top of a markup. What that means in practice is that the money reaches the operator at close to full value, and that the operator can afford to pay properly.

That last part is not a small thing in Iceland. Wages here are set by collective agreement, not by whatever the market will tolerate. Entry-level pay in tourism under the 2026 agreements sits in the region of ISK 483,000–498,000 a month before overtime, and a guide with glacier or highland qualifications earns well above that. A cheap trip in Iceland is almost always a trip where someone in the chain is being squeezed. Usually it is the guide.

We travel the country to find these people and we go back. If a partner does not hold up on safety, on quality, or on how they treat the place and their staff, we stop selling them. That has happened.

A note on tips. Tipping is not customary in Iceland and no one on your trip is depending on it to make rent. If someone has been exceptional, say so, and tell us — it carries further than cash.

Partners and suppliers (74%)

Roughly three quarters of what you pay leaves us almost immediately. It goes to the guides, drivers, hotels, farms, boat operators, kitchens and mountain rescue-trained crews who actually run the days we have written down.

We buy from these partners at net rates — their market rate, less our commission. We do not run a markup on top of a markup. What that means in practice is that the money reaches the operator at close to full value, and that the operator can afford to pay properly.

That last part is not a small thing in Iceland. Wages here are set by collective agreement, not by whatever the market will tolerate. Entry-level pay in tourism under the 2026 agreements sits in the region of ISK 483,000–498,000 a month before overtime, and a guide with glacier or highland qualifications earns well above that. A cheap trip in Iceland is almost always a trip where someone in the chain is being squeezed. Usually it is the guide.

We travel the country to find these people and we go back. If a partner does not hold up on safety, on quality, or on how they treat the place and their staff, we stop selling them. That has happened.

A note on tips. Tipping is not customary in Iceland and no one on your trip is depending on it to make rent. If someone has been exceptional, say so, and tell us — it carries further than cash.

WHY THE FUND EXISTS

Travel here is sold on a landscape that is being quietly dismantled

Travel here is sold on a landscape that is being quietly dismantled.

Iceland is marketed as empty, clean and untouched. It is none of those things. The fjords are being used, the rivers are being changed, and most of the damage happens in places no tour bus stops. Every company selling this country is selling something it is not paying to keep.

We are one of those companies. The fund is how we stop pretending otherwise — not a donation button added at checkout, but a fixed cost of running the business, decided before a trip is priced.

It is not a marketing budget with a conscience. We do not choose issues because they will look good in a brochure, and we do not put our name on the work the money pays for.

A snow-capped peak emerges from low cloud above a dark fjord

what we are trying to do

Conservation money here is spread thin across whatever is easiest to photograph. We would rather do one thing properly and be judged on it.

Open-net salmon farming in the Westfjords

Salmon are farmed in open pens in fjords that were never closed systems. Fish escape and breed with wild stock. Lice spread. The rivers that carry the cost do not have a marketing budget, and the valleys around them have no say worth the name.

We chose it because the damage is happening now, the permits are still being decided, and almost nobody outside those valleys is fighting it. Whaling gets the cameras. This does not, which is exactly the gap the fund was built for.

The work we intend to fund: independent lice and escapee testing, legal review of pending permits, support for residents at hearings, and grants for reporting nobody else will pay for.

We do not sit on the board

The fund is administered separately from the travel business. We choose the issue, then we hand over the money and lose the vote on how it is spent.

One issue at a time

Three-year cycles. No spreading it thin across causes that photograph well.

Recipients are named

Every payment will list who received it and what it bought. No anonymous line items, no bundled totals.

Nothing comes back to us

No salaries, no overheads, no co-branded campaigns. If a payment would benefit North of Normal, it does not happen.

Where we actually are

There are no results on this page yet. The fund starts with our first season. Nothing has been paid out, so there is nothing to show — and we would rather say that plainly than dress up an intention as an achievement. The first ledger is published at the end of the season: every amount in, every amount out, every recipient named. If the first year achieves nothing, that is what this page will say.

Our Economic Nutrition

A black lamb and a white sheep stand on a dirt road running through a field of purple lupines

Where we actually are

There are no results on this page yet. The fund starts with our first season. Nothing has been paid out, so there is nothing to show — and we would rather say that plainly than dress up an intention as an achievement. The first ledger is published at the end of the season: every amount in, every amount out, every recipient named. If the first year achieves nothing, that is what this page will say.

Our Economic Nutrition

A black lamb and a white sheep stand on a dirt road running through a field of purple lupines

Where we actually are

There are no results on this page yet. The fund starts with our first season. Nothing has been paid out, so there is nothing to show — and we would rather say that plainly than dress up an intention as an achievement. The first ledger is published at the end of the season: every amount in, every amount out, every recipient named. If the first year achieves nothing, that is what this page will say.

Our Economic Nutrition

A black lamb and a white sheep stand on a dirt road running through a field of purple lupines

Where we actually are

There are no results on this page yet. The fund starts with our first season. Nothing has been paid out, so there is nothing to show — and we would rather say that plainly than dress up an intention as an achievement. The first ledger is published at the end of the season: every amount in, every amount out, every recipient named. If the first year achieves nothing, that is what this page will say.

Our Economic Nutrition

A black lamb and a white sheep stand on a dirt road running through a field of purple lupines
Two anglers in waders point across a river while fly fishing in the highlands

The timeline we are holding ourselves to

Season one - the fund takes a fixed share of every trip. No traveller opt-in, no rounding up at checkout.

End of season one - first ledger published, with an outside accountant's sign-off.

Quarterly after that - payments out, updated as they happen, on this page.

After three years - we write up what changed, choose the next issue, and start again.

Add to the fund

You do not have to book a trip to pay into this. Most of the fund will come from trips. Direct contributions go into the same account, appear in the same ledger, and buy the same things. If you would rather wait until there is a ledger to read, that is a reasonable position. Join the list and we will send you the first one.

Give to the Fund

Visitors on a viewing platform overlook a turquoise river running through a canyon of hexagonal basalt columns

Add to the fund

You do not have to book a trip to pay into this. Most of the fund will come from trips. Direct contributions go into the same account, appear in the same ledger, and buy the same things. If you would rather wait until there is a ledger to read, that is a reasonable position. Join the list and we will send you the first one.

Give to the Fund

Visitors on a viewing platform overlook a turquoise river running through a canyon of hexagonal basalt columns

Add to the fund

You do not have to book a trip to pay into this. Most of the fund will come from trips. Direct contributions go into the same account, appear in the same ledger, and buy the same things. If you would rather wait until there is a ledger to read, that is a reasonable position. Join the list and we will send you the first one.

Give to the Fund

Visitors on a viewing platform overlook a turquoise river running through a canyon of hexagonal basalt columns

Add to the fund

You do not have to book a trip to pay into this. Most of the fund will come from trips. Direct contributions go into the same account, appear in the same ledger, and buy the same things. If you would rather wait until there is a ledger to read, that is a reasonable position. Join the list and we will send you the first one.

Give to the Fund

Visitors on a viewing platform overlook a turquoise river running through a canyon of hexagonal basalt columns

“”

For me it comes down to leaving a place better than it was when I arrived. I don't drive, which in a country where the car is king is its own small adventure, especially in winter. My family lives within a fifteen-minute walk of what we need, we keep things until they wear out, and we buy most things second-hand. When I travel, I take one region at a time and actually look at it.

Tamara Kocan, Sustainability Lead

tamara@northofnormal.is

Portrait of a woman with dark curly hair and a red scarf standing among trees

“”

For me it comes down to leaving a place better than it was when I arrived. I don't drive, which in a country where the car is king is its own small adventure, especially in winter. My family lives within a fifteen-minute walk of what we need, we keep things until they wear out, and we buy most things second-hand. When I travel, I take one region at a time and actually look at it.

Tamara Kocan, Sustainability Lead

tamara@northofnormal.is

Portrait of a woman with dark curly hair and a red scarf standing among trees

“”

For me it comes down to leaving a place better than it was when I arrived. I don't drive, which in a country where the car is king is its own small adventure, especially in winter. My family lives within a fifteen-minute walk of what we need, we keep things until they wear out, and we buy most things second-hand. When I travel, I take one region at a time and actually look at it.

Tamara Kocan, Sustainability Lead

tamara@northofnormal.is

Portrait of a woman with dark curly hair and a red scarf standing among trees

“”

For me it comes down to leaving a place better than it was when I arrived. I don't drive, which in a country where the car is king is its own small adventure, especially in winter. My family lives within a fifteen-minute walk of what we need, we keep things until they wear out, and we buy most things second-hand. When I travel, I take one region at a time and actually look at it.

Tamara Kocan, Sustainability Lead

tamara@northofnormal.is

Portrait of a woman with dark curly hair and a red scarf standing among trees