| dc.description.abstract | Abstract This thesis aims to explore the manifestation of distrust and the feeling marginality in the community of Orkuvík, situated in the eastern fjords of Iceland. More particularly, it investigates the correlation between the financial crisis in 2008, the startup of an oil industry in the “Dragon Area”, and the relationship between a peripheral community, the urban center and global processes. Orkuvík is peripheral and semi-isolated, but at the same time interconnected with global processes and large-scale systems. The community is connected to the largest hydropower plant in Iceland, the Kárahnjúkar dam, which provides power for the largest aluminum smelter in Iceland, Fjardaál. Simountanously, Orkuvík inhabits the largest fishing company in Iceland, Fiskur. This thesis provides a comparative analysis of these two different industries, and creates an understanding of how the indifference expressed towards the oil industry is not due to the lack of experience with industrial endeavors, but is rather based on a feeling of distrust. Building on the ethnographic descriptions throughout this thesis, I suggest that there are multiple reasons for the cynicism towards the opening of an oil field in the Dragon Area. However, they all emerge from the same feeling of distrust and marginality. The reason for indifference towards the oil industry was not only based on a feeling of distrust in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The financial crisis served as a catalyst for change and simountanously revealed larger issues concerning marginality, the feeling of not being heard and an understanding of disconnect from the greater Reykjavík area. As the fieldwork unfolded, different strategies for maneuvering in this reality became overt. Rather than staying dependent on global processes that provides industry, or nation-state decisions that suggests further industrial development, Orkuvíkians started to engage in how to frame their own future, and take back control. Keywords: Iceland, Oil, Distrust, Neoliberalism, Crisis, Scale, Industry, Disillusionment, Marginality. | eng |