Hótel Nýlundabúðin Puffin Hotel

The world’s first puffin-exclusive 5-star accommodation

For centuries, the hotel industry has been almost entirely human-centered and the accommodation needs of other species have been largely ignored.

This is where we come in.

Located directly opposite one of Iceland’s busiest puffin nesting colonies, Hótel Nýlundabúðin Grand Hotel Puffin Hotel is the perfect getaway for busy puffins during nesting season.

Hótel Nýlundabúðin Puffin Hotel is made together with my frequent collaborator Rán Flygenring. We spent two weeks on this performance (it has also been called site-specific theatre), with many working hours remodeling an old shed to turn it into a puffin hotel, complete with a spa and breakfast buffet.

In the mockumentary style video work we consequently made, we pose as hoteliers that are opening the world‘s first Five Star Luxury Hotel Exclusively for Puffins. It is a sort of sequel to our Puffin Shop project, Nýlundabúðin, where we set up a puffin shop in the middle of a puffin nesting colony. Both projects were set in and by Hafnarhólmi in Borgarfjörður eystri, an important nesting ground for puffins.

The puffin projects spawn from our interest for human kind‘s relationship with nature, and more specifically, Icelanders‘ relationship with puffins. The puffin‘s popularity with tourists has turned it into the face of mass-tourism and mass-produced souvenirs. As so-called puffin-shops fill countless store-fronts in central Reykjavík, its inhabitants get more and more frustrated with the puffin. Using the language of hospitality, we bring attention to the vulnerable state of Iceland’s puffin population.

Seeing it in the wild however reminds us that they are in fact just a seabird fighting for its existence, spending the majority of their lives out at sea in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. In our puffin films, we use the language of capitalism, commercials and mass-tourism, as well as the sheer absurdity of the location and purpose of our ventures, to highlight the absurdity of human behaviour towards nature and animals.