Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing a recent edition of Wavescan on Iceland.
Jeff: Just over a year ago in May last year, 2023, we brought you a feature on longwave radio in Iceland. That was intended to be the first of a two-part series, but we never got around to bringing you part 2. So, here with a recap, update and the rest of the story, is Ray Robinson, from Los Angeles.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. As we reported last year, Iceland is a very rugged country in the North Atlantic, just below the Arctic Circle. It actually contains some 36 islands, most of them quite small, although the main one is about 300 miles long, east-west, and 200 miles wide, north-south, and with a coastline of over 3,000 miles due to the many deep fjords and inlets.
It is one of the least densely populated countries in the world, and still today only has a population of just less than 400,000 residents. The country is about the same size physically as the U.S. state of Kentucky, but with less than 1/10th of the population. About 60% of Icelanders live in and around the capital area of Reykjavik. The remainder of the population is mostly clustered in fishing villages around the coasts, and a few are engaged in herding and grazing. With no arable land and an inhospitable climate, there is no agriculture at all in the country. The center of the main island of Iceland has a number of volcanic peaks that rise to about 7,000 feet, surrounded by a huge central plateau that accounts for more than half the land area, with ice fields that are both uninhabited and uninhabitable.
The language of Iceland is Icelandic, which has evolved surprisingly little over the centuries from the Old Norse spoken in Norway by their Viking ancestors more than 1,000 years ago. Formerly a part of the Kingdom of Denmark like Greenland and the Faroe Islands, Iceland gained full independence from Denmark in 1918.
Radio broadcasting first came to Iceland in 1926, and in 1930 the Icelandic State Broadcasting Service (known as the R.Ú.V., pronounced Roov) was established. From then until 1984, RÚV enjoyed a legally enforced monopoly on all broadcasting in Iceland – both radio and TV – and all programming was exclusively in Icelandic.
There are no railroads in Iceland, and in the wintertime, many roads to remote towns and villages become impassable, so radio communication remains extremely important in Icelandic culture.
RÚV has a long tradition of using longwave radio to try to cover the entire population because medium wave frequencies were often subject to interference at night from stations that crowded the band in Europe. The capital, Reykjavik, is situated towards the southern end of a large bay on the west coast of Iceland, and in 1930, a longwave transmitter on 271 kHz was set up right on the edge of the city in a place called Vatnsendi. Initially this had low power, but in 1949, it was replaced with a 100 kW unit operating on 209 kHz, which was adjusted in 1978 to 207 kHz to comply with the new eastern hemisphere 9 kHz spacing band plan.
At the northern end of the bay, there is a 30 mile long peninsula that juts westward into the Atlantic Ocean, and in 1997, the main longwave transmission site was moved from Vatnsendi to a new location at the extreme western end of that peninsula, at a place called Hellissandur. The antenna mast there, which was first constructed for other purposes in 1963, is 1,352 feet high – one of the tallest structures in western Europe. The new transmitter began operating on 189 kHz, with an output power of 300 kW to cover Reykjavik and the entire mainland west of the central highland plateau – basically the western half of the country. The original pair of masts at Vatnsendi, which were erected in 1930, were finally toppled by explosives in August 2021.
In 1938, a secondary transmitter was located in the east at Eidar. Initially this operated on 615 kHz medium wave with just 1 kW. In the early 1950’s it was replaced with a 5 kW unit, and then in 1965 it was converted to longwave, transmitting with 20 kW on 209 kHz (later adjusted to 207 kHz). In 1998, the antenna mast was reconstructed to a height of 720 feet, and the transmitter was replaced with a new 100 kW unit to cover all the eastern fishing villages, until its closure last year. The two frequencies of 189 in the west and 207 in the east basically sandwiched BBC Radio 4 on 198 kHz, which is consistently heard at night in Iceland, especially in the south and east. But, transmissions on 207 kHz ended on January 27th 2023, and the mast itself was also demolished on March 2nd, just over one year ago.
As of now, the transmitter on 189 kHz is still carrying a mixture of RÚV channels 1 and 2. Its stated purpose is:
• to cover the areas between towns and villages where FM signals don’t reach,
• to provide a service to the many people engaged in the Icelandic fishing fleet at sea, and
• to provide a backup for emergency communications purposes.
However, most vehicles sold these days don’t come equipped with radios that can tune longwave frequencies, so most people traveling between towns and villages can’t listen to the station on longwave anyway. The transmitter’s effectiveness is thus very much in question, and it just may not be viable to continue funding its operation for such a small population beyond the end of this year.
RÚV did operate a few medium wave transmitters, to fill in areas not well covered by either longwave signal. There was a 1 kW transmitter on 666 kHz at Höfn on the southeast coast, and a 5 kW transmitter on 738 kHz at Skjaldarvik on the central north coast, but both were closed on April 20th, 1999. A string of other very low-power (20 watt) transmitters on 1413, 1485, and 1511 kHz were also closed on various dates in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. The transmitter at Höfn on 666 kHz was reactivated briefly for test purposes in 2016 and 2017, but it has not been reported recently.
In the early years of RÚV, a short-lived external service was operated on shortwave, but this had to be abandoned due to budget cuts. In the 70’s and 80’s, however, they did broadcast a portion of their home service on shortwave for the benefit of their fishing fleet, which often was out of range of the longwave signal when they were over in the North Sea fishing for cod. They chose an interesting frequency – 12175 kHz USB – because that was the frequency used by their fishermen for point-to-point communications. The shortwave station, located at Reykjavik, used the callsign TFJ, and operated with an output power of 7 kW.
From 1973 until January 2007, two 10 kW Collins shortwave transmitters were also used with two directional rhombic antennas to beam relays of domestic news programs to Scandinavia, Great Britain and continental Europe on frequencies in the 90, 31 and 22 meter bands, and to Canada and the USA in the 41, 25 and 19 meter bands, although all programming was in Icelandic. Reception was often reported from Europe, the United States and South Africa, and one audio tape was even received from Australia. All accurate reports were QSL’d.
The Broadcasting Act of 1985 rescinded the RÚV monopoly on broadcasting, and made provision for licenses to be granted to privately owned FM and TV stations. RÚV is required to continue operating two radio channels and one TV channel, all partially supported by advertising.
Through a combination of FM and longwave transmission, RÚV had accomplished 99% coverage of the country, although that is now somewhat less since the 207 kHz transmitter was closed. Initially, most private FM stations operated in and around the capital city area, where a majority of the population resides. These days, there are five privately owned national FM networks, plus a dozen or more individual stations, and several dozen low-power community stations. There is also a 5 kW relay of the BBC World Service on 94.5 MHz FM.
During the Second World War, Iceland was initially a neutral country, but in the spring of 1940, a small force of British troops arrived to protect the island and to deny the Nazis the possibility of using it as a base for U-Boat attacks on North Atlantic shipping convoys. While there, the British took control of all radio communications and built a new broadcast studio complex in the center of Reykjavik, which is still in use to this day. The following year, the British asked the United States if they would take over protection duties so as to free the British troops for service elsewhere, and they did so, right up until 1945. Iceland then joined NATO in 1949 and in 1951 entered into a formal defense agreement with the United States.
To the south of Reykjavik, there is another peninsula that juts westward into the Atlantic Ocean– the Grindavik peninsula. This has been much in the news of late due to volcanic eruptions that have encroached on the town of Grindavik itself on the south side of the peninsula. Well, on the north side of that same peninsula, just a few miles north of Grindavik, sits another town whose name may be familiar – Keflavik. From 1951 until 2006, Keflavik was the site of a major US Air Base and Naval Station. When the base was established, a US Armed Forces Radio station was also set up on 1530 kHz AM, which, in spite of its modest power level of 250 W, in later years identified as ‘Thunder 15-30’. In the 1990’s, a second transmitter on 104 FM was added, which was identified as “Power 104”. These transmitters were easily heard across the water in Reykjavik, though, where they were collectively known colloquially as “Yankee Radio”.
But, early in 2006 under George W. Bush’s administration, the US decided to withdraw its forces from the military base at Keflavík in a move that was characterized in Iceland as a “unilateral cancellation” of the US-Icelandic Defense Agreement. AFRTS/’Thunder 15-30’ and ‘Power 104’ signed off for the last time on Saturday, June 1st, 2006, the former after 55 years of continuous broadcasting. At the time of the stations’ closure, RÚV reported they had greatly increased the amount of American music available to Icelandic audiences and “deeply influenced the music, fashion and attitudes of Icelandic youth.” The air base is now operated as Keflavik International Airport – the only airport in Iceland with immigration facilities for international flights. The smaller airport at Reykjavik is now used for domestic flights only.
RÚV does provide a daily news service in English on the Internet, which you can find at https://www.ruv.is/english
(Ray Robinson/AWR Wavescan)
