Iceland: An Island in the Mind's Eye

It's hard to decide what is the most remarkable aspect of Iceland. Is it the sheer beauty which has been shaped by its vulcanism? The hardy, independent minded Icelanders that have survived the centuries of natural disaster and harsh weather? The music? Truth be told, I have been intrigued by Iceland since I was first turned on to the music of Sigur Rós, Múm, and Björk.

A few years back I watched a couple documentaries relating to the music of this remote island nation. The first was Screaming Masterpiece, a documentary of Iceland's music and history, and the second was Sigur Rós' Heima. The musical landscapes that these artists create seemed to mirror the power of the natural landscapes of the country, and I knew that one day I would have to experience it for myself.

This opportunity presented itself when I was discussing with my sister ways in which I might travel across the Atlantic Ocean. I was thinking about trying to find another freighter to make this final crossing, when she suggested that I might check out the cheap fares offered by Iceland air to cross the pond with a layover in Iceland (for those of you West Coasters that are looking for a vacation in this wonderland of natural beauty, they offer direct flights from Seattle to Reykjavík). A few days later, sitting in an internet cafe in northern Laos, I purchased my ticket from London to Reykjavík (and then on to Boston) and made it official.

I arrived to the remote airfield of Keflavík International, surrounded by boulder-strewn tundra, on the afternoon of June 3. Walking through customs, I got pulled aside for special screening. My fears were allayed though when the friendly official made a cursory glance at my suitcase before starting up a conversation with me about my travels. This was a common experience with Icelanders: Brusk at first, but genuinely friendly and true just below the surface.

I stepped outside and realized that I would have to pull out all the clothing I hadn't worn since Siberia. Just three weeks before the summer solstice and the windchill was well-below freezing. I bought a bus ticket for the 45 minute trek into the capital, boarded the vehicle, then put in my earbuds to start a soundtrack for my drive through the desolate beauty of this land. I was dropped off in front of my pre-booked hostel, Kex, which derives it's name from the Icelandic word for biscuit. A bone-chilling drizzle began to fall around this time, which would continue off and on for the next three days.

Arriving on a Friday afternoon gave me a perfect opportunity to enjoy the raucous weekend nightlife in Reykjavík. And let me tell you something about Reykjavík: it holds about 2/3 of the population of the entire island, which amounts to about 200,000 people. This makes it a pretty small city. Despite that, this small population knows how to party, and during the light nights of summer, they come out in force on the weekends. After resting and exploring the town a bit, I met Becca, a fellow American, who invited me to join her and some others that night. We kicked off the night as the sun got lower in the sky (at about 11:30 pm) in the hostel bar, where I met two more Americans, Jay and Anthony, as well as a couple of Icelanders and a crazy Swede.

We began a tour of the city's bars around midnight. The real action doesn't really start until about 2:30 in the morning, which is coincidentally about the time that the sun pops back up from it's brief rest, and the twilight of "night" turns back into full daylight. Throughout the course of the night, I had the pleasure of speaking with many icelanders, a fiery bunch (probably a reflection of the vulcanism of the island). The Icelanders are direct descendants of the Vikings, and still speak the Viking language. One guy I met, a truly Vikingesque character named Axle, conversed with me about the finer points of Icelandic music, punctuating his ideas with pounds of the table and a copious amount of spit sent flying through the air. He is in a band, as most Icelanders are. His is called Dandelion Seeds.

As the night went on and on the debauchery grew to a frantic pace. I think it was round about 6am when the realization hit that I either needed to go to bed immediately or not sleep at all. My internal clock was telling my that it was time to eat breakfast and start my day. I think it had something to do with the full daylight outside. I returned to the hostel, closed the blackout curtains in my dorm room, and proceeded to sleep until noon.

The next day felt a bit like a reboot of the day prior. The afternoon was spent recovering and preparing for Saturday night. Once again I went out with my three compatriots, Becca, Jay and Anthony and the experience was pretty much the same as the night before; lots of drinks, loud Viking conversations and the rowdiness that comes with 24 hours of light. It was on this night that our group of four Americans agreed to join forces and rent a car for the next four days to explore the island a bit.

We were all up by 10am the next morning, whereupon we walked across the street to enquire into car rentals. For roughly a hundred dollars each, we signed on to rent a compact car for four days. The car was named Mr. B32.

We quickly got the car and loaded our bags for the big adventure. We stopped by a grocery store to stock up on supplies then drove east through pastures towards Þingvallavegur National Park.

Þingvellir is both a historical and natural park. Geographically speaking, the rift valley of the Mid-atlantic Ridge is located here, and you can see where the tectonic plates on either side are pulling apart. Historically, Iceland's first parliament was established here in the year 930. We did a short hike along the rift where a waterfall cascades down its border.

Moving on, we continued east to the geothermal area around Geysir, a Geyser whose name has been adopted to refer to any geothermally heated pool of water that shoots up into the air. The weather was beginning to get sunny, but the near freezing temperatures and constant wind made it nearly unbearable to be outside, though the natural wonders were well worth the pain. We spent about an hour here admiring the geysers and hot pools spitting out sulfur-scented bubbles, warming our hands by the open pits.

Just down the road we walked down to the Gulfoss waterfall, a wide cascade that somewhat resembles Niagara Falls. We endured the spray of water to capture views of rainbows arcing over the majestic falls. The beauty of all these places was astounding. Now it was getting to be about 6:30 and we had a ways to drive to reach the village which we had chosen as our resting place for the night. Anthony, our driver up until this point, relinquished the wheel to me as I drove a car for the first time in months, proud of myself for being able to get the manual transmission into gear with only one stall. We drove for about an hour to the relatively large village of Hella (670 inhabitants).

Using Becca's Lonely Planet book, we found our way to a peaceful guesthouse by the river, named Brenna. We rented out the two bedroom guesthouse and had the place to ourselves for the "night". The three of us guys prepared a dinner of sardines, baked beans, and cheese sandwiches pressed with a waffle iron. It really hit the spot after a long day out in the cold summer air.

As the sun slowly made its way at a shallow angle towards the horizon around 11:30 that night, and all the clouds finally cleared from the sky for the first time since I had arrived on the island, we headed out to search for a bar. Unfortunately it seemed that every place in town was closed on this Sunday night, so we headed back to the house where I busted out the bottle of duty free Islay Scotch that I had purchased at London-Heathrow. With some liquid warmth in us to fight the bitter wind and cold outside, we played a marathon game of Hearts, which ended with a rather unexpected shooting of the moon. Around 3:00am, as the sun began to peak back up, we closed all the curtains in the place and willed ourselves to sleep.

So now we arrive at June 6, where we continue our journey along the southern coast of Iceland. After a brief trip to the grocery store for breakfast materials, some eggs on toast, and a quick cleanup and checkout, we were back on the road by noon (late starts don't really matter when it never gets dark). We set out eastward on HW1, aka the Ring Road. We drove out of town than took an impromptu turn off for some sort of old farm house. A dirt road through an expanse of grassy plains and rolling hills brought us to a dead end and a sign for the historic farmhouse. We walked past a natural spring pouring forth from a low hill and entered the gates of the yard which held the old wooden structures and small cemetery. There was no information displayed, so we just sort of looked about in mild puzzlement at the small church and what looked like hobbit holes.

We returned to the car and moved on. Returning to Eastbound 1, we stopped in the nearest town for coffee, where we found a flyer for a short documentary on the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that shut down air traffic in Europe for a while back in 2010. We determined to make a stop at the museum/shed that was showing the film at the base of the volcano, which we reached in about 30 minutes' time. It was an uplifting movie about the constant struggle of Icelanders against the natural elements, and their overcoming of these forces. We moved on.

Just before our stop at the museum, we stopped off at another awe-inspiring waterfall, Seljalandsfoss. We hiked up behind the falls, then found a way up through a gully to the top of the plateau from which it launched its waters. Amazingly, the creek that spawned the falls completely disappeared into the spongy, grass-covered earth, only to reveal itself just before the edge. As we walked along the plateau, our steps created little ash clouds, one year since the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. We spent a few minutes basking in the sunlight and wide open views before returning down the hill.

We continued down the 1 to the next tiny village of Skogar, where we spent a few minutes skipping stones at the base of yet another torrential waterfall and enjoying the double rainbow that refracted through its mist.

We carried on down the road and soon arrived to a town lying at the base of a large rock monolith overlooking a black sand beach. This place was called Vik. We drove Mr. B32 down to the beach crest and got out to enjoy the cold surf pounding against the dark sand. Jay, as he was apt to do, decided to take his shoes off and go in half way. I stayed on the beach taking photos of the stone cairns that some elves had presumably built. With the wind beginning to sandblast us, we headed back up towards the town for some afternoon coffee in a nearby cafe, and finally discovered why they have all these horses in Iceland; they put them on the menu.

Heading further east out of town, and just as our guidebook had informed us, we began driving through a vast expanse of dust and nothingness, where the wind blew the dust in curtains over the road. If we were in Middle Earth, then this was somewhere just beyond the gates of Mordor. At least there was a nice glacier to look at in the distance.

After about an hour of this, we entered a greener region again- well, the ground was sort of green, but the sky was a dull gray color due to the eruption that had occurred about two weeks prior to our arrival. We stopped briefly in the aptly-named town of Kirkjubæjarklaustur and, finding that just about everything was shut down, we moved on 8 km down the road to a group of small cabins owned by a family. We negotiated a fair price for the night and booked ourselves a cozy cabin for the night. As we walked around the grounds to our cabin, a fine cloud of ash burst forth from our feet with each step. Two weeks prior, this place was literally under a black cloud of pyroclastic rock.

The gang and I enjoyed a fine evening, and due to the ash in the air, it even got a bit dark by 1am. See?

We cooked some dinner, listened to the radio (which is not bad in this country), drank some beer and scotch and enjoyed ourselves on the porch of our cabin. We contemplated climbing the steep glass incline behind us to follow some fellow cabin-goers who can climbed up there to do a j, but decided that we should just sit and play some more Hearts. We hit the hay about 3am.

Day 3 on the road, we left the cabin and backtracked a bit to a grocery store for supplies. It was at this time I discovered that we could plug an iPod into Mr. B32's stereo system and the ride became a whole lot more enjoyable. After some shopping and petting of a horse, we headed back eastward. Again, we entered a vast, dusty expanse that was covered in ash. Here though, things got a bit more interesting with the introduction of ash devils, which are mini tornados composed of ash. We hit a few of them head on, leading to some white-knuckle moments, but I did manage to capture a couple of them on video.

We briefly stopped off at some twisted I-beams which had once been part of a bridge that had been wiped out by a volcanic deluge some time in the 1990's.

After climbing on the beams a bit, we drove for a few more minutes until we reached Skafkatell National Park. We parked Mr. B32 and walked the mile and a half to the head of a large glacier and it's resulting glacial lagoon. The view was stellar, and we entertained ourselves by taking pictures, bouncing up and down on some springy quicksand (it's not like you see in the movies), and throwing rocks at icebergs in an attempt to break them (we did have some success).

Back at the trailhead, we got some coffee and made some sandwiches before continuing on our way. Here the road turned south to skirt this huge glacier (which covers about 10% of the entire country) before heading back east towards our next destination, the iceberg-filled lagoon of Jökulsárlón. At this point I find myself unwilling to resort to the lofty language that would be required to describe this, or any other of the natural wonders of this country, but let's just say it was real nice. The arm of the glacier came to within a mile of the ocean, and between the beach and the glacier was a large lagoon filled with pieces of ice, big and small, that had broken off from the frozen river. We walked around for a while taking pictures and marveling.

The next couple hours of driving were mundane compared to the rest of the day's drive. We decided to stop at the harbor town of Höfn, where we checked out several guesthouses before settling on a rustic cabin at a campground just at the edge of town. We were pretty beat, but we managed to spend the night doing the same things we had been doing for the last two: beer, scotch, good/cheap cooking, and Hearts. We managed to take a group photo at about 1:30am.

We decided the next day that we would all make the long drive back to Reykjavik, which took about 7 hours instead of three days, even though we largely took the same route. We ceased to pull off for sightseeing, and besides, we had already seen these things. This was my last day before I headed back to my native land. I was tired and had a sore throat; I was ready to go back. We checked back into Kex Hostel again and spent a quiet evening eating and relaxing before I got to bed early around midnight.

The next day, I packed my bags and called in a ride to the airport. I went to a record store to get some vinyl recordings of the music I love so dearly, as well as some final gifts for friends and family. I said farewell to my traveling companions, shouldered my bags (and full suitcase now), and rode to the airport. My flight was delayed for four hours by an airport workers' strike, but I finally got off the island, flew over the white expanse of Greenland, and landed about five hours later in Boston, Mass, where I saw the familiar face of my cousin Lisa.

And now we arrive finally to the last installment, the trip back across America to complete the circuit. I will deal with that shortly.