Fire and Ice: Iceland

This is a long one, about Iceland, so if you aren’t interested just move on. The summary is that it is a fantastic place and we absolutely loved it; Jim was lukewarm about going and now he says it was one of our best-ever trips.

I’ve wanted to go there for years, I think it was a mystery I read in my teens and then a fascination with the Norse gods. A most amazing deal popped up on Travelzoo’s weekly top 20 so we decided to grab it. Turns out my sister, Betsy, also had a hankering to go to Iceland so she came too; she claims she had to beg but we were happy to include her.

We flew from Seattle, 7 hours, directly to Reykjavik on Icelandair and stayed at the Hilton Nordica which included amazing breakfasts. We were “on the ground” for 5 ½ days which gave us a good flavour of the city and surrounding area. I would have liked another day.

There were a lot of highlights and surprises:

Almost everyone speaks English which makes it very easy for English speaking visitors and the people we met were friendly and cheerful. Icelandic is an absolutely incomprehensible language, old Norse, and not a bit phonetic. They spent so many years in isolation that the language hasn’t evolved much and the general populace is still able to read documents from the 11-1200’s. Try that in old English!

The population of the country is about 350,000 and about 2/3 live in Reykjavik. The city is deliberately low-rise so as not to impede anyone’s view of the mountains. That may have started because there are so many volcanoes that the people wanted to be able to keep an eye out for potential activity; it’s a theory.

walking down to the Althing

It’s a new country geologically and politically but it began its democratic parliament back in the 900’s, the Althing, centuries before anyone else was getting around to it. The Settlement (reference to the first arrivals as there didn’t seem to be any indigenous people) was in 871-ish and much of the next 1000 years was spent under Norse and then Danish rule. Independence was only achieved in 1944.

turf houses

Not that the Danes are backward or oppressive but turf houses were still in use into the 1940’s in the countryside, pretty much heated by the livestock in the lower rooms. Yikes.



city hall



So the impression we got is that the buildings and infrastructure are quite new, and the style and feel of the city is cosmopolitan without the hurly burly city hassles. There are lots of sculptures my favourite being the Solfar Viking Ship on the seawall, evocative of isolation, longing, independence, and adventure.

seriously black sand!

I can’t speak to the rest of the country but in the south west there are lava fields everywhere, some that look like sand and some that are moss and lichen covered rubble. We visited a glacier that was retreating rapidly in part because of the coating of black sand which, of course, attracts heat. The sand happened to be the fallout from last spring’s eruption, Eyjafjallajökull. Give that one a whirl; people tried to help us with the pronunciation to no avail.

moss covered lava

There are thermal areas all over the place too, just puffing steam into the air through vents, some that are extremely high hear 300C and some that are lower and more useful at 80-100C. There are various public thermal pools and we spent some time at the Blue Lagoon which is the biggest and most famous. It was dark when we got there so we don’t have any decent photos but the colour is really odd; pale milky blue, apparently from silica. About 25% of Iceland’s heat and electricity is produced from thermal energy and they have the capacity for about 75%. Apparently it costs about $500.00 per year to heat a house and they seem to keep the building very warm. Which brings me to the climate: despite being at latitude 65◦ it doesn’t get very cold thanks to the Gulf Stream. Winters are warmer than New York on average and last year Reykjavik didn’t have any snow at all. The wind was cold but we had rain and it was in the 4-8C range. On the other hand we’ve had snow and serious cold in Victoria since we got home, one of life’s many ironies.

The small towns and villages are unprepossessing but the most modest of buildings may house a quality glass shop or very good restaurant. It is a good lesson in suspending judgement based on the exterior.

kindred spirits

Daylight is interesting and short at this time of year. Sunset was about the same as our latitude of 48◦, it’s slipped a lot since then, but sunrise isn’t until 10:30 today. I think we got the last useful week for sightseeing as they are losing a half hour a week just now and only have 4 hours of low light by the solstice. They've already got Christmas decorations up everywhere compensating for the darkness. It must be very exciting when that reverses.

And waterfalls and churches (sometime in the 900's at an Althing it was decided that everyone would be Christian). And sweaters! Gorgeous. I’m already regretting not buying another one. The sheep are amusing looking with long shaggy hair and short stubby legs. The local food is mostly fish or lamb and quite salty, and there is an awful and much vaunted delicacy that is fermented shark. For once I was glad that I don’t eat fish as I gather the after taste is like ammonia.

shark in the background - the face says it all

So then we had to leave, I actually said I could live there, and we knew we had a tight window to get the last ferry to the Island. The plane was half an hour late landing, the shuttle was a bit slow to pick up our car, traffic was heavy, the highway advice was that there was a 15 minute wait at the Peace Arch border crossing, and in spite of all that we made the ferry with 10 minutes to spare. Betsy was driving and despite the full moon it was a tense white-knuckled trip not wanting to have to spend the night in a hotel. The next morning all hell broke loose with snow and wind and a crazy mess on the roads so the gods were definitely smiling on us to allow us to get home the night before.