Iceland
‘See you later’, the Australian parting, is a languorous coastal assumption. In Iceland, they say, ‘be safe’.
‘See you later’, the Australian parting, is a languorous coastal assumption. In Iceland, they say, ‘be safe’, and it comes with earnest concern for your welfare.
Icelandic car hire companies offer three types of insurance: the usual accident cover, another for smashed windows, another for damage from sand and ash. The latter two take account of local conditions — items big enough to smash your window are carried on the breeze (we saw the results on one car); sand and ash in the wind strip the paint from vehicles.
We took the basic accident insurance (‘be safe’ says the desk attendant), stepped out of the terminal, and reconsidered both decisions. A flat, cheek rippling wind slapped us sideways. Hardened little ice spheres (not for Iceland overwrought snowflakes) flowed sideways on the northerly, banging into poles, cars, eyes, ears, hands; gathering in lava folds at the edge of the asphalt. The hire company desk attendant had given us the keys and waved towards the car park. After ten minutes of searching for the car, the vagueness of her gesture seems like reckless disregard for human life.
Minutes later, the Blue Lagoon offers respite from the wind, at least for those parts of us that we can keep submerged in the hot sulphurous water. The volcanic mud is said to be excellent for the complexion — hints of the pervasive European belief in panacean warmth. Surprisingly, a couple of hours in its cerulean shallows leave my skin feeling notably softer.
The undressing wind rockets ears, pulls tears from eyes, chills teeth and snatches breath. All sensation is dominated by it, but the horizontal landscape barely acknowledges it. Beyond thirty yards, where the brown grass bends and riffles, the hurricane wind is invisible. There are few trees. As we pass a stand of pines our driver remarks, ‘they’re new’ — the shallow frozen soil of the lava plain and the smothering force of wind and ice don’t allow such extravagance. (An Icelandic joke: what do you do you if you are lost in an Icelandic forest…? Stand up.)
We drive out to the ‘Geysir’, the namesake of all the rest of the spouts of superheated water in other parts of the world. Geysir itself is all blown out, but nearby geysers still spout every five minutes or so. The spurting steam is impressive, if only because, for a moment, it vertically withstands the wind. But the superheated vapour almost instantly condenses and is blown flat across the ground — a frozen fan of ice on frozen lava.
Up the road a little, Gullfoss (golden waterfall), half frozen, seemingly in the very moment of its tumbling over the precipice. We hunker over ‘Icelandic meat stew’ (worryingly ambiguous) in a place above the falls that is fitted for hundreds of tourists but today shelters three or four. We have also eaten puffin on this trip, which seems to say something about Icelandic attitudes to the rest of the world — you lot can use them to sell cutesy children’s books, but we like them stewed with carrots. (Another local delicacy, rotten shark, is widely reputed to be the most horrible thing ever conceived for human consumption).
Despite the weather, we journey to the glacier that dominates the middle of the island, sliding across the volcanic angles of the place. Here the weather has very much been en évidence, even at a distance — the whole of our time here the glacier has been made invisible by a blizzard whipped up from its surface.
The plan was to go snowmobiling up there, but that is out of the question now. To assuage our disappointment they drive us up to the glacier anyway. The wind is full of ice — seems capable of ripping corneas from eyeballs. You can’t see more than 5 metres. We get out and tromp about on the ice for a couple of minutes, then get back to shelter in the truck.
We go in search of the northern lights — the questingly romantic reason for our trip — apparently a (roughly) daily event here. We have already spent a night in the country sheltering beneath the lip of a hot tub, watching out for the borealis. But the clouds and wind, the back end of a hurricane wreaking havoc a continent away, make a set of unfavourable conditions. This time we submit to local leadership and take a bus with other midnight travellers hoping for green atmospherics.
The bus presents a large target for the wind and when we are athwart it, the force brings the driver to a standstill as we tilt about atop the suspension. We get out at the first location and shelter in the lee of the bus looking up, but it is mostly overcast and headlights coming down the road are distracting. Someone points out the polar star then we get back on the bus.
We travel a little farther out, cross the meeting point of the Eurasian and North American plates; craggy subsidences and upthrust rock. Our guide reports today’s two reasonably substantial earthquakes by way of a digression.
We come to a more remote place and again the group scans the horizon from behind the bus. I walk out a bit. There is a path up through the rocks nearby and I take it a few hundred metres up the hill, navigating by the recently revealed gibbous moon. The suppurating earth flubs away, boiling the mud. Sulphurous smoke lays flat across the path.
There is a platform at the end of the curving track. The moon shows the land black and dull white; the smoking mud, the sudden rocky rises, the black volcanic dust and rock, the glacier distantly grinding, the handful of people huddling behind the bus. The sky is finally clear.
I’ll turn thirty tomorrow. The twenties were something like this. Jagged adolescent peaks ground to dust. Occasional eruptions; accompanying heat and light. Sometimes the earth shook and cracks showed up at the fault lines. Cold ashen expanses. Makeshift shelter from the buffeting. Sudden technicolor out of darkness.
I look up into the north, searching for the light.
Originally published at assaythis.com on February 19, 2015.
