Iceland: nature, landscape and perpetual summer light
First time visitors to Iceland will be in awe at the same phenomenon: it never gets dark in summer. When experienced first hand, it is rather disorientating. My personal account of it was to wake up at 3am to open the door to my co-traveller who was arriving on a later flight, and finding that it was still light outside, not a midday brightness but a soft pre-dusk luminosity. Still light enough to spend an hour outside, me standing in my pyjamas, her talking and smoking incessantly.
It was early June in Reykjavik, we were staying near the harbour, in a house owned by two single brothers, one who lived on the top floor and the other on the lower ground floor. We temporarily occupied the middle apartment, which must have been their grandmother’s flat judging by the late 19th century furniture style, and shared their kitchen and bathroom. Both brothers had the legendary Icelandic reserve; we exchanged no more than about ten words during our weekend stay. They showed us the house, pointing at the various cupboards with a parsimony of words that in another context, would have made us questioned their fluency in the English language. Their mother, who dealt with the online booking, was far more loquacious in her written messages. Throughout our stay, the two brothers made themselves invisible. Maybe, they felt slightly invaded by the presence of three lively mothers (an Italian, a Norwegian and a French), who, behaving like students while away from their family, systematically drank pre and post-dinner gin and tonic in their room. I realised later that the two brothers were friendlier than the local norm: in the next house I stayed, I encountered my host only once and on that occasion she didn’t bother getting up from her sofa to greet me, that involved too much social interaction. The logistics of checking-in had been done via messages and a key box.
Iceland is known to be a cold country. It is written in its name. Even in early summer, the outside temperature didn’t rise above 13° Celsius, and we were lucky, we were there during an exceptionally sunny spell which made the nature and landscape even more spectacular. Iceland is a country for nature lovers; its main attraction is the unique combination of volcanic landscape and seaside.
Like all first time visitors, we signed up for the Golden Circle tour, a loop that covers the most famous sites outside Reykjavik, including the only active geyser on the island, the European-American continental plate rift, and Iceland’s first Viking parliament founded in 930 in Pingvellir. Of the three, the geyser was by far the most impressive. As expected we were not alone, there were many other groups of tourists since it was an easy day trip from the capital. My co-travellers who stayed longer, drove around the whole island and saw the many natural wonders that make its fame: glaciers, waterfalls, cascades, deep ravins, thermal pools and wild beaches. For that, one needed a minimum stay of ten days because of the long distances. I had to content myself with the Snaefellsness peninsula, north-west of Reykjavik, known to be Iceland in miniature and accessible as a day trip from the capital.
The road, a narrow single-carriage way, followed the coastline all the way to the Snaesfellsjökull volcano and glacier at the end of the Peninsula. That volcano was the setting of Jules Verne’s Journey to the centre of the earth: in the author’s fantasy, the protagonist would enter the earth from Snaesfellsjökull’s crater and exit at Stromboli in Sicily. On the way, we crossed many agricultural fields lined with hay bales, fresh from the recent harvest. They were wrapped in thick plastic sheets of different colours, a technique used to make it ferment and preserve it for the whole winter, just like cabbage with sauerkraut. The colours had a meaning: pink bale for supporting breast cancer and blue ones for prostate. We eventually reached the end of the Peninsula after a slow three-hour drive, the horizon always wide open in front of us, and stopped at Budir. The main attraction there was the small wooden church that spectacularly stands alone between the glacier and the sea and is the subject of many postcard pictures of Iceland. It was a photogenic spot that would have looked the exact same had the picture been taken 200 years ago. A timeless place.
From Budir, the coast became more rugged with high cliffs and strong winds. It was somewhat reminiscent of the Irish landscape, except for the snow-capped mountains in the backdrop.We could barely walk without being set off balance by the gale force. In some parts, the scenery was particularly dramatic with rocks and cliffs advancing into the sea like a gigantic promontory, and narrow bridges crossing fjords. If I had stopped every time I was taken by it, my journey would have taken thrice as long. Eventually, we returned to Reykjavik in time for a very late dinner.
Reykjavik is a good base for discovering Iceland; it is lively in summer with fashionable bars, restaurants and cafés open late into the night, and many people outside enjoying the perpetual day light in preparation for the darker winter days. In a warming contrast, I enjoyed returning to the vibrancy of city life after a full day of wild nature, not to mention swimming in one of the city’s many outdoor thermal pools. The other towns I visited were rather dull, with a limited number of social venues and rather mediocre food. But, one does not travel to Iceland for the food but for the unique landscape and nature.
© Dominique Magada (text and pictures)
