Iceland 2006

Karen & I had Iceland on the list of places we'd like to go to 'some day'. Why? What's not to love! Glaciers! Volcanos! Friendly people! Vikings! Stark scenery! Bjork! Plus, Reykjavik is on every path between any two places in the world, so it seemed inevitable. When we found out that the Sugarcubes -- one of Karen's favorite bands in college -- was having their 20th anniversary reunion show for one night only in Reykjavik, we decided 'some day' might as well be now. Karen got to fulfill two do-before-you-die goals: Going to Reykjavik and seeing Bjork (a member of the Sugarcubes) perform live.
Our first day, after an exhausting redeye flight, we excitedly napped all day, then ventured out for a meal. It was really friggin' cold. We were told that this was the windiest November on record. Iceland actually has relatively mild temperatures considering how far north it is, but the windchill was painful. We had highs in the 20s and lows in the single digits, with, I'd guess, 30-40 mph winds. It's one thing to be outside for a couple of minutes, but as tourists we were spending a lot of time outside. In this picture, you might note a pointed building off in the distance, just to the left and below the street lamp. That's the tallest building in the city (Hallgrimskirkja) and is much, much further away than the other buildings in this picture.
We took refuge in a building along the way which just happened to be the City Hall and one of the places that I'd noted in the guidebooks as a place we might go. It houses, among other things, a massive, to-scale model of the country. You can see, in orange, all of the inhabited areas. The big blob of orange is Reykjavik. There are about 300,000 people in Iceland. About 190,000 live in Reykjavik.
Iceland is on top of a hot spot in the Earth's crust where two plates are pulling apart. I noticed this volcano on the map in the City Hall.
After a very excellent dinner (Vidth Tjornina) we ventured out to find the Volcano Show. Villi Knudsen is a wonderful, ecentric, documentary film maker, following in the footsteps of his father. He runs a small theater where he shows his own films. It was so cold that Karen & I were the first visitors to show up in two nights, so after he roused from his sleep we were treated to some wonderful stories before being shown in to see the films. Islands rising up out of the sea, volcanoes erupting under glaciers, boulders the size of a house being rolled out to sea by massive floods. It was impressive.
On day two we walked the short distance to the National Museum and spent a wonderful few hours fully exploring it. They didn't allow pictures. Iceland was settled in about the 900s. A genetic study has shown that about 80% of the men and about 50% of the women who settled Iceland came from Norway and most of the rest came from Ireland. The settlers were fleeing the losing side of a civil war and taxes and many of them apparently stopped off for 'provisioning' in Ireland. We then took quite a rather long, cold, uphill walk to reach Hallgrimskirkja. This church absolutely dominates the skyline. It's built on a hill in the center of the city and is far taller than anything else. There's a wonderfully grand organ inside (though we didn't hear it) and an (outdoor) observation deck near the top of the spire.
View from the top of Hallgrimskirkja. Look how cute the houses are and how beautiful the scenery is!
Zoomed-in shot of the moutains from the top of Hallgrimskirkja.
After Hallgrimskirkja we spent a bit of time looking at the sculptures outside of the Einar Jonsson Museum and then started heading towards the place where we planned to catch a bus over to the concert. Along the way, being hungry, we stopped into this very wonderful vegetarian restaurant (Cafe Gardthurinn), only later realizing that by chance we'd ended up at one of the restaurants we'd noted from the guidebooks as places we might like to go.
Then, still on the way to catch the bus, we happened upon this music shop, which just so happens to be the one run by the recording company that the Sugarcubes set up to support local music. The dress pictured here was worn in one of Bjork's videos. It's made up of bells which Bjork plays in the video.
The concert was good. The hall held about five thousand people. We were about as far as you could get from the stage, but had brought our binoculars. There were a couple of opening bands I liked, particularly Mum. I failed to get a single decent picture, but have about 25 video snippets.
The only picture from the concert that's in focus.
On our third day we explored the old cemetary on our way down to the city center. Looks like there might be (have been?) some Jews in Iceland.
Here you can see Hallgrimskirkja rising up over the city. We're also overlooking Lake Tjorn, which sits right next to the city center. The lake was frozen over and we saw various people out skating on it during the day and at night.
After some shopping downtown to procure THE BEST HAT EVER for Karen (her previous one wasn't quite up to what Iceland could dish out) and another excellent vegetarian meal (A Naestu Grosum), we took a bus up to Perlan. These tanks used to hold geothermally heated water that was distributed to the city. They've been retired now and turned into a wax history museum and a cafeteria. I've got no idea what these sculptures are for. Maybe if it had been ten degrees warmer I might have been willing to look around for a plaque or something. Note the long shadows. It was about 3:30pm. At winter solstice, Iceland gets about four hours of daylight. We were getting about seven or eight while we were there.
After the excellent National Museum the day before, Perlan seemed like a bit of a joke. In retrospect, though, the figures and scenes do give a reasonable presentation of some of the history of iceland. The National Museum is far, far better though. (Note the wax cat off to the right.)
At Perlan we met up with Helga, pictured here with her son. Helga and I each have a sister who married into the same family. Our brother-in-laws are brothers. It's a bit of a tenuous link, but I met Helga's sister at a family function about six months before we went to Iceland and she was kind enough to put me in touch with Helga who was kind enough to show us around for a few hours. We got to see some things we wouldn't have otherwise, including this pump station on the river that runs through Reykjavik. Helga took us on a drive around the city where, amongst others, we saw a lighthouse (ironically it was too dark to see it), the house where Gorbachev and Reagan had their historic meeting (the modesty of the place was discordant with the momentousness of what was achieved there), and the best hot dog stand in the city. I can't be sure, but I think it was the same place that Anthony Bourdain has a hot dog in his Iceland episode. We didn't actually stop to eat. Next time. The best things that Helga showed us, though, was the washing facilities at the public park. Up until the 1940s, apparently, the entire city of Reykjavik would show up at these hot springs to do their washing. Why not? Free hot water.
That evening we took the first of three bus tours. The whole point of the evening bus tour was to see the Northern Lights. We completely failed to do this because a storm was coming in and the sky was overcast. Others claimed that they saw a faint green glow in the sky. I'll admit that I saw a faint glow, but there wasn't anything green. This sign is from the bus depot. Notice the sheep's head on the plate. It's a traditional food in Iceland and can be found in the frozen section of any local grocery, as I understand it. Karen's got a DVD of the Sugarcubes with all sorts of weird extras on it, including one of the band members playing around in a grocery store and, in fact, producing a sheep's head from the frozen section. I was pleased to see a sheep's head show up in Anthony Bourdain's Iceland episode, too.
On day four we took a day long bus tour to the 'Golden Circle', which is a popular set of sights near Reykjavik. The first stop was pretty cheesy -- The Garden of Eden. What they do there is actually quite cool -- it's a massive set of geothermally heated green houses -- but it's been turned into a tourist trap, complete with silly characters like this guy. I gotta admit I liked this guy, though.
Next stop was this frozen lake in the bottom of a volcanic crater. I believe Anthony Bourdain showed this as well, but it was nowhere near as picturesque because the whole thing was covered in snow. I just love the frozen patterns on the top of the lake. It was cold here. Really cold and windy. As at many other stops on our trip, I was barely able to bare my hand long enough to use my camera. It was nowhere near as cold and windy as our next stop, though.
Gulfoss, or the Golden Falls. Note the two separate levels of falls. This picture was taken approxmately five stories up from a cliffside overlooking the falls. It was by far the windiest spot we'd been in. To reach it required walking up a (sturdy, at least) set of wooden steps and then walking along a pathway. I was being blown off balance. You can imagine what poor Karen experienced. We didn't stay long. Note the pathway snaking out towards the falls that reaches a spit of somewhat flat land that sticks out right into the middle of the falls. Note the handrails that extend along the path towards the spit but don't actually go out onto the spit. Our guide suggested we not go out there and try to deal with the massive winds on icy, rocky terrain. I thought that was pretty good advice. There were some brave souls, though, who successfully navigated their way out and back. I think it would be an awesome experience to get out there when the falls are in full gush rather than mostly frozen like they're shown here.
The word geyser was coined from the name Geyser, which refers to an actual geyser at this site. Unfortunately, Geyser stopped going off back in, like, the 1950s. Still, there's another geyser here, Strokkur, which goes off every eight or ten minutes. I don't have a still of Strokkur going off, but you can see at least a bit of the steam coming out of the ground. The nearby, one room museum had stills of the moment before Strokkur goes off when water bulges out of the hole in a steaming, swirlying hemisphere before exploding upwards. Way cool.
The last part of our Golden Circle tour took us through the seven kilometer wide rift zone. The rift zone runs roughly diagonally through Iceland from the southwest through the northeast. This zone is where one finds the many volcanoes on and near Iceland and is also where the land is literally pulling apart. The ridge running through the middle of the picture is one of the largest (and I guess oldest) rifts. Note the frozen waterfall in the middle. In the foreground you can see a much smaller rift. Note the mountains in the background. The mountains were grand and majestic and all around us during this part of the tour. This ridge was the original site for the Allthingy. (Really -- the correct spelling includes Icelandic characters I don't have readily available to me.) The Allthingy is the oldest (though not continuous) democracy in the world and was instituted in the 900s. Leaders would come from around the island to meet for a couple of weeks in the summer to discuss business, make laws, pass sentences, and party. It was moved to a building in Reykjavik in the 1800s, I believe.
This particular rift is used as a wishing well and has a bridge built over it.
Me on the bus. Very happy to be out of the elements.
Me and Karen on the bus. Note that Karen is wearing THE BEST HAT EVER.
On our fifth and final day we took a bus tour that dropped us off at the airport. There were two main stops on the tour. The first was at The Blue Lagoon, which is a spa and health center built around the hot springs that are the castoff of a huge geothermal plant. The waters and resulting silt are apparently rich in healing minerals. We had the surreal pleasure of swimming in 100 degree water with 20 degree winds blowing over our heads. A bit crazy, but still quite enjoyable. This shot was taken through the cafe's window.
Shown here are some of the blue waters just lying around near The Blue Lagoon. Note the electric blue color of the water. Note also the snow covered volcanic rocks. Despite eating in the cafe after our swim, I found myself a bit hungry as we drove off to our next stop. These snow covered rocks kept reminding me of chocolate chip ice cream. Mmmm. Ice cream.
Our final stop before the airport was the sea shore. Shown here in the distance is an island that's home to the largest colony of gannets (it's a bird -- listen to more Monty Python!) in the world. The sea shore was kind of cool with the crashing waves and volcanic rock cliffsides. Apparently, though, at the right time of year it's home to thousands upon thousands of birds. We saw two.
So that was our trip. It was cold and blustery, but we mostly were able to turn that into fun and Karen got a great hat out of it. I had few expectations and really enjoyed learning something about the history and geography of the place. It was wonderful getting a chance to meet Helga and get the perspective of a local. There was great food and interesting food and some of it was both. I, for instance, had the shark that Anthony Bourdain thought was atrocious and thought it was alright (though not worth the price). The concert was a lot of fun and people were very helpful and friendly. My biggest disappointment was not getting to see the Northern Lights. The thing I enjoyed most (besides that I got to share all of this with Karen) was the National Museum. Or maybe the Volcano show. Or the adventure of trying to get to the concert. Ack! I can't pick just one. Reykjavik's a great place to visit. Majestic views. Interesting geography. Walkable, attractive city center. I recommend it. If you're traveling to travel rather than to be a tourist or, heaven forbid, do work, than traveling is fun. The good times are good and the bad times make good stories. You might, uh, want to go in summer, though.