Gone to Iceland

By Elizabeth Johnstone

In November 2013, Iceland‘s world famous rock group Sigur Rós performed in concert in London. As the opening chords of ‘Brennisteinn‘ (‘Brimstone‘) thundered round Wembley Arena, accompanied by images of spewing volcanoes, I turned to my friend and announced: ‘I am so going to Iceland!‘ And I did.

I have an interest in all things Nordic, and have long held an ambition to visit the land of ice and fire. My husband and I spent a week in Reykjavik in June 2015, alternating days in the city with day-long excursions. In view of previous happenings in Iceland (and I will return to the topic of Eyjafjallajökull), I was anxious to have full ATOL protection. I put together a Thomas Cook package comprising seven nights at the Hilton Nórdica Hotel with Easyjet flights from Gatwick.

Arriving at Keflavik Airport, most tourists opt for the Flybus or Gray Line coach transfer service which, for a small supplement, links up with minibuses in the city centre to take you to your hotel (and in reverse on the return journey) There is no other public transport from the airport, which is a good 35 miles outside the city. 

Our hotel, unsurprisingly, catered for an American clientele for whom Iceland was a picturesque stopover en route to or from Europe. It had ‘restrooms‘ but no ‘ground floor‘. Our room was spotless but somewhat small. There was little storage space – I guess few guests were there long enough to unpack! Breakfast was a lavish buffet with both US and Icelandic influences. My husband selflessly samples the bacon and eggs in every hotel we stay at, whereas I make a beeline for smoked salmon and other Nordic specialities. Both were excellent. A bottle of cod liver oil stood proudly on the counter and I saw more than one person take a little plastic glass of it. Iceland has its own yoghurt, called skyr. It is not really a yoghurt, more like fromage frais or the German quark. I enjoyed it.
The hotel was about a mile out of the city centre but offered its guests the free use of a bus pass. Public transport holds no terrors for me and soon we were jumping on and off the buses.

The population of Iceland is approximately 330,000 of whom about two thirds live in or around Reykjavik. Consequently, everything is on a small scale. We started our sightseeing at the grandly named National Museum, two nicely set-out floors of displays and artefacts in a building beside the University. Nothing is too far in this compact city centre. We walked to the Tjörnin or Pond (cognate with ‘tarn‘), the pocket-sized lake which is home to dozens of native and visiting birds. After getting pleasantly lost looking for the tourist information centre, we had a quick sandwich in a coffee shop and headed along the main shopping street, Laugavegur. This name means ‘laundry way‘, because local women used its hot springs for washing clothes. There are no department stores in the city centre, but plenty of designer shops and tourist emporia.

We walked up the hill to the Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland‘s biggest church, whose arresting architecture mimics the basalt pillars formed in the aftermath of volcanic eruptions. In truth, I preferred its sober interior. Outside the church, Leifur Eiríksson adopts a heroic pose, about to sail to America. Many of the streets in the neighbourhood are named after Norse gods. Paganism is not far beneath the surface in a land converted to Christianity only by king’s diktat in 1000 AD. The first new pagan temple in the Nordic countries for a thousand years is to be built in Reykjavik for the practitioners of the Asatru religion. Thor is still a popular name – Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi‘s full name is Jón Þór (or ‘Thor‘) Birgisson.

Heading back to the hotel, we explored the magnificent Harpa building, the city‘s pride and joy, which houses the opera and other cultural facilities. It is a photographer‘s dream, a steel framework clad with geometric shaped glass panels of different colours. Like so much in Iceland, its fate was uncertain in 2008, but it was duly completed. Walking to the bus stop, we passed the iconic ‘Sunfarer‘ sculpture, with its echoes of a Viking longboat. My camera was working overtime by now!

Our days out were arranged through the excellent Iceland Horizon, who specialise in just three trips and only use minibuses carrying up to fifteen people. The smaller numbers mean that you get in and out of the most popular tourist sights quickly and the minibuses were able to access smaller places off the beaten track for added value. We had three different driver-guides, each of whom had lots of local knowledge and personal anecdotes to keep us entertained. Each had been affected in a different way by les événements in 2008. One, for example, had lost his job as a television repair engineer. Another was a retired coastguard pilot. The repercussions of the crash are still being felt, in terms of high interest payments and house repossessions. There is national recovery, but the country is not out of the woods yet.

Our first day trip was to the 100-kilometre peninsula of Snaefelnes, with its glistening fjords, dramatic volcanic peaks, vertiginous sea cliffs and ancient lava flows. At its heart is the Snæfellsjökull, ‘snow mountain glacier‘, immortalised in Jules Verne‘s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Unfortunately, weather conditions did not permit us to get close to the glacier, but we were told that we would benefit from its emanations of other-worldly energy. Horses everywhere! The Icelandic pony has graduated into a full horse. They are eagerly sought overseas because of their intelligence and hardiness, and horse-trekking (or ‘rental‘, as our guide put it) is a major tourist attraction. 

Next day had a maritime theme. The old harbour has been revamped into a tourist destination. We walked to the furthest part and explored the new attraction ‘Whales of Iceland‘. A simple concept – massive, life-size models of whales, in something like a hangar, with lots of information and photo opportunities. We saw two imposing ships with a prominent ‘H‘ on the funnel. If you are an English speaker from Scotland or the north, you may pronounce ‘where‘ as ‘hwhere‘. Or ‘whale‘ as ‘hwhale‘. Yes, these ships were whalers. Opinion in Iceland is divided on whaling. With year-round food availability, few Icelanders now eat whale, but it is offered to visitors who want to sample local delicacies. So tourists are perpetuating the whaling industry. The whale-watching companies – another major contribution to tourism – are keen to discourage patronage of any restaurant which serves whale. Their motto – ‘Meet us, don‘t eat us!‘

When there was literally nothing to eat over a harsh Atlantic winter, the hardy Icelanders could not afford the luxury of squeamishness. A stranded whale was a godsend that could feed a village for weeks. Puffins and guillemots were free protein. Shark was buried for months to break down the ammonia in its flesh and render it edible. Nowadays, these items are offered as curiosities to tourists but, sadly, several of these species are endangered. My advice: just say no!

We debated whether or not to go to the famous Blue Lagoon, walk-in price £35 each plus an hour‘ drive. In the end we didn‘t go but, for a fraction of the cost, (less than £4 each) we strolled to the nearby Laugardalslaug public swimming pool complex. The air temperature was about 11° C. The water temperature in the open-air pool was about mid-30°s C. and in the ‘hotpots‘ around the edge hotter still. There is no chlorine in the geothermally heated water and a stern attendant makes sure you shower thoroughly i.e. naked and with soap. Foreigners are notoriously slack about this, in Icelandic eyes. But what a fabulous facility to enjoy, for an extremely low price.

The second day trip was the South Shore tour. More wonders of nature. We started with a mini-tour of our guide‘s home town, Hveragerði, in an area so geothermally active that the steam comes up out of the ground everywhere. There are greenhouses over the heat, and the town is famous for flowers and a geothermal restaurant. On a more gruesome note, it has no cemetery, as the underground conditions are not suitable for interring bodies. Just outside the post office, in the shopping centre, you can look down to the rift between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.

We carried on out into the countryside, driving past the infamous Eyjafjallajökull whose emissions grounded air traffic in May 2010. As a linguist, I have made it my mission to pronounce this word correctly. The name means ‘glacier‘ (or more properly ‘ice cap‘) of the Eyjafjöll. The word jökull, meaning glacier or ice cap, is a cognate with the Middle English word ikel surviving in the -icle of English ‘icicle’. We were bombarded with facts about volcanoes, glaciers, seismic shifts and other apocalyptic events which have occurred from time to time. We drove within sight of the Westman Islands, scene of a month-long volcanic eruption in 1973, which was eventually doused with 6.8 billion litres of cold sea water.
Our guide walked us up to the very edge of the Sólheimajökull glacier. Unfortunately, its surface was dirty but, in places, you could discern the startling blue ice underneath. He brings visitors out to see it regularly and gloomily concluded that it was shrinking, almost before his eyes.

The last stopping place on this tour was the black sand beach at Höfðabrekka which you might recognise from the last scene of the film Noah, where Russell Crowe gets drunk. It was also used for Frostfangs scenes in Game of Thrones. Volcanic action has led to stunning rock formations, but the stars of the show are the puffins. Impossibly cute, they perch atop the cliffs in their nesting areas before launching themselves laboriously out to sea to find food for their pufflings.

Our last full city day was a little more relaxed. We saw the Settlement Exhibition with its special display of some original saga manuscripts. These national treasures can still be read and understood today. My husband was keen to go whale watching. I would not pay money to go onto any sort of marine craft unless my life depended on it, so we split up for the afternoon. He told me later that he enjoyed the boat trip, but that they had only fleeting glimpses of the animals, guided by a spotter high up on an observation platform. Faxafloi Bay is not an aquarium; the whales were not putting on a Seaworld display of tumbling. One fun fact was the ‘stinky minke‘. Apparently, you can smell the bad breath of a minke whale long before you see it. The whale watching company, Elding, gave us a voucher for money off in their (whale-friendly) restaurant.

Meanwhile, I was amusing myself on Laugavegur. For the first time, I bought an item tax free, at the suggestion of the shop owner. As Iceland is outside the EU, you can fill in a form and hand it in at the airport on the way home. That fur hat will feel all the cosier when those extra few pounds are refunded onto my credit card. I enjoyed lobster soup for lunch at the Sægreifinn (‘Seabaron‘) restaurant, as explored by Ainsley Harriott in the Reykjavik episode of his Streetfood series. Icelandic lobster is really crayfish, but none the less tasty for that.
Our third day trip was the classic Golden Circle excursion. There are three major stopping points. The first is the magnificent double waterfall of Gullfoss (‘golden waterfall‘). In Iceland, you can get blasé about waterfalls, but Gullfoss is a beauty. In the visitor centre car park, I saw my first ever public toilet with a credit card reader at the entrance. Very occasionally, a charge of 100 kr. (about 60p) was levied for a public or service station toilet. At Gullfoss and, later, at Þingvellir, the city fathers had decided that 200kr, about £1.20, was appropriate, possibly because there was no other option to extract money from tourists on such open sites.

The second stop was the geothermal area at Geysir. The eponymous geyser has not gushed for many years, but its companion, Strokkur, entertained and occasionally soaked the crowd. Elsewhere on the site, boiling pools plopped and seethed. A smell of sulphur hung in the air.

The third stop was the rift valley at Þingvellir (‘parliament fields‘). Viewers of ‘The Vikings‘ will remember that Ragnar and his companions periodically travelled to the ‘Thing‘ or assembly. Iceland‘s first parliament was founded here in 930 AD. The rift valley marks the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are pulling apart. Once again, spectacular scenery with mind-boggling statistics underpinning it.
On the very last day, our flight was not until late afternoon, so we strolled over to the beautifully tended Botanical Gardens. The temperature had crept up to a balmy 14° and some Icelanders were in lightweight summer jackets. The floral displays reminded me of municipal planting in Scotland, quite a lot further south than this island which flirts with the Arctic Circle.

Our journey home was uneventful. The pick-up service worked perfectly and we had plenty of time to enjoy the superb facilities and shopping of Keflavik Airport, not forgetting to hand in the paperwork for my purchase tax refund. A tip: counter-intuitively, the airport shopping really is cheaper than in the city! Our return flight was too late for the last train, so we spent a night at the immaculate and good-value Premier Inn at Gatwick North Terminal. Sadly, Lenny Henry was not there to turn down the covers.

The midnight sun was quite something. I am used to late summer nights, but it was strange to go to bed at 11.30pm in perfect daylight. The Secret Solstice rock festival was in town over the weekend. No need for the rockers to stay up all night. They had 72 hours of daylight.

What were my overall impressions of Iceland and the world‘s most northerly capital city? Our day trips took us to a relatively small area in the south-east of the country. Thrill-seekers and geology aficionados have a lot more to explore further west. Reykjavik is not big; the population of the capital city area is less than that of the London Borough of Camden. It offers more than enough sightseeing, shopping and dining for a long weekend, but that is probably long enough for Reykjavik itself. 

It is interesting to chart the rapid rise of Reykjavik from a collection of fishing huts to a 21st century capital city. Many traces of its humble beginnings remain, not least in old corrugated-iron fronted cottages next to ultra-modern multi-storey buildings. There are no railways, and no MacDonalds. However, there is an app for everything, including incest prevention. (You can log into the genealogical database and check how closely-related you are to your new date.) They refuse to import the word ‘computer‘ and call it tölva or ‘number prophetess‘. It is an almost cashless society, down to the overpriced public toilets at national beauty spots. Everyone knows everyone else. You are called by your first name (all three tour guides came into the hotel asking for ‘Elizabeth‘), even in the phone book. Your second name shows that you are someone‘s ‘son‘ or dóttir. All in all, a fascinating blend of the old and the new.

And that‘s why this mum went to Iceland!

First published in VISA 123 (October 2015)