ICELAND.
Prihyrningsfjallgardur… Kirkjubaejarklaustur… Bjarnarflagsstod… You’d be forgiven for assuming that the cat’s been stomping about on my keyboard again. Truth is, however, plucking place names at random off a map of Iceland as we fly north over the island’s vast, utterly uninhabited interior, I’m praying that we don’t get lost over the course of the next week and have to ask someone the way.
Because not only -on an island boasting just 280,000 inhabitants, more than 50% of whom live in the capital, Reykjavik- is it highly unlikely there’ll be anyone to ask in the first place, but also, correctly pronouncing a place-name which sounds like a cross between the last inch of water leaving a bath and a man who’s inadvertently inhaled a fruit fly comes under the fat chance category. No foreigner has ever fully mastered Icelandic. So play it safe; if you are going to settle in Iceland, make the local taxi driver happy and live in Vik. As in vapour rub.
A dusting of snow covers the landscape as we land In Akureyri, the capital of northern Iceland -a bit of a shock to the system with mid-May England in the full flush of spring. Then again, the northern tip of Iceland nudging into the Arctic Circle, a July blizzard isn’t uncommon here. Iceland, it seems, doesn’t get real weather, only samples; the T-shirt clad locals delighting in chuckled reassurance that, if you don’t like it, you just have to wait five minutes and it’ll change.
Odd, then, to find such a climactically inhospitable island –where, for several months of the winter the sun simply refuses to stagger over the horizon at all –inhabited. But this is what happens when you try and tell a Viking what to do… History suggests that bossing Vikings about can be very hazardous to the health indeed. Yet, in 870 AD, it was precisely such meddlesome behaviour by the incumbent king of Scandinavia, Harald that put the legendary navigational skills of a fistful of longboat crews to the test once more, in search of pastures new.
New they found. Pastures, on the other hand, proved somewhat harder to come by on an island that is still very much the geological toddler of the planet. Nowhere else in the world do lava deserts, active volcanoes and kilometre thick ice caps jostle for position on an island smaller than England. And nowhere else in the world have I consistently harboured the disconcerting feeling that, were I to bend down and run a Stanley knife across the ground, it would promptly bleed molten lava…
Terra here being anything but firma, the tenacious Icelanders have survived countless, appalling natural catastrophes over the centuries. None worse than in 1783-5, when the largest volcanic eruption the world has ever seen killed a quarter of the entire population at a stroke when the ‘Haze of Hunger’ (dust from the eruption) blocked out the sun. Indeed, Iceland still experiences some 20 earthquakes a day. But these tend to be minor tremors, and I still can’t choose between a sense of disappointment or relief that, over the course of my visit, I didn’t experience so much as a tangible shudder (unless you include a first encounter with smoked puffin) at first hand.
Lake Myvatn, an hour east of Akureyri on Route 1, offers the perfect introduction to the bewildering diversity of Iceland’s brutal, beguiling landscape. From the windows of the Hotel Myvatn (the water supply of which reeks so strongly of sulphur I confess to having resorted to bottled water for teeth cleaning purposes) my view of a lake teeming with waterfowl frantically courting to make the most of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it summer is partially obscured by close-bunched clutches of moss covered, fledgling volcanoes, dimpled like freshly vacated bean-bags. On the lake’s eastern shore the brooding Hverfjall stands sentinel. Thought relatively diminutive by Icelandic standards, this kilometre wide crater is all the more impressive for the complete absence of vegetation on its coal-black slopes; a testament both to its relatively recent appearance 2500 years ago and the astonishing lengths of time it takes life of any form to establish a first, tenuous foothold on the virgin terrain.
By contrast, the Krafla volcanic region, 10km the north east of Lake Myvatn, is still busy as cheese. Here, a succession of nine eruptions in 1975 understandably put the building nearby of one of Iceland’s numerous geothermal power stations on hold. And, even thereafter, attempts to drill a borehole into the underground steam chamber caused an explosion so powerful that bits of the rig were later discovered over three kilometres away. Today, stand beside any of the PowerStation pressure release valves hissing gouts of superheated steam into the air and the ground trembles alarmingly at the unspeakable power barely contained beneath my decidedly itchy feet.
Sadly, our attempts to explore the areas’ innumerable fissures, craters, boiling mud pools and steaming vents on foot are somewhat scotched by a combination of snow cover and dense cloud. You’re ill-advised to wander about here when the pathways are obscured; beneath a wafer thin crust, much of the ground has a disturbing habit of being molten. Besides, Krafla is due to erupt again any day now: Cue mass exodus of petrified tourist and clamouring influx of curious Icelanders who, despite the fact that even the smallest dollop of magma on the head won’t stop travelling south until it exits your shoe leather, are famed for converging on each fresh eruption from far and wide.
At breakfast the next morning we realise we’ve both slept the full eight, er, minutes. The problem isn’t so much that at this time of year nights last about as long as it takes to say ‘No, I’m sorry, I really cannot face pickled fish at this time in the morning’, but that, in the absence of darkness, the birds never shut up. The biggest culprits being the snipe: They too are courting like crazy and the process involves a peculiar, aerobatic, tail feather splaying ritual which creates a sound much like a cross between a miniature football rattle and a length of hosepipe whirled rapidly round the head. I’m able to report in such detail on this due to hours of painstaking study. Oh for a 12 bore…
Now, whereas many Europeans today think nothing of choosing their own cowering, main course crustacean from a large frothing tank in the corner of a restaurant, Icelanders approach the task of appetite appeasement in an even more forthright manner: They simply climb aboard a respectably sized ship, splosh off into the mid-Atlantic and choose a whole whale for supper.
Though the whaling debate rages every bit as heatedly in Iceland as it does throughout the rest of the world, the greatest single benefit to an Icelander in catching a whale is that it merely means he doesn’t have to go fishing again for an especially long time. Because, despite the fact that almost 80% of the island’s economy revolves around fishing, Icelanders would rather not go to sea unless it’s absolutely essential. So you’ll never see bright shoals of pleasure boats biffing about off the entrance to Husavik harbour; after all, it’s even more cold, bleak and perilous out there than it is ashore…
Mercifully, however, the sea is remarkably benign today and, in high spirits and seriously bad hats, we putter gently out of Husavik harbour for a spot of whale watching aboard a reassuringly stout converted fishing trawler.
A school of white-beaked dolphins escort us out into waters still so cold that a scant 15 second immersion would instantly transform me into a blue-lipped human. Nonetheless the sea is, apparently, already warm enough for Minke whales (pronounced as Inspector Clouseau would say monkey) to come quite close inshore. Sadly, our three hour vigil goes unrewarded. But, albeit on a less than leviathan scale, the ocean still teems with all manner of life: Fulmars, past masters of the low-level fly-past, are so numerous it’s a wonder they don’t occasionally bang together in a puff of outraged feathers. Squadrons of eider duck sporting extraordinary mullets of a day-glo green hue more usually associated with a ditch-digger operative’s waistcoat bob disconsolately along fretting about TOG values. And, around a huge, guano-stained stump of rock called Lundey Island, ineptly flap several hundred thousand puffins. Or, as the Icelanders call them, lunch.
I hadn’t realised quite what a bird-watcher’s paradise Iceland is. Twitching, moreover, with a twist: Spend all day eyeing assorted exotic species through binoculars, and then retire to a local restaurant and eat them. I recommend a little place called Bautinn in Akureyri, where both black guillemot and puffin are on the menu. Since I’ve never tasted anything remotely like the former before, I can only describe the flavour as, well, black guillemot. Puffin is another matter entirely. Though whether you’ll like it or not depends on how you feel about a dish that looks and cuts like duck breast, but sneaks up on the taste buds with the full-on flavour of anchovies.
‘Where is everybody’ I ask the restaurant owner of the almost deserted pedestrian precinct. Akureyri being the second largest town in Iceland, I’d expected something of a Saturday lunchtime turnout. ‘This is everybody’ he replies. For not only does Akureyri boast just 15,000 inhabitants, but they also appear immensely reluctant to be shoehorned from their cars.
Forget ruddy complexions, stout hiking boots and thighs like tugboats; such couture is strictly for tourists. Rarely stooping to anything as technologically mundane as hiking, the Icelander drives everywhere, preferably waiting until the weather is truly vile before piling aboard convoys of vast 4x4s boasting CB radio, satellite navigation and tyres like over inflated Space Hoppers, in the direction of the nearest glacier. Once there, they’ll lower tyre pressure to a feeble 2lbs per square inch to give maximum footprint and grip, and happily biff about all day dodging crevasses.
Happily, driving conditions along Route 1, which circumnavigates the island, are less hazardous. Nonetheless, though billed as pretty much the only tarmac clad surface on the island, even the Ring Road submits to the occasional bout of unmade bed, as we quickly discover heading east from Lake Myvatn the next morning to Egilsstadir on the east coast.
Most of the journey to Egilsstadir would pass muster as a World Rally Championship special stage. Now I know why 90kph is the maximum speed limit anywhere on the island; what seems wounded tortoise pace on tarmac so empty of traffic you’re lucky to pass another car once every hour becomes more than challenging on an unmade surface which, though largely remarkably smooth, offers all the grip of the Keystone Kops let loose in a marble factory.
All vestiges of the recent snow have now disappeared from all but the distant peaks, and I suddenly understand why every inch of Iceland’s ‘main’ roads are lined with incongruously bright yellow posts: In the absence of vegetation, the road is all too often exactly the same colour and texture as the hundred thousand acre, ash and lava field across which it has been meticulously bulldozed. After dark, without these posts in place, progress would be impossible. You would, quite simply, be peering through the windscreen at the world’s most difficult jigsaw.
Today, a brief flurry of fine weather affords one astonishing view after another at every bend in the road. In the absence of colour, the adjacent lava fields, punctuated by the occasional perfect, pert cone of ash, take on a remarkable range of forms; here a forest of jagged obelisks like wet beach sand dribbled through the fingers into clumsy peaks, there an endless jumble of hot-air balloon sized hemi-spheres burped upward by pressure from below, their surfaces split open like the fissures atop a freshly baked muffin.
‘God is in the details’ Modern Movement architect Mies van der Rohe once said of his work. The same is true of Iceland. For closer inspection invariably imbues the bleakest of landscapes with both life and colour at a micro-cosmic scale. Set off on foot amidst this maelstrom of tortured rock and a patina of bright lichens, tenacious mosses and even diminutive wild flowers come to light; primitive life clinging on for dear life.
Egilsstadir reveals itself to be a small, unlovely town in vast, beautiful landscape. I wouldn’t, it must be said, hurry to Iceland for the architecture. The climate consistently assaults buildings with all vim of a robber’s cosh, and frill-free functionality is very much the order of the day. Roofs, however, are all made of crinkly tin, which has to be regularly painted to keep it rust and leak free; bright colours are cheapest, so most villages look as if they’ve been decorated by primary school children.
From Egilsstadir, hemmed tight between still, dark waters and precipitous slopes that loom fleetingly out of a cloying sea mist before vanishing into low, scudding clouds, Route 1 zigzags south along a coastline deeply riven with fjords to Hofn, a fishing port huddled on a peninsula within a huge lagoon at the eastern extremes of the south coast. From here, we should be afforded spectacular views of the Vatnajokull ice-cap –the world’s third largest after Antarctica and Greenland- which dominates the southern coastline. But near horizontal rain limits line of sight to the welcoming glow of the Café Hornid, where we settle in like a pair of damp spaniels to discuss tomorrow’s in-the-conservatory-if-wet itinerary alternatives over shark and chips.
With high level visibility down to just 4 metres, an enthusiastically awaited, snowmobile slither atop the ice-cap is out of the question. Happily, however, the Jokulsarlon lagoon more than compensates. This enormous, 600ft deep lagoon is awash with icebergs, amongst which you may putter gently in a pair of stout amphibians purchased from the Americans after seeing service in the Vietnam War. The icebergs crack free from the Breidamerkurjokull glacier at the top of the lagoon and then, trapped by a narrow, shallow river outlet to the sea, are consigned to meander to and fro across the surface of the lagoon, disconsolately biffing into one another until they have melted sufficiently to make good their escape.
Ironically, bad weather here is a must. Out on the freezing waters, mist and rain quickly obscure all sight of land and your entire, eerie, alien world comprises nothing but icebergs of every conceivable shape, size and variation of an all-blue palette. Some of them are truly gigantic. On the basis that only one tenth of an iceberg is visible above water, I’d guess that a fistful of these monsters range in size somewhere between respectable mansion and the Albert Hall. And it’s inadvisable to get too close; as they melt, the bergs become unbalanced and have the alarming habit of rolling the other way up at a moment’s notice. Already soaked to the skin, I’m not sure it’s possible to become any wetter. But I’d just as soon not find out.
At last the weather clears to allow glimpses of the distant ice-cap, glinting in the evening sun like the exposed flesh of a hard-boiled egg of biblical proportions. Driving west, we pass the immense, unkempt ski slopes of glaciers grinding inexorably seawards between rocky crags jutting through the ice, like icing dripping from a badly decorated wedding cake. Ahead, unexpected riot of colour greet us as Route 1 arrows across the enormous lava field of Landbrot. Here, thick moss covers acre upon acre in a dazzling, lumpen goo like bright green shaving foam. It’s so deep and spongy that you sink up to your ankles when walking on it, which is why driving off-road here is strictly forbidden. Tyre tracks will never disappear, the indentations simply growing with the moss in perpetuity.
Pinched between the sea and the smaller Myrdalsjokull ice-cap, Route 1 continues west past a pair of Iceland’s most spectacular waterfalls, Skogafoss and Seljalandsfoss, before we turn inland and head north for Landmannalaugar. The scenery is spectacular beyond description, changing dramatically with every bend in a road surface which vacillates in composition and quality every bit as wildly as the landscapes through which it ambles. Deep rutting of the surface plays such havoc with the hire cars of tourists that they are taken off the road and completely rebuilt after just 6 months of life. Moreover, 30 miles off the beaten track, there are no reassuring yellow posts out here to mark the road surface, so if it snows again we’re somewhat stuffed. At this time of year, a wait for a passing 4×4 is measured in days rather than hours.
No one could live in this hostile interior. So lunar-like is the landscape that NASA brought its astronauts here to prepare for the moon landing. The view is so utterly devoid of colour that I have the disconcerting impression someone’s stolen my eyeballs and replaced them with a pair that only works in black and white. Frequent, reassuring glances at the car are required; it stands out like a tree frog nailed to a blackboard.
The occasional, much need signpost looks as out of place as an humpback whale in Westminster Abbey, my favourite being the sign for a picnic area; a bench beside a tree. Fact is, you’ll be hard pushed to find a respectable tree anywhere in Iceland. All the indigenous species have long since been consigned to longboat status, and attempts to re-afforest have proved somewhat stunted; the national joke being that if you’re lost in an Icelandic forest all you need do is stand up.
Though it lacks the pioneering spirit of more adventurous, wreck-your-rented-car sallies into the island’s interior, a trip to Geysir – on the edge of the lava field at the foot of the Langjokull glacier- is hard to forfeit given the opportunity. After all, it does represent the only Icelandic word ever to have made it into the English language. And, short of the next volcanic eruption, it’s still the best way of appreciating just how precariously Iceland balances atop a vast bubble of the earth’s molten core smouldering just beneath the surface. Here the very ground appears to have caught fire; hissing, steaming, bubbling and rumbling like a post-Mexican food stomach. Ironically, Geysir itself is inactive at the moment, only showing off in synchronisation with the more violent earthquake activity. But the lesser geyser, Strokkur, still bursts into spectacular, boiling life once very 15 minutes, showering the unwary with scalding hot water and almost overpoweringly noxious sulphur smells.
Just one hour’s drive from Reykjavik, the Hotel Valholl, nestling beside the lake in a surprisingly verdant Pingvellir national park is my kind of hotel. ‘What would you like to eat, and when would you like it’? demands the manager before promptly answering his own questions in the next breath. It seems he and the chef are anxious to go fishing this evening; they have 130 people to feed tomorrow and need ‘a couple of trout’ in a hurry. Er, two trout to feed that many… Are you sure? The chef disappears into his kitchen and staggers back out under the weight of the biggest trout I’ve ever seen. It is, no word of a lie, the size of an executive desk. Two it is, then.
Supper bolted, I rapidly find myself up to the waist in water the colour and temperature of iced tea, casting my first fly in 25 years. Glorious. In summer months, when it never gets dark at all, the manager tells me that half of Reykjavik spends the whole night fishing here, before driving straight back to the office first thing in the morning.
It’s said that God’s gift to the Icelanders was a virgin land of incomparable beauty and diversity. But the price they have to pay for that gift is the cost of alcohol. Beer was banned until 1989, and the locals appear to have been making up for it ever since: March 1st is still National Beer Day, marking the end of prohibition. But it’s hard to tell this 24 hour, celebratory binge from any of the other 52 weekends in the Reykjavik party calendar.
Dancing is tackled with equal enthusiasm because it too was once illegal; outlawed by Iceland’s previous rulers the Danes who, recognising it as the vertical expression of a horizontal desire, believed it to be responsible for the high level of illegitimate births on the island.
Due to the cost, most Icelanders don’t leave home for an evening out until the rest of Europe is on its way back to bed. Which gives the visitor plenty of time to sample the delights of Reykjavik cuisine before staggering off to as many as possible of the disproportionately large number of bars and night clubs on offer. It’s hard to believe that Reykjavik had no restaurants at all until 1980, because there’s now a wealth of choice. Though only one place, The Three Friends, where you can go to try whale meat…
Which, I’m astonished to report, is not in the least like the blubbery lump of ocean-going fat I’d expected. It actually resembles, and carves like, a slice of lean pork, whilst tasting faintly of liver. So the next time I’m asked by anyone what I feel about whales, I shall be able to reply that I’m a huge fan, finding them, in fact, quite delicious.
The truly daring can even hunt down one or two traditional, Viking delicacies: Ram’s testicles pickled in whey, soured seal flipper, boiled and pressed sheep’s head, ulp, or perhaps putrefied shark meat… Buried below the high water line on the shore and then left to, er, mature for 6 months, the resultant rotten flesh is eaten in finger-joint sized bites and washed down with a huge slug of Icelandic vodka to ensure both that you don’t taste it, and that it stays put. Legend has it that this dish was eaten to bring strength and bravery to fishermen before setting sail. But it strikes me that anyone who can swallow something this revolting already has all the strength and bravery they’ll ever need.
CAR FACTS:
We bullied our Renault Megane Scenic 1.6 16v Privilege so mercilessly over such an horrifying array of unmade road surfaces that it was something of a relief to be able to hand it back in one piece, rather than two large buckets.
It is to the remarkably tough Scenic’s eternal credit that, despite the fact I consistently ignored the ‘F’ suffix on Icelandic signposts indicating roads suitable for 4×4 traffic only in an effort to place photographer Simon and the most breathtaking scenery in close proximity to one another, it never missed a beat.
Having at one point dropped both nearside wheels clean off a tall, gravel topped, embankment and very nearly rolled the poor thing all the way to the bottom on its roof, I’m also somewhat grateful for a 4-speed automatic transmission which afforded me the painstaking control needed to bring the Scenic inexorably back onto the road without an embarrassing, 15 mile walk back to the main road to flag down help.
The word’s ‘rat’ and ‘smell’ spring to mind as I recall being unable to drive more than half a day without Simon contriving some means or other of soaking me to the skin in the name of a good photograph. So the Scenic’s ruthlessly efficient heating system proved a boon in drying drenched trousers so thoroughly, just in time for my next submersion.
As ever, copious glazing and the high, comfortable seating position make the aptly named Scenic the perfect vehicle from which to view the biggest landscapes I’ve ever seen. And, as ever, Simon’s photography equipment contrived to occupy both loadspace and rear seats of the capacious, flexible Scenic, leaving the modest tools of my trade -Dictaphone, note pad, biro, clean socks- stowed throughout the cabin in the bewildering array of pockets and cubbyholes available. Not to mention a cooled glovebox full of emergency, er, dried fish.
CAPTIONS:
Page 1.
Lake Myvatn seen from the top (pant) of the Hverfjall volcano in a rare burst of sunshine. The lake is awash with honking, flirting, bickering waterfowl which, because there is no night, keep you awake all night.
Page 2.
The Kviarjokull glacier grinding its way inexorably down to a lagoon at the foot of the massive Vatnajokull ice cap –the third largest in the world after Antarctica and Greenland.
Pages 3 and 4 (clockwise from the top).
1. The Hverfjall cater. Closer inspection reveals myriad forms of bright moss, lichen and diminutive wild flowers establishing a tenuous toe-hold on an ostensibly barren landscape. Trees prove somewhat harder to come by.
2. The Godafoss falls on Route 1 between Akureyri and Myvatn. Icelandic rivers are universally incapable of flowing more than 100 yards without throwing themselves enthusiastically over a cliff. Stupendous waterfalls are everywhere.
3. 20 earthquakes per day ensure nothing except putrefied shark meat is buried underground in Iceland, including geothermal steam pipelines.
4. Downtown Reykjavik at 7.00pm; at least six hours before the inhabitants come out to play on a Saturday night.
5. Driving on a surface like spilled marbles for hours on end requires huge concentration, and a heater going at full bore to dry out sodden trousers.
Page 5 (clockwise from the top).
1. Steam rises from the turbulent landscape of Krafla. The area is due another huge eruption at any time now, causing tourists to flee and Icelanders, to a man, to get as close to the scene of the volcanic violence as possible.
2. People in grass houses…
3. The ‘Sun Voyager’; a longboat sculpture, complete with facsimile horned helmets overlooking Reykjavik harbour. When the sun shines the stainless steel flares into life. When the sun shines…
4. Flash fried black guillemot with a mustard sauce. Poor thing.
Page 6.
The towering Skogafoss falls on the south coast. The car, despite being a good 200 yards from the foot of the falls, is utterly drenched in spray. So, indeed, is the driver.
Pages 7 and 8 (clockwise from the top).
1. Route 1 skirting the coastline near Hofn on the south coast. From alongside a diminutive acreage of the only green pastures in Iceland, the landscape leaps into clouds veiling the immense Vatnajokull ice-cap.
2. Reindeer. Or, as the Icelanders call them, supper.
3. An unfriendly section of Route 1 en route to Eglisstadir from Myvatn. In the background, the Prihyrningsfjallgardur mountains… Don’t bother asking directions if you get lost.
4. A very, very bad hat indeed in which to watch whales. And, of course, eat them.
5. Cod fishermen in Husavik harbour on the north coast. If it was the only job in the world I’d still say ‘no thanks’.
Pages 9 and 10 (clockwise from the top).
1. Overlooking Seydisfjordur on the road from Egilsstadir. Spectacular, despite the clouds’ best efforts to usurp the sea from its rightful place in the landscape.
2. The converted trawler, Nattfari, leaves Husavik harbour on a whale watching expedition. The sea rapidly became considerably less calm.
3. Peering out from Dimmuborgir’s ‘black castles’; a vast acreage of tortured volcanic pillars and crags beside Lake Myvatn, in which you may become hopelessly lost on foot.
4. An adult sperm whale skeleton in Husavik’s whale centre. Each of those teeth is the size of a shot glass.
Page 11.
Top: the Landbrot lava field on the south coast. The moss here is so thick and spongy that you sink up to your ankles. Driving over it is strictly forbidden; the tyre tracks remain, growing with the moss for eternity.
Bottom: Landmannalaugar, deep within the interior. We shouldn’t even be here without a 4×4, but wanted to see where the American astronauts practiced for their moon landing. Every footprint here feels like the first made by mankind.