Around Reykjavik the Next Few Days

So here are a few sights in the city of Reykjavik. Two structures dominate the city skyline (and I use the term "skyline" loosely as there are not too many really tall buildings. To dominate the skyline, a building pretty much has to be on a hilltop). The first is The Pearl, a hot water tower converted into a luxury restaurant, tourist center and museum. The Saga Museum is a privately owned and operated wax museum displaying scenes from the Icelandic Sagas. Better attraction than I expected. My favorite tableau for sentimental reasons was from this great story from the sagas, one I tell my American History students most years, about the attempted settlement of North America. A financial transaction with the locals turned into a nasty business when the natives attacked the village. Surrounded and outnumbered the men fled to the longships at the bay, leaving one sincerely PO'ed woman named Freydis, daughter of Erik the Red. Freydis' ire simmered to a raging boil as she waddled her mighty pregnant frame along the path to the ships with arrows flying and warriors running passed her. According to the legend she came upon one dead warrior, picked up his broad sword and turned to face the natives alone. The kicker comes when she (version vary here about whether she simply lowered her neckline to expose her breast or lifted her skirt to expose her bloated belly and her breasts - as a family attraction Saga went with the more subtle version) slaps her swollen breast with the flat of the blade and screams, halting the attacking aborigines in their tracks, thereby saving the settlement.




The more impressive of the two structures is the Hallgrimskirche, a sort of national (Lutheran) cathedral. The architect used the concept of basaltic columns (sort of long six sided crystals formed from cooling lava - Think Devil's Tower Wyoming from Close
Encounters of the Third Kind) to design the facade. It is beautiful inside as well, a combination of protestant elegance with Scandinavian simplicity. I especially liked the baptismal fount that looks like it was carved from ice.









We lucked out while there and got to here the organist practicing. He threw out a really beautiful Liszt piece that I have long admire. The acoustics were tremendous.

















Below are the outside of the front door and the inside of the door:





















A last detail is the back side of the statue in front. It is Leif Ericson depicted and the text reads that the sculpture is a gift from the United States.






















Some Important historical details. This is Hordi House, where Nixon and Brezhnev met:








This Gamli Gardur, Eryn's dormitory. The "hotel" sign at the top indicates the building functions as a haven for visitors at the height of the tourist season.







Some amazing historical artifacts were visible in the museums around town. Some really ancient manuscripts were on display at one locale, this one is one of the oldest existing copies of the laws of Iceland, the Jonsbok:














This is one of my favorites on display because of the story behind its size. These are two palm sized manuscripts of the Saga of St. Margaret. Women pray to her during childbirth and the book is placed against the thighs to relieve the pain:










Wood in Iceland is scarce so anything made of wood that is old is a right precious artifact. These are details from a church door that I thought looked very cool, the top and bottom respectively. Actually what appears to be the top is actually thought to be the middle of the original door as it is believed to have been that much higher. Look at the door to the Hallgrimskirche to get an idea.
































A last bit of wooden wonder: The figure on below is thought to be the earliest Icelandic depiction of Satan (tempting a saint on the right). Evidently once salvaged from a church to serve as a rafter for a barn, it got salvaged once again to wind up in the National Museum.


















With minutes to go before closing, we stumbled on this cool hands-on display of things allowing your to play a little dress up. Eryn skipped the traditional Icelandic clothing for a stab at channeling her inner warrior

Best Day of the Trip

For sightseeing nothing beat our third day. So much to see, the photographs do not really do justice to what it looks like. Because Eryn had no classes, we had the whole day for tripping. The plan was to go to a peninsula north of Reykjavik called Snaefellsness. Its key geological feature is the extinct volcano, Snaefellsjokull. The road runs around a fjord where the morning light was extraordinarily weird at times, giving this rosy purple glow to some things like this stream feeding into the head of the fjord. The name of the place is Hvalfjordur or Whale Fjord (In the crazy world of Icelandic pronunciation, the Hv is "K"). The story is that an evil whale with a red head was lured by a magician priest (In Icelandic tradition, magic or mystical power is a major attribute of priests whether of the pre- or post-Christian variety) to his doom by swimming up the stream to his ultimate exhaustion. Saw no whale bones as per tradition, but the sunlight was awesome on the stream.
Iceland is known for its horses, a breed that has remained largely the same for over a thousand years. They heredity is so highly protected that no show for the International Icelandic Horse Association is ever held in Iceland. No horses are allowed in and if an Icelandic horse leaves for the show or other reasons, it is a one way journey. This shot of horses near one of the towns with the chapel in the background is my favorite photo of the week:
The terrain and the weather combine to make some more pretty cool views. All these mountain have this basaltic scree at the base. I imagine if one wanted to scale this mountain, not only some pretty good rock climbing skills would be necessary but you'd have to be in superb shape. Just getting to the base of the cliff would wear you down trudging from the plain through the gravel.

One of the highlights of the day was getting to see Snaefellsjokull (SNI fedls yo KUDl is the pronunciation - good luck at that "dls" sound!) the volcano Jules Verne used as the entry point for the Journey to the Center of the Earth. One of my favorite child movie memories if the moment in the movie when the sun lights the entrance inside the cone to the sound of the Bernard Hermann's haunting soundtrack. Standing at the base with the twin peaks rising above was pretty awesome. The ground is all lava flow, called hraun, which is covered with this incredibly thick moss. Eryn aptly described it like walking on bushels of cotton. "Hraun" is the name of our favorite Icelandic candy - sort of chocolate Rice Krispie treats that look a bit like chunks of basaltic lava flow. Getting to the way you cannot get the whole scene into your camera frame, one can turn around from the mountain and see the ocean just across the highway. One of the best spots is this basaltic formation overlooking a cliff. The bizarre shape rises from the land about 40 feet and the cliff on the other side adds another 25. Two interesting traditions about the location: The formation itself is called an "elf church." Elves are an important part of Icelandic lore, but they are not really like elves in our tradition. They look and act like human beings, but are not really happy with being seen, so they remain hidden to most people, hence their name in Icelandic is "Hidden People" (Huldefolk). Once Christianity came to the island, the Alfar converted as well. The other story is sort of "The Devil Went Down to Iceland" wherein Satan challenges a 19th century poet to a poetry slam that lasted the entire night. Until Midnight, the Devil starts a couplet and the hero has to finish the rhyme with another couplet. The poet ties the first round, but the second round after Midnight has Satan completing the poet's beginning. All was tied (with the tie going to the Devil evidently) until just about daybreak when the poet flourishes his knife at Satan's throat (I suppose to break his concentration) while ending his couplet with the word "oblige." Satan, being unable to respond, loses the contest and is ordered by the poet to plunge into the sea never to bedevil, literally, the poet again. With the waves crashing below, Snaefellsjokull rising behind, the elf church to the right, the image of the hellish contest in the moonlight is an easy vision of eerie to picture.

A little further on around the peninsula is a location more rich in tradition than historical certainty. Supposedly, the first people to the island were Irish monks who came for meditation in the solitude (which they would have found in abundance other than the seals and the puffins). They established a settlement on the western end of the island at a place that bears the mark of the folklore, Irskabrunner (Irish Well), pretty much a hole in the ground down which one could walk down steps to get, presumably fresh water, about 200 yards from the ocean. We saw no water, but it was pretty cool especially with the inexplicable whale skull adding structural integrity to the earthen walls staving off, we hoped, sudden collapse. Just as we were about to leave, I remembered something I needed - a stone from Iceland. There was a pile of hraun just at the exit to the highway so I stooped the car, hopped out and selected the cheapest souvenir a tourist could carry home.

I did not know really what we would see on this trip so all of these remarkable sights were serendipitous joys. The only thing I truly desired to see while there was the Aurora Borealis. Every time I have journeyed north of the 45th parallel, I have hoped after hope to see it, but to no avail. On the way back that evening, sharp eyed Eryn spotted some light so we stopped the car to check it out. There it was, a faint glimmer of green in a moonlit sky. I rushed to get my camera and then realized a photographer's horror: NO TRIPOD! In a moment of desperation / inspiration, I started scanning the side of the country road for something to set my camera on to steady it in the darkness. Farm country provided just what we needed, a fence, so I pulled off by the gate to a pasture and stepped out into a beautiful but frigid night. I was dressed warm enough in my multi-layers despite the 40 mph winds. What I didn't have were gloves. Stephanie lent me one for my left hand, but I kept my right hand free to operate the camera controls. It did not take long to recognize that winds so fast with temperatures, at most, the high teens could turn quickly to a medical emergency if I were not careful, so I had to work fast enough to save my fingers from frostbite but slowly enough to get multiple exposures. Next obstacle: the camera flat on the fence post was at too low an angle to photograph the sky. Joints and fingers on my right hand freezing made it hard to concentrate on what I could use to find prop the lens up. There was nothing but grass around me. My hraun! Out of my pocket came my basaltic souvenir from the Irskabrunner, just large enough to point the lens at the sky without my touching the camera.

After setting the time exposure, I leaned down to aim the camera for just the right shot and heard a faint humming - the post was wooden, but the wires were electrified! Another challenge to face. I placed the strap around my neck and loaded my back muscles to straighten up like a spring if the camera fell and hit the shutter button.

Now, a camera when working on a long exposure should remain motionless or the film image will blur. But 40 mile and hour winds will not allow a camera steadied on a fence post and balanced on a lava rock to remain motionless. Only a really heavy tripod would probably have worked in those conditions. I had to keep my hand on the camera during the exposure, a sure way of introducing micro movements of the hand muscles into the problem of getting a proper exposure. The only solution was waaay more shots than I would typically do and hope at least one of them was not too jiggly. With stinging fingers on my right hand, I eventually got back in the warm car with hope of success in my heart. The final outcome, while not perfect, is about as good as I good expect for the circumstances:















And I still have my fingers.

Day 2 and Rock City's Iceland Cousin

Eryn has classes during the day, so we waited until she was done to do anything. Getting a late start meant our choices were limited. with the Blue Lagoon a half hour drive away, we decided that was the place to go.

The best thing about going to Iceland in November is there are virtually no tourists. One of the key tourist traps on the island is a place called the Blue Lagoon, geothermal health spa. More than a public pool (one of the major native pastimes is swimming - the public pools are the place to see and be seen), BL has a bar and restaurant, masseurs etc. The key attraction which distinguishes it from the other geothermal pools is the "therapeutic" mud, a white mush of calcium, silica and blue-green algae that is supposed to make you look younger.

So going on a foggy night in November, we almost had the multi-acre pool to ourselves, or at least the illusion of having it to ourselves. About 34 degrees air temp and around 100 degrees water temp, faces smeared with white goo, Steph with her ever present Pepsi and I with a plastic tumbler of the local brew (appropriately called "Viking") we enjoyed a refreshing bit of kitschy tourism. If you cannot afford the professional massage personnel (who will give you the treatment while in the pool) you can saunter over to the waterfall that poors heated water off the roof of one of the buildings, the sensation described in one of the advertisments somewhere as like a shoulder massage at the hands of trolls, or some such. From what I have gathered of Icelandic folklore, a troll masseur would not be something you would want to seek out for therapeutic reasons unless masochism is your idea of therapy. In any event, it really did feel delightful.




One final bit of whimsy, Stephanie and I decided to take the occasion of our relaxaton to do a little Tai Chi while there.

Final evaluation: It is, as with many things in Iceland, expensive to go to the Blue Lagoon, but if you want to do one touristy thing and you can avoid the crowds, it is worth it as a once kind of thing.

Beating Back the Jet Lag

Our first day, Eryn suggested we do "The Golden Circle," a short drive near Reykjavik with some pretty nifty sights. First thing to see is Thingvellir, a rift valley at the junction of the European and North American tectonic plates. Iceland expands here a tiny bit each year. There is this beautiful lake where, if one were not there in winter, you could scuba dive down to have a look-see. We settled for looking at it from the water's edge. Just behind Eryn and Stephanie are some little piles of stones. This is an interesting bit of local custom which I never really got a handle on. As best as I could figure, people gather stones together and put them in piles as a sort of geological graffito as if to say "I was here." From time to time, you see out in a field some really large piles about five to six feet high made of two to three tremendous stones about 3 feet across. My guess here is this announces, "I was here and I am a BAMF."


Here you get another view of the lake.

Our next stop is the part of the valley that may have the most significance for world history. In the valley around a 1000 years ago, Chieftains from the island gathered annually to write the laws for the nation. The gathering was called the Althing and lays claim to being the longest continuing legislative body in the World.

This is the sunset looking back to the area where the previous photo were taken:
The original Althing was not a building, but a gathering. It is now housed in downtown Reykjavik.

The valley has "folds" in it from the pressures of the tectonic movement. In one of these folds a rise on one side creates a rock wall and on the other side a natural stage of sorts. A speaker would stand on the stage, The Law Rock, and speak to the crowd before them using the back wall to contain the sound. Eryn and I try our hands at being Law Speaker:
















On around the tour we get to some volcanic hot springs. Nearby is one called Geysir, from which comes the one English word that derives from Icelandic. It is a bit irregular in spouting, but it has a smaller cousin that we got to see several times. The sun had set and the moon was rising making this shot possible:








One more stop for dinner and the last view, Gullfoss, one of your larger Icelandic waterfalls. For those in middle Tennessee, it reminded me a bit of a really big Burgess Falls:

Sunday - Arrival

On Friday after school, we scrambled around loading car, getting last minute items, dropping off dogs and headed south to Orlando. The plan was leave at 4:00 and have a nice, relaxing stay at our halfway point in Valdosta before on to Orlando the next AM. Of course leaving at 7, meant drop in bed immediately after checking in, then rush out to Orlando the next day.

Why Orlando? Icelandair does not fly out of Hartsfield, so it wound up being way cheaper to drive and stay in a hotel than get a connecting flight. Steph got us a stay at a hotel in Orlando that would let us park for $5 a day and provide free transport to and from the airport. (As it turns out, they didn't even charge us for the $5 so we we made out well).

Hotel van dropped us at the Airport - Sanford International. The name Sanford International Airport is sort of like having an international airport in Cookeville, Tn. It is a nice little place but it is little and VERY quiet. We spent, all told, about five hours there on departure and arrival and saw two planes leave, including our own.

Most of the time we spent after going through customs (much more humanely than at Hartsfield and no backscatter body scanners so much in the news of late) was directed at trying to contact our debit and credit card companies to let them know there would be some out of country charges. Steph had more success than I did. Her credit card company actually has people providing services outside of business hours, so all the charges during the trip were on her card. ("Oh, the Check? The lady is paying.")

The flight over was a bit bumpy and the seats were more than a bit stiff (Ah, those stoic and ascetic Icelanders. 1000 years of life in one of the harshest climates on earth means there will be no mollycoddling of rear ends. What is a little fanny fatigue to a people whose national symbol is a tire with snow chains and whose national dish is rotten shark meat! Yeah, in case you have not heard about this before, the most remarkable item in Icelandic cuisine is a delicacy called Harkarl. If you live life on the edge where food is hard to come by, especially on an island, you will get protein wherever you can find it. "But why does the meat have to be rotten?" Very simply, because sharks do not pee. You see, they excrete uric acid through their skin, so their blood and tissue is just saturated with uric acid. Now we know why sharks, besides being at the top of the food chain, have no natural predators. Who would try to eat a full catheter bag with big, nasty teeth? Three months in the ground apparently allows for some fascinating biochemical fermentation, transforming the poisonous meat into a cheesy tasting treat that reportedly still smells like pee. I would like to meet the guy who figured out how to do that. What prompted some guy to say, "Hey, that shark steak made my buddy, Hjálmarsson to retch his guts out. I'll just bury my steak, let it rot and see if rotting meat is better for you than fresh meat. Hey, could it be any worse?")

Nice menu of options to keep you from not thinking about the rock hard seat on the way over: The usual movies and American TV fare on the video screen, plus some Icelandic TV selections, fortunately with English subtitles. I chose to watch Sands of Time. I am not saying it was bad, okay, I am saying it was bad. Aladdin + Lord of the Rings + Crouching Tuger, Hidden Dragon couldn't be too bad, right? This is a special effects driven flick (which generally I enjoy), but it is also a stunts driven film (which I typically enjoy), with the stunts wildly implausible because they are created not by real actors, but by the special effects. It was like watching an animated Jackie Chan movie. The whole wonder of the incredible athleticism is gone. Add the contrived pseudo hatred between the hero and heroine and you get a major fail.

So now we get to Iceland!

Kudos to Stephanie for reading the Fodor's Guide To Iceland in more detail than I did. She figured out how to get the shuttle bus to Reykjavik and we set off. Arrival about 6:00 AM local and as the sun does not rise until 10, there was not much to see on the way in. The shuttle bus allowed us to transfer to a van to take us to the hotel directly, but we misunderstood the bus driver's instruction and were late getting to the hotel van. So we had to wait another 45 minutes or so until another one left. The Reykjavik bus terminal is perhaps less dreary than most bus stations, but it was still a rather depressing sight. All the touristy posters showed green meadows, snow capped mountains, and blue sky. But all we could see of Iceland at that moment was steel seats (more tough posteriors), linoleum floors, and harsh florescent lighting.