My baby brother turned forty this year, and the whole extended family went to Iceland to celebrate. We had to fit it around everyone’s schedule so in the end we only went for four days, but what days they were!
Arriving in Keflavik on Odin’s day seemed fitting, and the home of sagas didn’t disappoint; already at the rental car desk they told us tall tales about the risk of volcanic sand peppering the cars if the winds rose along the coast – turns out that was a typical rental car company hoax to get us to pay for more insurance, but still, Iceland didn’t disappoint: even the drive from the airport to the capital went through lava fields, and we all looked eagerly out through the low clouds to see the odd volcanic cone rising out of the mists.
We headed immediately for the Secret Lagoon, one of several places on the island where you can bathe in natural thermals. It’s over two hours from the airport, but a lot less crowded and touristy than the more famous Blue Lagoon, and unlike the latter it’s not heated by wastewater from a power plant either, so it was an easy choice. Floating in a pond of water that’s heated by a geyser might not be everyone’s cup of tea (even though it was easily as hot as one, at 42 degrees centigrade) but we took to it like ducks to, well, scalding water, and spent the rest of the day there.
On Thor’s day we set out from Reykjavík on the first of several organised tours (courtesy of my sister); horseback riding in the morning, and whale watching on the afternoon. Both were fantastic experiences, not least because of the unexpected, glorious weather. They did leave me wanting for more, however: hacking (riding out on cross-country trips) would be more satisfying if you could go out into the real wilderness, even if the National Park we were in was pretty enough.
The same is really true for whale watching. Having seen humpback whales feed at close range only a couple of weeks ago off Cape Anne in Massachusetts, the sightings of minky whales here were a little underwhelming (the dolphins were nice tho!). And I later learned that north of Snæfellsbær there are orcas (indeed, some Americans we encountered had even seen them from land!), so that would have been a better bet.
Anyhow. Everyone was happy with (if sore in the nether regions from) the riding and no one was sea sick from the boat ride, so all was well, and it also meant everyone really appreciated the rather slower pace of Frej’s day, when we did the “Golden Circle” by tour bus. Long established, it encompasses the Gullfoss waterfall, Tingvalla, and Geysir National Park; the first is an enormous, two-tier waterfall, the second is the area where Icelandic Vikings assembled in the very first National Parliament in AD 930, and the third is where the mother of all geysers, the eponymous Geysir, sleeps peacefully – it only erupts when there’s an earthquake in the region, and hasn’t done so for ninety-odd years, but when it does it apparently leaves even Old Faithful in Yellowstone in its steamy wake.
All were good outings, but it felt wrong to be on someone else’s clock – I would have liked to spend more time at Tingvalla, to explore places such as Gallows Rock and Drowning Pond (laws were a little harsher then – I suppose having to wait for justice for up to a year and riding for up to two weeks to get there didn’t encourage leniency!) but that’s the compromise you have to make when you try to take in so much in so little time, I guess.
The next day was no less relentless: we took the cars up to Snæfellsbær, the peninsula/national park north of Reykjavík, and drove around it, stopping briefly here and there to take in volcanic caves, a narrow rift gorge, the jagged coastline, and salty fishing villages.
I would have gladly spent a week exploring it all, but we were on a tight schedule, because that evening we went out on a deep sea fishing expedition, angling for (and catching plenty of) cod which we then promptly devoured on board the ship*.
I had hoped to go on one final adventure, to Silfra, a lake situated right between the tectonic plates that hold North America and Europe, respectively. There, you can dive in crystal clear waters in a straight narrow enough for you to touch the both continents simultaneously, but our flight was early Sunday afternoon, and there was no feasible way of making that happen. Instead, we ventured to an old-fashioned bathhouse in Reykjavik, where you could move between pools with temperatures varying from ten to forty-two degrees centigrade – a sufficiently exciting adventure for the rest of the family, for sure.
All in all it was a marvelous four days, and it was particularly nice to be able to do something with the whole family, but next time I come I will stay for longer, and do all the things we didn’t have time for now. There are still glaciers and volcanoes to be explored, for instance – now THAT would truly be A Song of Ice and Fire!
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*My not-so-understanding clan made fun of me for eating the fish, as it marked my second ever deviation from vegetarianism, but I figured it was more ethical to eat what I had caught, as not doing so would have made it even more amoral and wasteful.