Iceland Fragments (Pt. I)

In the summer of 2008 I went to Iceland for the first time, alone with a one-man tent. What follows are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Beneath an enormous blue sky we drove through the grass-smothered lava fields towards the city. I have not yet seen its heart and walking out this evening I kept to the quiet coast, observing the leisurely sunset and making notes.

My tent is cosy—full without me.

Reykjavík lacks the grand spaces of the world’s great cities and feels like a seaside town when compared. Walked here and there under overcast sky feeling melancholic and blank.

Got jittery on over-brewed tea and a little bit drunk on beer, eavesdropping on a table of girls.

Walking back to camp with headphones in I was riotously happy.

Rain overnight on the glaciers above Þórsmörk meant the rivers were up. Hills in the distance and in the other direction utter flatness.

Near Selfoss the vast estuarial flats met sudden slopes. Crashing waterfall at Seljalandsfoss. The road turned to gravel as we edged into Þórsmörk and we were soon plunging through rivers, cold and brown and well up above the wheels.

At the lagoon below the first glacier we stopped for a few minutes, the water a luminous green and fresh to taste. Drove on through unusual formations and vast strewn boulders, remnants of a flood in 1967 caused by a piece of the cliff dropping down onto the ice. The eerie shapes were palagonite—sandstone, easily weathered, created by sub-glacial volcanic activity.

By now it was gone 4 A.M. Across the dawn-bright square and streets were strewn hundreds of flailing teens, all mortally drunk and happy. Queues still outside the clubs.

The bay under the sunrise sky—complete stillness, silence, birds swooping, fish bubbling, majestic colours.

Campsite dew-damp and eerily quiet. Found a seagull yanking one of my boots out from under the tent.

Perhaps it is the cold, or the meagre diet, or loneliness, or all of these things, but fatigue is beginning to dominate. I’m in Akureyri, on the north coast, tucked into a narrow fjord. Sky oppressively grey, cold mist hanging on the surrounding mountains.

Drive from Reykjavík spectacular. Landscape undeniably bleak, especially grey as today. Small clusters of houses, farm buildings, hard to imagine as dwellings. And in winter, with darkness almost total?

Sweeping valleys, hulking cliffs; horses, sheep, cattle, all clinging and chewing. And hay-bundles shrinkwrapped in bright white plastic, scattered so densely as to resemble snow.

I declined to join him for a wander into town and later was woken by fireworks. Through a peephole in my partially-unzipped door I watched them detonate against the half-dark sky.

A Tina Turner tribute band was on the breeze, chastening me for my naïve hopes of ‘authenticity’—teens in skinny jeans, prurient pop from passing cars, celeb rags on the mag racks: whatever I expected northern Iceland to offer, it isn’t so different from anywhere else.

Grand views south down into the valley, smoky clouds coiling around the snowy peaks. Picnic on a boulder in the brush, watching planes take off and land on the strip that splits the fjord.

I had resolved to hitch and was soon hiking along the stretch of road where I would try my luck. The sun, the stretch of the afternoon—everything seemed in my favour.

I jumped out at a T-junction, he going west, my destination to the east. Great stillness, little flowers nodding. Sun.

After no joy with the first 20-odd cars, I began the 18km walk.

In magnificent sunshine, acres of space, I pitched and made celebratory tea.

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