In the summer of 2009 I went back to Iceland. This time I was joined by an old school friend, partly for company and partly to split the cost of a rental car. What follows are excerpts from the journal I kept.
Gradual adjustment to pace, space, clarity of light, air. Watching of clouds as if rain would be disastrous.
In the pool just now a teenage boy exactly as he was last year.
Orange light glinting on a sprinkler hose snaking across the football pitch, its steady spurts similarly caught.
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Battered by wind and rain all night, damp tent slapping me at will across the face.
Clambered out to a bleak grey day, bitter Arctic wind howling in off the sea.
On slopes, only sheep provide perspective—something apparently easily scaled is suddenly revealed to be colossal.
It was something, the slow and placid river cast into disarray, only to regroup far below.
Monumental radio tower held in place by great looping cables, its stature and longevity in the face of such winds unworldly.
Joined by a large bus group who suffered our disdain until an ageing couple stripped off and dashed out into the waves.
Climbed over the crater’s rim and found vast emptiness and shelter. Lay dozing on the mossy softness, getting sunburnt despite the persistent chill. No other humans as far as the eye.
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Breakfast at the harbour where we realised I had the evening before left our loaf of bread on the roof of the car.
The road was unpaved, bumpy, thrilling, reminiscent of rally car arcades.
Spent all morning watching the fuel gauge, finally rolling into Borgarnes with the Empty light flashing.
Watched what I assumed was a whaler sail out.
Drank cheap wine and played cards until we were too cold to sit still and walked along the coast into town.
She warned us off the other local girls to whom we’d been chatting: “They are cannibals. They will eat you alive.”
Sunrise. Clambering down the rocks to piss we were soon apprehended by police and so walked on.
Spanish-looking guy slumped in the campsite toilets on a plastic chair under the repeatedly activated hand dryer, apparently out of his mind.
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Dirt roads, Siberian driftwood, whooper swans. A young man walking with a backpack, utterly alone. Rockslides, potholes, sheer drops.
Djupavik: shipwreck, horrific dereliction of herring factory.
Wet and chilled by the Arctic breeze we scuttled across the stones to the water’s edge and clambered into the bitter shallows over sharp dark rocks.
To drive the dwarfing fjords is frustrating, humbling, spectacular, boring, majestic, endless. What to say of it? We are a tiny metal speck hurtling at reckless speed on virtually empty roads, rendered miniscule by the vastness we cross, the great gouges made by the water.
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Walked north beyond the town past old drying houses for fish—wood and wire structures, incredible smells.
Hiked up the steep hillside, securing immense views across the fjord, lying in the soft dry grass, scrambling eventually as high as we could, higher and steeper than was safe, until we descended sliding and barely in control, triggering small landslides.
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The edges must be approached in a prone position and even then the vertigo is potent.
The wind kept blowing the flysheet off the pegs but with rocks we pinned it down. The beach was 50 yards away, roaring with windchop, kneedeep in wrack.
At 3A.M. I got up to piss, alone and half-naked on the flat expanse of grass, mute grey light of the slow northern dawn. But for the cold I might have taken a stroll.
Stopping for lunch at a desolate petrol station we bought fruit and filled our water bottles with the permission of the batty woman who sat calmly smoking mere feet from the pumps.