Iceland

Y2K was supposed to be the end of the world, so that's where I went. I knew there were fireworks, and that it wasn't as cold as it sounded, but when I heard about the talking cows and elfin gold, I was hooked.

I figured that any effects, real or imagined, of the Y2K problem would be a lot less in Iceland than in the U.S. As it turned out, the only Y2K bug of any significance was the flu, and leaving the country probably helped me avoid it.

12-28-99

I got up early to pack, crammed everything into two bags -- barely -- and left for SFO. I parked in the lot that Lobo recommended, across the "bay inlet or estuary thingy". It was a clear, sunny flight to Minneapolis, and I looked out the window as I dined on chicken that looked uncomfortably like skinned hamster (but it tasted like chicken). It's amazing how much of this country is uninhabited, and how much it looks like misshapen linoleum tile.

Minneapolis from the air looked like mostly patchy snow and dead trees. but the airport was almost luxurious. It has a full mall; you could easily spend the day there. Also, it has at least two ten-foot-tall wooden mooses.

The Icelandair people made me check one of my bags, and were really surly about it. First it was too big. Then when I pointed out that it fit just fine on the previous plane, they said it was too heavy, even though no one weighed it or even lifted it. This was all as I was going through the boarding gate and was in everyone's way. There was an Indian guy with me who also had to check his bag and was quite irate about it: "This is just stupid!" They ignored him.

The flight to Keflavík was uneventful. I read the whole time ("Them Bones" and "Journey to the Centre of the Earth"), and there was nothing to look at except the weird light out my window. It was almost the size of the moon, but the wrong shape. The aurora borealis? Not spread out enough. A reflection off Greenland? It took me a full five minutes to figure out that it was the light on the end of the wing.

12-29-99

The Keflavík airport is small but efficient. I got off the plane, converted some dollars to króna, got my passport stamped by the friendly passport guy ("You've had this for nine years and you haven't used it?"), collected my bag, and walked through Customs (they completely ignored me), all in about a half hour.

Then began the odyssey of getting from the airport to the guesthouse in Reykjavík.

The Keflavík airport is at the end of the Reykjanes Peninsula. Reykjavík is at the other end of the peninsula. I took the bus into town. It was several hours before sunrise, and raining.

The Reykjanes Peninsula is nothing but lava, with a few little towns here and there. The few buildings are either boxy nothings or quaint gingerbready things sprouting out of the lava, like Santa's Workshop on the moon. Closer to Reykjavík the buildings are newer and bigger concrete projects, like misplaced Soviet architecture, as if Santa had suddenly gone Marxist.

The Flybus was supposed to go to Reykjavík, but only went to a hotel at the edge of town. The driver told me I had to take a taxi to get into town, but I asked inside the hotel and they said I could catch a city bus out front.

So I stood out front. After about 20 minutes, a bus pulled into the parking lot, then turned around and stopped at a bus stop at the edge of the parking lot, about a block away. I ran after it, but I didn't catch it, so I stood in the shelter for another 15 minutes until the next bus came. This bus had the same number, but went somewhere else. The third bus, however, was the same as the first. I got on that one and was fumbling with my money when the bus driver took off, hurtling me and my luggage down the aisle. She was very friendly and pleasant, but she had a schedule to keep and, by God, she was going to keep it. Never mind that it was 7:00 in the morning and I was the only person on the bus.

We sped through through the rain and snow, sliding around corners, and getting a head start on every green light. (The traffic lights in Iceland turn yellow before they turn green, which means nearly everyone starts across the intersection before the light is green.) I showed her the map of where I was going, and she dropped me off at the closest stop. I put too much money in the slot and dragged my luggage into the rain.

First I walked the wrong way, then another wrong way, then a third wrong way, across the ice and snow, in the rain, dragging my luggage, until I stumbled across the right street accidentally.

When I finally got to the Baldursbrá Guesthouse at a little after 8:00, Joachim Fischer greeted me by name and gave me coffee. I don't normally like coffee, but at that point I would have happily downed a cup of turpentine, if it were warm.

After checking into my room and warming up a bit, I wandered around the shopping/tourist area. My bright red Polartec jacket seemed to attract a lot of attention. No comments, but a lot of people looked at me as I went by. Then I noticed that hardly anyone seems to wear anything colorful -- pretty much only tourists and children.

I picked a convenient cafe and had lunch. It was American diner food from the 1960s. Not bad. I also had some Gull beer, which is an Icelandic brand that tastes like Miller. Icelanders speak pretty good English, but there are some quirks. When you order something, they tend to say "yeah":

"I'll have a hamburger..."
"Yeah!"
"...with no sauce."
"Yeah!"
"And a Gull."
"Yeah!"

And they all smoke. A lot of them, anyway. After years in California, I'd forgotten what it was like to go somewhere and be surrounded by smokers. California's anti-smoking laws are paternalistic and overbearing, but if we're going to have paternalistic and overbearing laws, it's nice to have ones that benefit me personally.

I tried to stay up until a reasonable time, but I finally gave up and went to bed at 6:30 without eating supper. I woke up at 9:00 to the sound of fireworks, and watched them out my window for a half hour. Then I slept for another twelve hours.

12-30-99

I missed breakfast, so I was pretty damned hungry. I went out wandering all over Reykjavík, this time wearing my Army overcoat, and didn't get any funny looks. It had snowed, and the city was very picturesque and European-looking.

And they do think they are European. Culturally, that makes sense. Iceland was founded by Norwegian vikings and Irish monks, and was a colony of both Norway and Denmark. They only became independent in 1944. Geologically, it makes less sense, although the island does straddle the European and North American tectonic plates. They really aren't very close to the European continent, though, or at least what we call the European continent, since any idiot can look at a map and see that Europe and Asia are the same continent.

I walked out to the Kringlan mall, which is quite a bit farther than it looks on the map. It's the only shopping mall in Iceland. They think it's quite a novelty.

People don't get out of your way in Reykjavík, whether they're driving or on foot. They just happily bump into you. They're not rude about it -- they just don't seem to care. It seems strange, considering how sparsely populated Iceland is.

For dinner, I went back downtown and had lamb shish kebab and rum tea at a partially underground restaurant on Laugavegur. The radio was playing a Beatles marathon, so I sat there and read for a while. It was quite pleasant, except for the cigarette smoke.

12-31-99

I went wandering around again, this time with a camera. I had no light meter, so I had to guess. I opened it one more stop from my usual overcast setting, to f8 at 1/75 for 200 ASA film, which turned out to be exactly right. It had rained, so much of yesterday's snow was gone, but there was still some, plus a lot of ice.

I walked out to the Kringlan mall again, did a little shopping, and had lunch. As I was standing in the mall, a girl called out "sex". I immediately came running. Unfortunately, "sex" is just the Icelandic word for "six", which was my order number, so all I got was a chicken sandwich. It tasted like chicken.

When I got back, my left foot was all bloody. It's important to remember to cut your toenails before doing a lot of walking.

There's precious little open in Reykjavík on New Year's Eve. Nearly everything closes at 2:00. The only restaurant that was open for dinner was at the Hotel Borg ("Borg" means city in Icelandic). Joachim made reservations for me, and since I had some time to kill, I went outside to try out some of my fireworks.

The first rocket I tried to set off was thwarted by the guard at the American Embassy. It seems I was on their grounds. He had no sense of humor whatsoever. Just because I was trying to light an explosive device outside an American government building on the eve of Y2K, he gets his shorts all in a bunch. I fixed him, though. I went down the street and set it off, then watched it sail directly over the embassy and blow up.

As it turned out, I didn't have to have dinner alone. I went with a couple who had just arrived from England (the Flybus shuttle took them right to the door of the guesthouse), where they'd spent Christmas. He was British, she was from California, and they lived in New York.

Dinner at the Borg was good, and the waitress politely let us know that they would be closing at 11:00 so they could go celebrate New Year's, too. I had Viking beer. It's not great, but it's better than Gull.

Then I went back to my room and gathered up my fireworks. At 11:15 I was getting concerned, since there was hardly anyone out on the streets. But by 11:30 we started seeing more and more people, and most of them seemed to be headed for the big, ugly church that looks like a space shuttle up-ended, done in concrete. By 11:40 there was quite a crowd and large quantities of fireworks. I took some video footage and a time-lapse 3D picture that captured several minutes on either side of midnight (or would have if it weren't so overexposed), then went to set off my fireworks. I couldn't get my lighter to work in the wind, so some woman loaned me her sparkler. I used that sparkler to light one of mine, and I was set for the rest of the night.

I shot some more video of the festive revelry as it started to snow again, then started back to the guesthouse with the video camera running. Along Skólavörðustígur I met Martin and Sam (short for Samantha, apparently), from London and Manchester, respectively. They told me this two or three times. They were drunk in that highly entertaining way that seems typical of the English. In fact, they told me that, too: "We English drink loads, and we're mad!" Each one shot some footage of me with the other one, for no particular reason, and I shot some footage of both of them. I was concerned at first that Sam was going to drop the camera, but she managed okay. In fact, they were both more alert and quick-witted than a lot of sober people I've met.

I continued back to the guesthouse, stopping for a few minutes to marvel at what appeared to be a Russian Orhodox church, all lit in blue, with Cha Cha music emanating from within.

I got back about 1:00, then went outside again. There were a bunch of drunken Icelanders in the intersection and I used their tube to shoot my remaining rockets. Every time something went off they'd all yell "Yaaay!" and drink some more. I got to bed a little after 2:00, but fireworks continued for the next several hours.

One strange side-effect -- The snow and the smell of gunpowder created strong flashbacks to basic training. At least I didn't have to dress like a shrubbery.

1-1-00

Breakfast was at 11:00, which still felt pretty early. It had snowed during the night, and the whole city was all white and fluffy. I went out taking pictures, since nothing was open. That was pretty much it -- a quiet day. Then I blew up the rest of my fireworks and went to bed.

At about 11:30 that night I was awakened by obnoxiously loud American tourists who had just arrived. They were tromping around upstairs and talking to each other in loud, booming voices. I was annoyed until I heard one of them say "northern lights". I got out of bed and looked out the window, but I couldn't see anything. The sky was clear, though, so I got dressed and went outside. And there they were, writhing across the sky like a cosmic lava lamp. They weren't all that bright, but they had the city lights to contend with. I went back to my room and opened the window and sat on the window sill and watched them. Every now and then some fireworks would go up here and there. Then, right at midnight, the whole sky clouded over in a matter of minutes, and it started to snow again.

It was just so new-millennium.

1-2-00

Hardly anything was open, so I just wandered around taking pictures.

1-3-00

Took a tour around southwest Iceland since that was the only way, other than renting a car and driving through the snow myself, to see Þingvellir in January. So I paid 5100 króna (about $73) to take the tour. We were about 10 miles down the road when I found out we weren't going to Þingvellir because the snow made that road impassable. So instead I saw:

• A greenhouse that grew tropical plants. This was a big novelty in Iceland, but generally less interesting to tourists from warmer climates.
• A volcanic crater. In the winter, a volcanic crater looks like a big hole with snow in it.
• Gullfoss. This is a beautiful waterfall formed by glacier run-off. It's especially stunning in the snow. We had twenty minutes to see it, which is more than enough time when it's 20 degrees out.
• Geysir, whence we get the English word "geyser". It's an area of boiling water bubbling up through the rock, including one old-faithful-type geyser that erupts every five minutes. We had lunch at a nice restaurant there that served smoked lamb.
• A church of some historic interest, although most of the historic interest had to do with the location, rather than the church itself, which was built in the 1950s.

Some of these things were interesting, though not 5100-króna-worth of interesting. However, it was fun riding through the Icelandic countryside, in all its vast, bleak snowyness. It was very easy to imagine Vikings living there.

I saw quite a few Icelandic horses out in the country. Icelandic horses are very cool, but people look extremely silly riding them, because their feet almost touch the ground. (The riders, I mean. The horses' feet do touch the ground. Gravity, you know.)

When I got back, I went to a divey bar/restaurant, which was the only place I could find that served hákarl. This is a traditional Icelandic dish that Icelanders themselves admit is disgusting. It's basically rotten fish marinated in ammonia. I ate a whole serving of this while watching the snow fall and listening to Natalie Merchant sing Space Oddity. And I had plenty of beer to wash it down.

On the way out I was hit on by a drunken woman from New York. She was probably around 50, and looked the way people look when their primary hobby is drinking. She accosted me as I was leaving and asked me where I was from and told me I was beautiful (!) and asked if she could kiss my cheek. She was at a table with two guys and the woman who owned the bar or managed it or something. One of the guys informed me that the New York woman was "drunk off her ass", and she responded by telling me that he was an asshole. Then she said something about the millennium that I didn't quite understand, and managed to tie it into the fact that she was a Catholic ("I believe all that shit!"). She kissed me on the cheek four times. The owner of the bar seemed quietly amused by the whole thing.

1-4-00

In the morning I wandered around and bought sweaters and other touristy things.

In the afternoon I went to the Arní Magnusson Institute, which has vellum manuscripts of early Icelandic writings, including religious manuscripts in Latin and (more interesting to me) early saga manuscripts in Icelandic. The Icelandic language has changed very little over the centuries, so these saga manuscripts are quite readable today, at least to people who understand Icelandic.

While I was there, several people came in and were talking amongst themselves in an assortment of languages. One was a woman who alternated between English, German, Icelandic, and (I think) Afrikaans. At first I thought she was British, because when she spoke English, it was with a full-on Cockney accent. It was only by listening for a while that I noticed a slight Scandinavian lilt. I think she was Icelandic, but I've never heard a foreigner use that kind of regional accent before.

After the Arní Magnusson Institute, I headed over to the Icelandic Institute of Phallology. Yes. In the central shopping district, in a little courtyard off a driveway, is a penis museum. No human ones, thankfully, but animal penises from mice, whales, and everything in between. I don't know why. They're all nicely displayed in bottles of formaldehyde. I was there for about 15 minutes and I never did figure it out. Judging by the facial expressions of the other people there, they didn't either.

1-5-00

The Blue Lagoon (Bláa Lón) is in the middle of nowhere on the Reykjanes Peninsula. It's formed by runoff from a geothermal power plant, which sounds disgusting until you realize it's just seawater. The power plant gets the seawater, heated through volcanic activity, from boreholes that go down nearly a mile. They can't use the seawater itself, though, so they use it to heat fresh water, then dump the seawater. They originally figured that the seawater would soak into the porous lava and return to the ground, whence it came. Instead, the minerals in the seawater sealed the lava and created a small lake, which was cleverly turned into a spa.

So on my last day in Iceland, I spent a little over an hour sitting in a hot salt-water lake in the middle of a lava field looking through clouds of steam at the person shoveling snow off the walkway. The mountains to the south were covered with snow, too, and were just high enough to block the sun at 1:00 PM.

My plan was to take the bus to the airport, stopping at the Blue Lagoon for a couple hours on the way. But there's no bus service from the Blue Lagoon to the airport, unless you take a tour. So I took a taxi to the airport for about $40.

The Reykjanes Peninsula is incredibly barren, but strangely fascinating. This was the first time I'd seen it in daylight. It was mile after mile of lava, covered by snow. It hadn't snowed for a couple days, and the wind had made the snow look like sand, blowing it into dunes against the lava.

The sun had set again by the time I got to the airport, and it was dark by the time the plane took off. But once we got up to our cruising altitude, it was sunset again, and that continued for the next six hours -- most of the way to Minneapolis.

I had a window seat on the plane, and sat next to a 16-year-old Icelandic girl who lived in Utah. She was traveling with a friend who was sitting somewhere else on the plane. Every few minutes she would get up to talk to her friend, go to the restroom, or just wander around. The guy on the aisle was very patient, probably because he had two children and was used to that sort of thing, but I was glad I had the window seat. Every half hour or so she would ask one of us what time it was and how long until arrived. Sometimes she would forget and ask us in Icelandic. When I wasn't telling her what time it was or watching the six-hour sunset, I read Njal's Saga. It's the most famous of the Icelandic sagas, written in about 1280.

In Minneapolis, we had to go through Customs, which meant that I had to collect my checked baggage, walk it through Customs so that a Customs person could ignore it, and give it back to the airline, who no longer had time to get it to the plane. The bag was delivered to my apartment the day after I got home.

I never did see any talking cows, but I understand that they pretty much just repeat the Icelandic word for "suet"* anyway. Didn't get any elfin gold, either. Damn.

* mör