Ultima Thule
In late September we left Boston, flew into Keflek airport, rented a subcompact mini car and drove to Reykjavik as the sun rose. Watching long fingers of misty clouds retreat back over the mountains we realized what the big deal was about Iceland.
The vulcan rock of the island is sharp, raw and fresh. Everything is jagged and porous. The “fields” are all knee deep in glacial debris. The peaks jut up out of the landscape without foothills. The crunchy boulder strewn ground is covered in 7 inches of thick, soft, bouncy green moss. It looks like candy and just begs to be stomped around. Its like a mold experiment let loose on Mars. There are no real trees, but if you hunt you can find small copses of lonely dwarf birch and evergreen. Mostly its just small patches of moss vainly trying to crawl up the steaming, sulfurous mountains.
Reykjavik is small, like Portland Maine. The city has short buildings and cobblestone streets winding through narrow alleys. Its pretty much an overgrown fishing village. Every crosswalk is a very high speed bump. Where there are people, the cars must drive slow. The hot water from the tap smells like sulfur. We picked up some food and coffee in the city and then charged off into the country.
When you leave the city the human habitation just ends. There are a quarter million people on this island the size of Britain. More than half of those people are in Reykjavik. So really its more like a hundred thousand out here, widely scattered. There are many underground mound homes and a few shops tucked into the earth like hobbit holes. The people out here leave their villages, run off into the mountains and stick a pipe in the ground until steam shoots out of it. The horizon is dotted with little puffs of steam where someone decided to start a miniature Icelandic pony farm.
The Icelandic language is basically perfectly preserved archaic Norse, and the landscape is named after the mythology. So the road signs are all runes spelling out the names of the old gods. This, combined with the primeval landscape and lack of people and trees make Ultima a very storybookish place to tromp around.
We spent most of our time attempting to drive to Sights. Mostly we’d drive for a bit, get distracted by the amazing scenery we’d bump into along the way, pull over and run off to chase sheep and ponies up into the mountains. We’ve pictures of Geysir and Gulfloss, we also went swimming in the Blue Lagoon hot springs. There’s this silicate mud that gives the water there an eerie milky blue color. We sculpted big white horns on Mandy with it (French girl: “You are like zee bull”). Its supposed to be good for your skin, but it turned my hair in to one giant dreadlock. Nappy. It fell out in handfuls.
In Reykjavik there was an advertisement calling for hands on an organic farm. I’d love to spend a week or two messing about in the earth here. Stick my hands in it, stomp all over it. This land has great texture. Its too bad we only had a couple days here. I’d like to get to know some wooly sheeps and those tiny ponies. Every inch of this island is amazing, driving from one “attraction” to the next is just a good excuse to see all the cool stuff in between.
Here’s a small smattering of photos we took.
Then with very little sleep we flew to Amsterdam…