For my 61st birthday – how strange it is, to write those words – my wife took me to Iceland. There is a longer account of my trip coming, with travel advice as well as “what we did”. Our main objective was to see the northern lights, and we succeeded spectacularly. A story for another post.
By happy accident, we had to move our trip up a week from my birthday, and I discovered that a pianist I love, Víkingur Ólafsson, would be playing at Harpa during our visit. And he would be playing the Goldberg Variations, one of the summits of the piano repertoire.
Now, Harpa is a magnificent building, and in my previous two trips to Iceland, I had somehow managed not to visit it. And Víkingur Ólafsson is a world-class pianist, the Deutsche Gramaphone Artist of the Year for 2019, and he happens to be Icelandic. And I would later learn that the date of the concert, February 14th, happened to be his 40th birthday. All in all the omens were favorable. I scrambled to get tickets – the event was nearly sold out – but I succeeded in getting nosebleed seats (the second to last row of the enormous main hall).
Harpa is a magnificent building. The lobby interior is vast and surrounded by crystalline glass structures lit with a slowly rotating color, blue being the most predominant. There is a restaurant downstairs, which we did not try (favoring Fjallkonen for dinner), and as well there is a jazz club on the top floor, which, sadly, we did not have the chance to visit. One can take the elevator or climb the stairs as we did, making our way nearly to the top, slowly, taking too many pictures as we went.
As we wait, I listen to the crowd. They are mostly Icelandic, judging from the conversation and the clothing. But here and there, I hear a smattering of English and German, and some guests appeared to be from Asia. (I saw many more Asian tourists than I expected, in both our hotel and out and about). Finally, the doors open, and I hustle to my seat to get some shots of the concert hall before people crowd the hall.
It is a bit like being in the Imperial Senate in Star Wars. The room is dramatic, and very steep. A mild vertigo starts for me. I never had issues with vertigo until I went to the Guggenheim in New York City. Now I feel a faint discomfort when in steep, open balcony seating. But I master that and head up to the edge to take some photos.
The room is oddly smoky, as if a rock concert is about to break out. There are neon red striped lights surrounding the stage, and a jagged orange strip light running through the floor of the stage, surely intended to evoke a lava flow. The lights changed periodically during the show, very unusual for classical performances.
Soon it’s time, and a tall, trim, bespectacled man takes the stage. He is dapper, wearing a modern-cut, medium-blue suit. He looks like an earnest graduate student, not one of the most brilliant pianists in the world.
The Theme and Variations is one of the canonical forms of classical music. A theme is played, then developed in repeated in variations, usually alternating between fast and slow, happy and sad. The Goldberg Variations are one of the most difficult and beautiful pieces of the piano repertoire, consisting of a theme and 30 variations. Perhaps the best-known recordings are by Glenn Gould, who famously recorded the piece twice, once as a young man and once not that long before he died.
The theme opens with a crystalline singing, with simple lines and chords. Writing descriptively about a musical performance is always difficult, but let me start by simply saying that Ólafsson’s performance was astounding. His rendering of the Goldberg was over 75 minutes in duration. He of course played this without any breaks and without any score to guide him, it was all from memory. I do not believe that during that entire performance, I heard anything like a mistake. His tone was absolutely beautiful, and even during the most frenetic parts of the piece, his sound had total clarity. Every note was audible, even when buried inside a chord. Every phrase had total conviction and a deeply felt intent. Glenn Gould was famous for bringing out the “inside lines”, the melodies lurking in the lower registers and not the highest pitch. Ólafsson has a similar ability. Even my wife, who knows classical music but doesn’t listen to it much, remarked on that aspect of his playing.
I recently had a chance to hear Helene Grimaud in Boston. She is also a world-famous pianist and justifiably so. But I must say that Olaffson’s playing affected me more deeply and had much greater tonal clarity and precision. And I enjoyed her concert very much – I am not attempting to denigrate her playing at all, simply to give some perspective on how elevated this particular performance felt to me. Even at his fastest playing, it seemed clear that Ólafsson had another gear we did not hear.
I saw John Williams, the guitarist, some time ago in Boston. My friend Lynn remarked that during a particularly difficult passage, Williams seemed to have grown an extra finger. During one of the most frenetic variations, I thought Ólafsson had grown an extra hand. It just did not seem possible, what I was hearing.
Visually, he was intriguing to watch. He did not have as many quirky mannerisms as some pianists do, but he did perform the occasional self-conducting (ala Glenn Gould) when he was playing a single, slow-paced melody. Occasionally, during meditative sections, his head would sink, nearly touching the keyboard. Ólafsson’s technique was impeccable and visually interesting. Of particular note was his constant hand-crossing, playing blistering scales at a frenetic pace, where his left hand played rising scales while the right hand crossed over to play a melody below, both in pitch and on the keyboard.
The auditorium acoustics were wonderful. We heard complete clarity, even in the next-to-last row. With the lights down, it was almost like a meditation session, as the music surrounded us for almost 80 minutes in a long continuous stream. I confess, I almost nodded off once, but in a good way :()
Variation 29’s frenetic pace and associated technique faded to Variation 30’s stately, quiet chorale-like structure, then to the reprise of the quiet, calm opening theme. The room was silent for a good 20-30 seconds – whether in appreciation, in unsureness of whether he was done, or just a desire not to break the spell, I cannot say. The last reason for me.
Then cheers and bravos broke out. The hometown crowd brought him back for bows four times. After the last, he spoke for a few moments in Icelandic. There was frequent laughter from the crowd. Very much a hometown crowd. Then he left, and the lights came up. The show was over. The usual bring-back-the-artist-to-play encores was not to be.
I asked my concert neighbors to my left, clearly Icelandic, what he had said. For a change, one of the two, the man, seemed uncomfortable answering in English (most Icelanders I have attempted conversation with have impeccable English). The woman said, “He said something like, after this, there can be no encore.” Her translation was imprecise, but I certainly took her to mean not that he was tired, but rather that he held the piece in such high regard he did not wish to break the spell of it. We had no complaints.
If you are interested in any of this, you can listen to Ólafsson’s recording of the Goldberg Variations on Spotify.
United Kingdom Bach: Víkingur Ólafsson (piano). Royal Festival Hall, London, 22.9.2023. (CSa) JS Bach – Goldberg Variations, BWV.988 It is said that Bach’s insomniac patron, Count Keyserling, in need of musical entertainment to help him pass his sleepless nights, commissioned some clavier pieces from the composer to be played by the court’s resident harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg.
Then yield thee, coward, And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time: We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, Painted on a pole, and underwrit, ‘Here may you see the tyrant.’ — Shakespeare, Macbeth
Just came back from an amazing trip to New York with our good friends T— and L—. We had a chance to see Daniel Craig of 007 James Bond fame play Macbeth in an off-Broadway production with Oscar nominee Ruth Negga. So we did. We also snuck in visits to the Metropolitan Museum to look at their Greek & Roman stuff, as well as their current exhibition of the French painter Jacques-Louis David (you will say that you do not know him, as I did….wait for it …. you do). And in addition we visited The Cloisters in uptown New York City, the best museum nobody knows about.
The Cloisters is the home of our semi-canine friend above, as well as amazing medieval art, stained glass and building elements from Europe. Indeed the entire museum is essentially created from spare parts from medieval Europe, including the famous Unicorn tapestry, illustrated manuscripts, gilded wine glasses, a delightful courtyard and nearly entire chapels.
We’re going to Greece and Rome in the fall, so we were excited to see the Met’s collection of Greek and Roman art and sculpture, as well as another visit to the Arms & Armory room:
Here’s some Greek stuff: Priam begging for his son Hector’s body, a grotesque, Hercules wearing a lion…
We took a walk on The Highline, which is very nice – a kind of mini-Central Park, near where our boat-based Architecture tour departed. Lots of interesting architecture including the new Hudson Yards.
The Macbeth was wonderful. Daniel Craig provided a fair bit of cognitive dissonance for me, as I know him mostly as Bond. His Macbeth was a wonderful far cry from his Bond. He seemed quite joyful and touched by the crowd’s response afterwards. Negga’s Lady Macbeth was absolutely outstanding.
The production was good fun. The stage at first glance appeared quite sparse and I expected a “small” Shakespeare. But soon the smoke was roiling, the lights were flashing, the walls were moving, and the play took on a much more cinematic experience than I expected. Much of the production was “modern” – the witches wear normal street clothes, Banquo is dispatched by a handgun, Bond (err, Macbeth) wears a fur coat that would not look out of place on a rapper…all good fun.
Since I was going to see Macbeth and hadn’t read it since high school (or never?), I decided to read it on my last plane ride. You may not have read Macbeth, but you probably know some of the famous lines, and the story itself: Macbeth, egged on by his wife Lady Macbeth and 3 Witches who foretell his future, kills King Duncan and usurps the throne, and embarks on a killing spree to cement his rule. I’ve captured some of my favorite lines below.
Oh, those witches:
Fair is foul and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air
By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes
Ray Bradbury did not invent that phrase 🙂
And of course the famous witches’ scene:
First Witch. Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
All. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
All. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
I love this rhyme, when King Duncan executes the Thane of Cawdor for treason and promotes Macbeth:
Go pronounce his present death, and with his former title greet Macbeth.
and when the sentence is executed and the death reported back:
Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
Macbeth:
So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
Lady Macbeth, when pondering her husband’s potential abandonment of their plan for pity of King Duncan:
Yet do I fear thy nature: It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.
and…
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time, bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue. Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t.
Macbeth, on the assassination:
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly.
Macbeth after the crime, remorseful:
Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast,—
Which reminds of the last time we went to New York City and saw the interactive, participatory show Sleep No More, loosely based on Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth, after the crime, driven mad and to some extent remorseful:
Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why, then, ’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
And Macbeth’s soliloquy lament on her death:
She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Macduff, as he fights Macbeth to the death:
Then yield thee, coward, And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time: We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, Painted on a pole, and underwrit, ‘Here may you see the tyrant.’
Macbeth in response:
I will not yield, To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, And to be baited with the rabble’s curse. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, And thou opposed, being of no woman born, Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’
Pretty much since high school, I’ve had what W. H. Auden called “The Northern Thing”, a fascination with Vikings, Scandinavia, and their conflicting views on Fate (everything is predetermined) and Free Will (you must fight to death, and never give up, even as your fate is predetermined) (and do see Auden’s translation of the Elder Edda mentioned below!).
I’m not sure precisely where it started, but it was somewhere at the intersection of Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons, and the teenage male fascination with death and destruction. That led to a college flirtation with becoming a medieval studies major (I read Old Norse and Old English for a brief time), before succumbing eventually (and probably for the better) to Mathematics and Computer Graphics.
This year I had a chance to travel to Iceland, the land of Fire and Ice, and the home of the medieval sagas I loved even as a teenager (ok I was kinda “not like the other kids”). Iceland also happens to be the home of Jolabokaflod, the “Yule Book Flood”, the tradition of giving books as gifts for Christmas. My kind of holiday (read about my trip here).
In preparation for my trip, I wanted to re-read some of my old favorites, as well as a new books that would give me context and re-kindle my interests in all things Norse. Myths, Sagas and some recent fiction, here’s what I read, plus a few promising books I found while I was there.
The Myths.
Snorri Sturluson is largely responsible for much of what we today think of as Norse mythology. Blond Valkyries carrying the fallen in battle to Valhalla, the one-eyed Odin and Thor’s Hammer. Sturluson wrote three of the northern world’s medieval masterpieces, the Prose (younger) Edda, the Heimskringla (the history of the Kings of Norway), and Egill’s Saga (one of the classic Icelandic sagas). (btw Egill was quite the asshole, see this hilarious recap on the Grapevine, a great Icelandic website). The Prose Edda is not to be confused with the Elder Edda, which, for maximal confusion, was NOT written by Sturluson. The Prose Edda, originally written as a treatise on poetry-writing (and to gain favor with a young King Hakon of Norway), is one of the main sources for much of what we know of Viking mythology, containing tales of Odin, Thor, Loki, and other gods.
Now, Sturluson, in addition to being a writer, was, as we might say today, an “operator”. Cunning, powerful, legalistic, and always looking out for himself. As you can imagine he did not come to a good end. All of this and more is captured in Nancy Marie Brown’s masterful Song of the Vikings, which tells Snorri’s tale alongside the Norse tales he captured (or created, your call).
We think of Norse mythology as ancient and anonymous. But in fact, most of the stories we know about Odin, Thor, Loki, and the other gods of Scandinavia were written by the 13th-century Icelandic chieftain Snorri Sturluson. Notice I said “written” and not “written down.”
The Elder Edda (not written by Snorri) contains a collection of mythical writings from old Norse mythology. My favorite is the Havamal, (“the sayings of the High One”), purported to be the pithy sayings of Odin. This is the home of cheery thoughts such as
“Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it has been drunk.”
(In case you are wondering about that “burnt” bit, legend has it that the Vikings chieftains sometimes had their wives burned/buried/cremated along with them).
The Sagas
The sagas are the treasure of Icelandic literature. Written in the middle ages, most of the anonymously, they vary from mythological adventure stories to quasi-historical extended family sagas, and are sometimes referred to as the first prose (non-poetic) novels. Here’s a few of my favorites I (re-)read:
Hrolf Kraki’s Saga. A retelling/reconstruction by Poul Anderson. This is a classic grim Viking tale, “brothers to the death”, “defiance in the face of fate”, “blood & treasure” mythological saga. A bit hard to find these days, but look a bit online for a used copy. (And if you love this, go for Anderson’s The Broken Sword right afterwards).
Njal’s Saga is essentially Iceland’s Iliad. It tells the story of a spiraling series of conflicts that result in fifty year blood feud between Njal and various of his enemies. Like the Iliad, Njal’s saga can be quite gory (including Njal’s family being burnt alive in their house), and is something of a meditation on vengeance and its effects. It also offers insight into medieval Iceland’s byzantine legal system (one of the world’s first), and the workings of the Althing, the world’s first parliament, which occurred annually at Thingvellir, which we visited.
Grettir’s Saga. One of the last of the great Icelandic sagas. Grettir’s Saga is a mix of the historical (Grettir’s father escapes from Harald Fairhair, the King of Denmark), to the mythological/fantastic: Grettir’s doom is set when he fights the draugr (an undead zombie) Glam, who, as Grettir is killing him, curses Grettir to become unlucky and weak, which leads to his eventually becoming an outlaw, and to his death. Grettir’s saga has striking parallels with Beowulf, with Glam standing in for Grendel. Good fun, if you like that sort of thing.
Sometimes reading the old stuff can be a bit of a grind. So I mixed in some modern stuff, some of it with an historical/saga angle, some not.
One of Iceland’s more famous authors is Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. I read her Last Rituals, wherein a young German student with a dark interest in the Icelandic sagas and magic is found murdered, with strange symbols carved into him. A procedural murder mystery, I enjoyed it but found myself wanting a bit more depth in characters and in Icelandic backstory. Still I was reading in translation so some of that may be the translation. In this vein, but more enjoyable for me, was:
Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath. Boston, Iceland, Tolkien…pretty much hits all my highlights. A fun Icelandic romp. A Boston detective with Icelandic heritage heads to Iceland and ends up investigating a murder involving J.R.R. Tolkien and a lost Icelandic saga. My kind of book…
Also in a similar vein, although I did not get to it (yet!) is The Flatey Enigma by Arnar Ingolfsson.
Lastly I read some modern Icelandic fiction, without the saga backdrop. Sjón might be Iceland’s most famous writer, both for his works and for his collaborations with Björk. The Blue Fox is poetical fairy tale about a Reverend hunting a blue fox, intermixed in a tantalizing way with the story of an abandoned child, apparently with Down’s Syndrome. Lyrical, bleak and mysterious, it’s also a quick read.
Likely Iceland’s most commercially successful novelist is Arnaldur Indriðason, author of the Inspector Erlendur series, the first of which is Jar City. I re-read Silence of the Grave, the 2nd in the series – a brutal, yet fascinating mystery. It explores domestic violence, the tension between countryside and city Icelanders, between Icelanders and the British & Americans, and drugs and the dark side of Reykjavik. Of particular interest to me was the exploration of the post-WWII presence of the Americans and the tensions and grievances it created. (As an aside, and not meant as any insult, but Iceland is perhaps the most “Americanized” of the European countries I have been to, and I got a sense for how that might have happened from this book).
Books I found
Books are a big part of Icelandic culture (they are one of the most literate countries). And they have some great bookstores….and yet… books are $%!@ expensive in Iceland. A small paperback usually runs about $26! So, haunting a few bookstores, I found some really interesting books….that I decided to get when I was back in the states. :).
Smile of the Wolf looks really interesting. Essentially a modern fiction novel wrapped in the skin of a medieval Icelandic saga. Fish Have No Feet, from Booker International nominated Jon Kalman Steffanson, offers a unique insight into modern Iceland and the ways in which it has been shaped by outside influences. If you want some dark humor and Icelandic slacker culture in a modern setting, try 101 Reykjavik (the name of this book, as well as the main area of Reykjavik, as well as a movie made from the book). Be warned: it sounds like it’s not for everyone.
But Iceland is! Everyone seems to speak English there, so (assuming you speak English), it’s an easy place to visit, and it has a rich literary history as well as a rich actual history. Enjoy!
(P.S. In between starting and finishing this post, I read the first few chapters of Smile of the Wolf. Wow. If anything I wrote here sounds interesting to you, start with Smile of the Wolf. Bracing like a shot of the “Black Death” the Icelanders are found of drinking.)
I started reading the Viking sagas in high school, after being infected with the Dungeons & Dragons virus. Or, was it the reverse? Can’t remember. I read Old Norse (The Saga of Hrafnkel the Priest of Frey) and Old English (Beowulf) in college, and perhaps only a fun collision with point-set topology ended me up as a Math major instead of a medieval studies major. 40-odd years later, I’m going to Iceland, the land of Fire and Ice and Viking sagas and the Black Death (the drink, not the plague). Thanks to wife, daughter and son for finally getting me to do it, and for their significant others for coming along!
Waiting for the galactic bus
After a short red-eye to Reykjavik, we huddle in the rental car line outside, in the dark and 30 degree weather, for the better part of half an hour waiting for the rental car shuttle. 30 minutes doesn’t seem that long til you are freezing. We’re later to discover that the rental cars are a short 5 minute walk away, but in the dark in a foreign country on the wrong side of the airport, these things escape you….finally it comes, and we get our car. Kristen has booked a car/SUV for 7 people. And indeed it will hold seven people. Just not 7 people plus their bags. We ponder a bit, then decide to make do. People hold their suitcases on their laps, and away we go, in the dark.
The Blue Lagoon
Our first destination is the Blue Lagoon. We’d been thinking to do it at the end of our trip, but, then we re-organize, thinking to do museums in Reykjavik the last day (which is when we fly out), to make better use of time. We’ll later learn that the National Museum is closed on Monday, when we try to get in…sigh. The Blue Lagoon has generated high expectations, and well, it outperforms them. After a quick shower (you must do so without your swimsuit on, but there’s shower stalls for privacy), we take the indoor wading exit out into what is essentially the world’s large geothermally-heated hot tub, and, wow. Wow does that water feel good after a long plane ride. The sun hasn’t come up yet (it’s almost December so the comes up around 10:30AM). But the sun is coming, and the color gradient of the sky is simply indescribable. Pictures don’t do it justice. There’s not a cloud in the sky and the gradient is so pure it’s like it’s drawn in Photoshop. The water varies from warm to scorching depending on where in the 100m lake/pool we’re in. There’s a swim up bar — we get a free drink — but it’s 9 in the morning so I opt for a smoothie instead of the beer I see others drinking. We all get our faces pasted up with the mud bath they offer, and we look pretty funny. But none of us has a camera. A man and two young women are speaking English near us, so I ask “Would it be weird to ask you to take our picture and email us?”. They are happy to help. We chat, and find they are from Massachusetts, about an hour from where we used to live. Father & daughters on a trip, presumably from the same flight we just got off. (the above is the picture they took).
After an hour or so in the water (seriously, none of us wants to leave), we hit the road, for our next destination: Thingvellir on the Golden Circle. I’ve downloaded Google maps for Iceland, and we’re using GPS. We exit the lagoon and trundle off into the dark, toward Reykjavik and then on to Thingvellir. I hang a right out of the airport, and … in about 10 minutes I am feeling twitchy. Google maps is chattering away instructions like it knows where we’re going, but the thing is, as I like to say about GPS, “you’re never lost but you never know where you are either”. I’m twitchy. We come over a rise and I see the ocean. That doesn’t feel right. We’re supposed to be going inland. Folks in the car convince me I’m up in the night, and we keep going. Then we get directions that take us down a small residential street in an industrial looking smaller town, and now I’m pretty sure something’s gone wrong. We keep going, but eventually pull over to look at the map. Yep, we’ve gone wrong. Shoot. But it looks like there’s a way back that doesn’t involve retracing the last 20 minutes. OK off we go. Up into some hilly terrain, and crap, now it’s snowing and I’m slipping around….I come over a rise and skid slightly. My heart jumps. Nobody else notices anything….and then one more turn and laying at our feet is blue sky and the most beautiful lake. Sometimes the wrong turns are the best.
After pictures we head off for Thingvellir, a couple hours drive. We look for food, getting hungry. Of all the things in a foreign country, finding food on the road might be the most unsettling. We’re in the middle of nowhere, and people want food. And there’s six of us, which means there are about 8 different ideas for food. Eventually we see an IKEA beside the freeway, and think, well THEY have food, Swedish meatballs and such (as all of them do in US). Right??? So we wander in. I expect we are the only tourists to have been here in some time. We eventually find the food area. They have….let’s see. Semi-congealed pizza. Hot Dogs (hot dogs seem the ubiquitous road food in Iceland :)). A bakery with bread and such. We make do, then back on the road.
The road to Thingvellir
It’s snowing on and off again and the road to Thingvellir is beautiful one moment and treacherous the next. The light here is just indescribable. Photographers talk about the “golden hour” when the sun is low, just after sunrise and before sunset. The sun rises at 10:30 here this time of year and sets around 4. And never gets high. It’s always the golden hour unless it’s dark. Thingvellir is the site of the world’s first parliament (930 AD) and figures prominently in many of the Icelandic Sagas (and it’s the scene of the Bloody Gate in Game of Thrones). It’s also home to many of the legal actions in medieval Iceland. In preparation for the trip I’ve re-read a number of the sagas, including Njal’s Saga, scenes of which often occur at Thingvellir, and which features many facets of the byzantine medieval Icelandic legal framework (for example, a lawsuit is dismissed because the plaintiff only called 5 witnesses, instead of the required 9 (see my reading list for Iceland). And, it is where the tectonic plates meet — you can snorkel here, believe it or not. But not this time of year. Damn it’s cold and windy. There’s a huge lake next to it, and, here’s the golden hour on full display. Straight from the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, I say.
The golden hour
We’d hoped to do more of the Golden circle today, but it’s getting dark, we’re tired, and it’s still snowing on and off, so back to Reykjavik we go, to our downtown AirBnb. The road is still snowy and treacherous, but we arrive ‘home’ without incident. At this point, by the way, we have memorized the Google Maps mantra, “take the second exit from the roundabout and continue straight” — we must have gone through 20 roundabouts both to and from Thingvellir, it seems the Icelanders prefer roundabouts to stoplights. After a 20 minute struggle in the apartment to find the location of both the garage door opener and the garage, we’ve found it, unloaded everything, and gotten into the place. It’s awesome. Classic Nordic white decor, with a picture of (apparently) Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones lighting a cigarette for our AirBnB host, who appears to be a canonical Icelander, with a huge grin, big flowing hair and a beard. There’s six of us so I dub the doorway the Icelandic Boot Invasion, with all our boots. Our balcony has a stunning view of Hallgrímskirkja. We find a rather boutique-y food court (Hlemmur Mathöll, which contains a neat restaurant, SKÁL!), across the street from us. Everyone gets what they want (arctic char and a cold Icelandic beer for me), with a minimum of fuss. Beginning to realize everyone speaks English here. We hit the supermarket for some breakfast food, then back to the AirBnB, and I crash, hard. Driving in a foreign country is exhausting, you’re constantly on guard for something unexpected.
And that is the end of Day One. My daughter, our lead scheduler, has the schedule pacing of a Greyhound.
Today our plan is to circle the Snæfellsnes peninsula, which I have dubbed Snuffleupagus for lack of clearer pronunciation. Up north and pretty much an all-day drive. But first, breakfast. Kristen leads the charge on cooking pancakes, but it takes 10 minutes or so to figure out the stove. It’s an induction stove, which means you need the right pan to conduct the heat and we can’t figure out how it works. Eventually we get it, and proceed to burn the crap out of the first set of pancakes and the pan. I figure we’re going to have to buy a new pan, but miraculously afterwards all of it comes clean. And boy did the pancakes taste good, good job Kristen! (We rented our house in Hawaii for a while, and the pans always got destroyed — I always assumed it was from incompetent cookers, but we’re pretty competent, and it happened to us — I guess it’s just the unfamiliarity. And then off to the races again.
The first interesting thing we run into is perhaps the longest tunnel I’ve ever been in. The Hvalfjörður tunnel is about 6km long, and it goes deep, over 500 feet down. Down and down and down, then up and out. We stop for gas and coffee in Borganes, the gateway to Snæfellsnes — we’ll return here on a loop later in the evening. The first gas machine doesn’t take a credit card. Eventually figure it out, then it wants a pin for my credit card, which doesn’t have one. My debit card works, eventually. Sheesh. and it’s cold out here! Inside we all wander around getting coffee. I glance up to hear Erik give a yelp and literally start sprinting away from something…what the hell? Turns out he’s dropped his coffee onto his (porous) shoes and scorched his foot. He later says, “I stopped running when I realized I couldn’t run away from the pain in my foot” :). By now we are all laughing hysterically and trying to clean up the mess and drawing bemused glances from all the Icelanders hanging out in the convenience store section of the gas station. Damn Americans. The view from outside the gas station over an enormous lake or inlet is breathtaking. Erik: “I’m kind of pissed off the views from their gas stations are so amazing”.
Our first destination today is the Basalt cliffs of Gerðuberg. Michelle and I each independently remark how much the terrain here reminds us of Utah. It’s desolate and beautiful, even though we’re not far from sea level it looks like high desert plains. The Basalt cliffs are super cool, tall columns of entirely square, tall chunks. We’ll see similar again later, elsewhere. Off we go, through mountainous sea level terrain (the contradiction is entirely meant here), with the astounding light shining on everything. We make an unplanned stop at Bersekerseyrara (“Berserker’s Ears”), a small inlet with a black sand beach, on our way to Kirkjufell, a small town with a cool waterfall and an eponymous small offshore mountain, which apparently can be climbed if you are intrepid (we are not, yet).
Kirkjufell
Kirkjufell peak bears a striking resemblance to Chinaman’s Hat on Oahu where we live. Kirkjufell is also home to another gas station/convenience store and a distinct fish smell — we suspect it’s a fishing village, mostly. There’s a semi-truculent semi-goth teenager running the counter, when we ask for the restroom keys. But he’s wearing a Nike shirt, and actually he’s probably not truculent, he’s probably just a teenager. Hot dogs are the food of choice here, apparently. Seems to be what other travelers are getting, but we pass. The combination of the Nike shirt, the hot dogs, and ubiquity of English finally hits me here and I realize Iceland seems far more Americanized than any other European country I’ve been to. As the trip goes on I’ll observe what a large percentage of everyone (Icelanders and tourists alike) are wearing jeans. We hang at the waterfall for a bit — it’s crowded, with a busload of Chinese tourists slipping on the ice — truly surprising to me how far they have come, Iceland is far enough but we’re in a pretty remote part of Iceland by now.
Game of Thrones enthusiasts, you may recall in Season 7 that Jon Snow and his band are hunting for a mountain that the Hound says is shaped like an arrowhead. That would be Kirkjufell.
A few pictures and off we go.
Our next stop is a cool lighthouse at the end of a long, very small road which spurs off the very long, small road we were already on. It’s snowing again, and sleeting. I realize I’m driving on black ice when the SUV starts slipping. I pass one car (a small sedan) that stops on the way back — the driver, perhaps Japanese, perhaps American of Japanese descent, says in flawless English, “The road is pretty slippery up there” — no kidding — then drives off. Not sure what to make of that, we decide to keep going since we’re in an SUV. We slip/slide our way over a few more rises on the way down to the shore, when over the last rise, over the black ice, we come face to face, in the middle of nowhere, with a tow truck trying to extricate a car from the ditch. The tow truck driver wanders over (he’s Icelandic, of course), and explains in blond and smiling and 100% flawless English that we should probably turn around, unless we want him to tow us out as well. OK, message received. We turn around.
On to the next stop — another lighthouse, the Gestatofa. The lighthouse is done in cement Brutalist architecture. It’s just a tall slab of concrete — no romance at all, not like an Outer Banks or Maine lighthouse. We see a few more along the way, and after the upcoming churches I name Iceland the land of Fire and Ice and Beautiful Churches and Ugly Lighthouses. This road is also bad, but we make it back up to the main road without incident.
From there we hit the famous Black Church of Buðir. Built in 1848 (after two previous churches were destroyed). It’s strikingly isolated — there is really nothing else around it — but it’s build on a slight rise going down to the sea, so the view feels infinite.
Not far from the Black Church is a cool waterfall which we climb, Bjarnarfoss — you can see the Black Church from the top. The climb was steep and cold and a bit wet and a good bit of rock scramble, but nobody gets hurt and the view is astounding.
Off we go, back to Borganes. We want to stop at the grocery store for some food, and at the state liquor store where you must buy your alcohol (see, I told you this was like Utah!). But first we must trek for an hour or so on a small, dark, two-lane road in the snow and dark. It’s quite nerve-wracking, having cars coming at you on a two lane road in the dark in a foreign country with the crappy windshield wipers smearing the windshield, and the oncoming cars flashing you. Everybody’s flashing their high beams at me. Can’t figure out why. I don’t have my high beams on, and I don’t have my running lights on. I can’t figure it out (and never did) — are they being polite? telling me to turn my lights down? telling me my fly is unzipped? Never figure it out.
Finally we get back to Borganes. Good lord alcohol is expensive here. The beers are all $4–5 each (not per six package, although they are sold in six-packs the price is misleadingly listed by the bottle, and it’s apparently kosher to just pull one out). A bottle of Icelandic aquavit (the Black Death), is probably ~$60, American gin and whiskey at least $50 a bottle it seems. Borganes is also home to the Settlement Center museum and restaurant. We pull up to the museum, it’s snowing and icy (you’re perhaps sensing a pattern here). We open the car door and IMMEDIATELY a cat jumps into the car. We flush the cat out, and head in. We decide to have dinner at the restaurant first. I’m driving and there’s 0 tolerance for drinking and driving here, so I have Egil’s MaltExtrakt, which basically like some kind of local malt root beer they’ve been making here for a hundred years. Sweet. Tastes like root beer. I have a delicious lamb tenderloin, others have a mix of “meat stew” (lamb stew), or soups. The bread and butter are astounding. Icelandic butter is just….different. Of course we haven’t eaten a solid meal since morning… The museum has two exhibits, one about the history of the settlement of this part of Iceland, including it’s most famous resident, Egil Skallagrímsson, the “hero” (I use the term advisedly, as Egil was an asshole, as well as a famous poet and warrior) of Egil’s saga. The other exhibit is about Egil’s saga, and Egil’s “exploits”. Yeah. Asshole with anger management issues and a gift for skaldic poetry. Off again, once more through the long tunnel, back to the house, a beer and about 10 pages of Silence of the Grave, a mystery by Arnaldur Indriðason, one of Iceland’s most famous authors, which I am re-reading as part of my ‘Reading my way to Iceland’ campaign. 10 pages and out like a light.
And that was the end of Day Two. Whew. You’re probably sensing the pattern.
Day 3 is the Southern route. The main activity is Ice Climbing on Sólheimajökull glacier, but we’re going to hit some of the top spots along the way. We’re up early and driving in the dark, again. And it’s snowing again. Much of this route is divided highway, so the snow and smeared windshield is slightly less nerve-racking. BTW. If you ever go to Iceland, rent a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Seriously. It’s worth the extra money. We’re hurtling down the freeway in the dark at 9am in the morning, when out the side of the car we see a church lit up, and in the graveyard in front of it, all the headstones have Christmas lights on them! It’s a bit surreal — it’s hard to imagine that happening in the states. Do the Icelanders have a different relationship with their dead than we do?
Eventually we get to Seljalandsfoss, today’s Waterfall #1, just as the sun rises around 10:30. It’s — well — everything is beautiful here. I’m starting to feel a bit repetitive. But this one, after an icy climb on an iced-over metal stairway, you can take a rock path to walk behind it. Then up and down another completely iced over metal stairway. I avoid crashing. All the way to the bottom of the last stair, and when I take my first step off the stairs, I slip and fall. Dammit! I thought I’d made it. 🙂 But no harm done. Back in the car to Waterfall #2, Skogafoss. Which is — you guessed it — beautiful, although perhaps slightly less impressive than Seljalandsfoss. We’re starting to get close to time to go Ice Climbing, but we’re pretty sure we can squeeze in a visit to the Black Sand beach, which is really the thing I wanted to see more than the waterfalls. So we make a run for it, me hurtling down the freeway at probably 30–40% over the speed limit (Icelandic speed limits feel quite low, especially for Americans).
Sjeljalandsfoss
Offshore we can see the Westman Islands, which we learned at the Egil’s Saga museum was the location where some Irishmen (Westmen) were chased and killed as part of some feud or other. And where in the 1970s much of the town was buried by lava flow. And where there’s a super-cool looking foodie restaurant with amazing cocktails called Slippurinn which we did not make it to…Maybe Westman Islands on the next trip…. Anyway the black sand beach is amazing, and the beach is so wide and deep and the horizon so vast it’s breathtaking. And more Basalt columns. And it’s also the filming location of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea in Season 7 of Game of Thrones.
Back in the car. No time to lose. we’re late for the Glacier. I lead-foot it to the Glacier, we arrive pretty much to the minute when we needed to.
Now we’ve got our crampons and climbing gear on, and we’re hiking up the glacier, in a group of about 15 people. We’re on Sólheimajökull (“Sun’s home glacier” — ironic as this is one of the darker places in Iceland according to our guide). Now damn this is cool!! Hiking on a glacier. The ice pack has an eerie blue color, with black lines throughout, and with piles of black dirt lying all over the place. At first I think they’ve put it on the trail we’re on for our footing. Then (facepalm), our tour guide explains this is volcanic ash, deposited periodically by volcanoes. It’s layered all throughout the ice, and can be used for dating. The glacier is receding, as you may have heard — a few hundred yards in the last few decades. We’re up and down, then finally rappelling down into a flat area, while one of our guides starts setting lines at the top. This is where we’re going to climb. And it’s starting to rain/sleet/snow, and getting colder and darker.
Ice climbing
Ice climbing turns out to be surprisingly hard. The crampons on your shoes have two teeth that stick straight forward, and you kick to seat them in the ice. Then you have two ice hammers you slam into the ice above your head, and pull yourself up. Then step up, kick into the ice to set your feet, and do it again. I’m not quite sure why, but for some reason this clicks for me, and (on belay and with a fair bit of lifting from one of the guides, I make it up ~40′ of ice to scramble over the ledge and on top. My back and arms will be sore for three days afterwards. Eventually we all make it to the top, some getting pulled up by a group of us on a rope. We trudge down in the cold sleet and the dark, and eventually leave the parking lot in the dark. More driving in the dark. Eventually we find a brewery that has wood-fired pizza. We each order a large, and almost every single large got eaten in it’s entirety in about 15 minutes :). The pizzas are pretty unique — Brian’s pizza has bananas on it, mine blue cheese, dates and bacon. Unfortunately, I’m driving again, so no beer for me but Kristen and Bryan get a sampler and the beer tastes good! More nerve-wracking driving on two lane roads in the dark and snow, 10 pages of Silence of the Grave (which I would eventually finish on the plane ride home), and then passed out again.
Day Three. The Whirlwind is winding down.
We had left one day mostly unplanned, thinking we might not be able to get everything in on the days we’d planned, since we abandoned the Golden Circle on our first day after Thingvellir, we went back for it. The main attractions being Geysir, a volcanic (duh) geyser, and Gullfoss, a truly amazing waterfall. More driving! (As you can tell, we didn’t spend too much time in Reykjavik). Geysir is pretty fun, although it’s a long drive to get there. It has a large tourist shop, which we spent awhile milling around in, and had lunch there. Mostly soups (I had Icelandic salmon on a bagel — quite tasty). And some very good cakes and pastries. Then up an icy path to watch the Geysir go off, once every 10 minutes or so.
Gullfoss is a short 10 minute drive away. It’s not really a waterfall — really more like a family of 20 or so waterfalls..really quite amazing. But it’s cold and overcast — in the summer I bet it is even more amazing….
We head back, stopping along the way for some pictures with Icelandic horses in a field. They’re a bit differently shaped to what we’re used to here — much shorter legs, shaggier and more muscular and stocky than their American counterparts. And, apparently, quite friendly with random American tourists who approach their fence in the middle of nowhere without any food to give them.
We’re back to Reykjavik early enough to tromp around town. We wander past the penis museum (ahem, excuse me the Icelandic Phallological Museum. Seriously.), but keep going. We’re headed for Hallgrímskirkja, a modern church built near the center of the old town. The architecture is amazing. We take the elevator ride to the top, and get wide-ranging views over Reykjavik. Then we’re off to wander the shopping district. Icelandic wool sweaters are the thing, but they are not cheap — the store I went in, they ranged from $200–500. Ouch. We wander off to Kaffibarinn, where Michelle gets hot chocolate and Kristin and I get Úlfur IPAs which are local and delicious. Then into a bookstore. Good lord it’s worse than the alcohol. Paperbacks run 32 KR (~$26), hardbacks even worse. I see a copy of Smile of the Wolf which looks like a tasty modern version of an Icelandic saga, but decide I can wait to get home and get it for 1/3 the price…I could never live here. Beer & books are too expensive!). We wander more, eventually ending up at a craft beer place. We have a look at the menu, and — I am not making this up — they are selling Treehouse Beer from Charlton, MA, not far from where we lived in Massachusetts, and which is pretty much impossible to obtain the US unless you drive to their facility in Charlton and get it. We defer on the Treehouse — I get Humar (Malbygg brewery) which is a lovely double IPA from Iceland. Home to our AirBnB, where we watch Seth Myer’s comedy special on our hosts Apple TV — so funny. And yay for the internet!!! Then to bed.
Up on the last day, the sprint is almost over!
Today’s museum day — we rejiggered the schedule to use time better, and today’s National Museum of Iceland day. Sitting in the car, waiting for everyone to bring the bags down, I check their hours. Shit. They’re closed today. Oh well. More for the next trip. We go for the Settlement Exhibition (confusingly named similarly to the one in Borganes but with different content). It’s fun — they’ve excavated a Viking long house from the settlement era and built a museum over it. Lots of video displays and exhibits, but not much in the way of actual artifacts except the long house foundations. But very interesting. Then around the corner for lunch at a restaurant one of Erik’s friends recommended. It’s either lasagna or soup — I go for the soup. It’s actually quite amazing. A lentil soup, but with the flavor of butternut or mushroom soup. And the sourdough bread and Icelandic butter are heavenly.
It’s raining hard now — we sprint for the car, and hightail it out to the airport. Advice: It’s much faster to walk from the rental car return than it is to wait for the shuttle bus. We hang out in the duty free area, shopping and eating and just loafing around. BTW — if you are buying anything alcoholic to bring into Iceland, or take out of Iceland, get it in duty free ( they have it coming and going ) — and it’s infinitely cheaper than outside, either way. And they have pretty much everything I saw in Iceland, in the duty free).
We suddenly realize time has gotten on ….we need to get to our gates. We hustle. Shit. We still have to go through passport control. Starting to feel pressed for time. Then Michelle gets pulled for extra security, which costs her about 20 more minutes. Eventually we all make it, but next time, I would relax on the other side of passport control…..
And back to Boston, where, ironically, it is even snowier and colder than in Iceland.
Iceland is a fascinating and beautiful place, especially if you are interested in either Viking history or the outdoors. The light in the winter is simply amazing, and hard to put into words. The people were uniformly friendly in our experience, and literally every single person we interacted with spoke fantastic English. I found Iceland to be much more Americanized than most European countries. I wonder if that is the legacy of the country being occupied by the British in WWII (which I did not know until I read it in one of Indriðason’s books), and then by a significant US military presence after the war. Our main regrets were that we were unable to see the Northern Lights (never really happened while we were there, you are at the mercy of the weather), and missing the National Museum, and not spending a bit more time wander Reykjavik. But those are just great reasons to go again some day!
So, you finally made to Hawaii. Magic. And you want to go hiking on Oahu. There’s a surprising number of options. As someone who’s been hiking the island for decades, here’s my guide to deciding on your first hike, whether you are a beginner or a seasoned mountain climber. It (somewhat) assumes you are a tourist or visitor, and you’re staying in Honolulu. And I’ve left out a lot of details, you can Google the details of any of these trails for directions and the like.
Easy/Kids: Lanikai Pillbox Trail, Diamond Head, or Makapu’u Lighthouse. Intermediate: Lulumahu Falls, Aiea Loop Trail, or Advanced: Kuli’ou’ou or Olomana.
Easy Trails
Are you a relative beginner as a hiker? Want some great views without too much work?
Get yourself to the Lanikai Pillbox Trail. A short, 30 minute climb to some WWII pillboxes, concrete bunkers used for lookouts.
If you’re not staying on the windward side (few do), then make a day of it, combine it with a trip to Kailua Beach and a meal in downtown Kailua.
Pros: Short (30 min), Views (out of this world), Safe (wear real shoes though, don’t hike in your flip-flops (or “slippas”, as the locals would say — a friend broke an ankle as the trail is very eroded in spots).
Cons: You will be on this trail with a hundred new friends. Seriously. About 1000 people a day hit this. Don’t go on a weekend.
2. Hit Diamond Head. Another short (but steep) climb. Much of the “trail” is really concrete stairs leading to the lookout. But the views of downtown Honolulu are hard to beat.
Pros: Easy access from Honolulu, Awesome views. Doesn’t take long.
Cons: Crowded. Lots of concrete and stairs.
3. Makapuu Lighthouse trail
The Makapu’u area is awesome. Makapu’u beach is one of our favorite beaches on the island. Mostly a locals beach, great waves for bodysurfing, and not too crowded. The Lighthouse hike is an easy stroll with amazing views. It’s easily accessible from Honolulu (30 minutes from downtown), or from the Windward side. The trail is mostly paved, and you’ll get a amazing views of the famous Lighthouse as well as the entire windward shore. Do yourself a favor and combine this with a stop at Makapu’u beach and lunch at Keneke’s, a local plate lunch shop.
Lulumahu falls are also easily accessed from both downtown Honolulu and and the Windward side.
Head up the Pali Highway, near the top you will see a bunch of cars parked in a dirt area, right where Nuuanu Pali Drive runs into the Pali Highway. There’s an entrance there to the trail. Just follow the people :). The trail to the falls will take you maybe 45 minutes (assuming no wrong turns — the trail is not extremely well marked). The trail is ok for smaller kids who like to hike. If you have a bit of extra time the bamboo forest and the ruins of Kamehameha III make for an Indiana Jones style experience. To find the path to the ruins, stay to the right as you come into the bamboo forest. There will be a side trail (looks a foot or two wide) that starts a gap in the bamboo. Just follow it west through the bamboo and you’ll find it eventually :)).
Pros: Indiana Jones. Waterfalls. Nuff Said.
Cons: Can be crowded. Not hard to get off the trail. Not a sanctioned state trail, but tons of people on it.
2. Aiea Loop Trail.
Pros: An ancient Hawaiian heiau (religious temple built from rocks). Gorgeous hawaiian Ohia flowers. A commanding view of the H3 highway and Halawa valley. A lost WWII bomber (I’ve not found it — yet — but it’s there). Relatively flat, 5m round trip hike.
Cons: It’s not much of a workout, pretty flat. But fun
Advanced
Kuli’ou-’ou Ridge Trail
This trail is a workout. You start in a Honolulu neighborhood and end at the top of the Koolau mountain range, looking down into Waimanalo, with commanding views in all directions. Along the way you’ll go through a number of different “zones” of differing vegetation.
Pros: Great workout, amazing views, high quality trail.
Cons: A stairmaster section at the end. But it’s worth it.
2. Olomana
Probably the best known Windward side hike. It’s not for the faint hearted. You’ll climb 1600 feet up a knife edge ridge, climbing with the assistance of ropes for 10–15′ in a few places. There are three peaks. The first is a workout but doable. The 2nd peak is not too much further, but you don’t get that much extra out of it, so I’d skip it. Don’t go to the 3rd peak. People die there. About once a year. Including experienced hikers. Just don’t.
Pros: Great workout, Amazing views, easily accessible.
Cons: Ropes. Mild danger. Extreme danger on 3rd peak. Just don’t.
Notes:
You will have heard of Stairway to Heaven, aka Haiku Stairs. I don’t advise it. The stairs have been heavily damaged by recent storms, and you’ll expose yourself to tresspassing charges and a fine. Not fun.
The definitive guide to Oahu hiking is David Ball’s book, highly recommended.
Experienced and novice hikers alike will benefit from the information in this updated and expanded edition of the best-selling The Hikers Guide to O’ahu. The author describes in detail 52 trails that will take you to O’ahu’s lush valleys, cascading waterfalls, windswept ridges, and remote seacoasts.
3. If you are a deeply experienced hiker and into extreme hiking, check out this site for (dangerous) adventures. http://www.unrealhawaii.com/hikes/ (what I call “advanced” here, they call “easy” or “intermediate”. You have been warned.)
