Now, at 11.45 at night, I am restless. I do need to sleep, if only for a few hours. The alarm is set for 4 a.m. in order to begin the next journey - to Egypt.
The remainder of this, my third visit to Iceland, was mainly unexciting. The original intention had been to stay in Reykjavík and to rapidly acquire a good command of spoken Icelandic. A young friend had offered me free accommodation in an environment where I might realise this, and I had booked my air ticket accordingly. Unfortunately, the promise was not his to make; his parents had the last word and it turned out he had not consulted them. They said ‘no’, so I had to go to Hólmavík, back to the guest house, as the nearest inexpensive bolt-hole. After the tremendous blizzard, the weather turned relatively mild. Thaw followed freeze and was followed again by a thaw, then another freeze, until the old coast road that led to the start of my favourite hill walk resembled a skating rink. Only the snap-on ice grips on my boots saved me from a serious fall.
In the hills, the valleys and hollows were still filled with deep snow that was covered with a thin crust of ice able to bear my weight. The going was easy there, but with all paths obscured I had to rely on general orientation. It was not a huge area, so there was no real danger of getting lost.
After four weeks in Hólmavík, I was starting to think I might as well have stayed at home. Most of my time was spent alone in the otherwise empty guest house and I was not learning Icelandic anything like as fast as I wished. Worse still, my secondary objective had been stymied: I had wanted to interview a couple of old men in Dalvík (near Akureyri) about their traditional methods of weather forecasting. I made enquiries, but it turned out the old fellows had both died fairly recently.
Then I heard from my German friend Pascal that he would be coming to Iceland on holiday and staying in Reykjavík, so I prevailed on another friend, Sam, to let me stay with him for the final 2 weeks of my time in Iceland. Sam readily agreed and I took the bus south.
The last two weeks were spent mainly in pleasure seeking. I took a day tour with Pascal and we went out across the snow on a snowmobile. Until you get used to these machines, they seem as manoeuvrable as a supermarket shopping trolley, veering wildly away from the intended course of travel until you get the hang of it and throw your weight into the turn as you would on a motorbike. Pascal and I soon got used to it, however, and were soon confidently chasing the others across the snowy landscape.
I also visited a couple of museums. Firstly, there was the Maritime Musem, where I was given a guided tour of the coastguard vessel ‘Odin’ and learned more about the history of Iceland’s fishing industry. Then there was the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which houses a vast store of pickled, preserved and mounted penises from all kinds of creatures great and small.
There was also the opportunity to attend meetings of the Ásatrú Fellowship on a couple of Saturday afternoons. On the second occasion, someone was giving a talk on place names in Iceland and I found that I could understand most of it. Clearly I had absorbed more of the language than I had realised.
Eventually, it was time to take the ‘plane back to England, back to my new house. I made the most of it, getting the garden in order and catching up with friends and family, for I knew that I had only a month before the next foray abroad.