Alright, I admit it: I am a rotten diarist. I had undertaken to make an entry to this blog every week, and it has now been a fortnight since my last. I was going to write something about the Icelandic language, but now I think I should simply catch up on general events.
When writing about travel experiences, one treads a fine line: change locations too frequently, and impressions are exciting but possibly superficial; stay longer in one location, and the experiences eventually become commonplace and deemed hardly worth commenting on. I have to constantly remind myself to maintain a child’s-eye view in which everything is fresh and new. This evening, for example, I was prompted to resume the blog when I opened a drawer in my desk, to be greeted by one of the characteristic scents of Iceland – fish. Fishing is Iceland’s biggest industry, accounting for some 70% of its exports, and most of the habitable areas are coastal, so you quickly become accustomed to the smell of the sea and of fish. But why should it emanate from my desk, you may ask? Well, this has to do with an Icelandic snack for which I have acquired a taste – hardfiskur. This consists of salted and dried (but not cooked) fish, usually haddock, which is sold in most supermarkets and convenience stores. Sold in small quantities in sealed plastic bags, it is a moderately expensive (£3.25 for 66 grams) delicacy that is best consumed with a beer or two in the evening. Despite the apparently airtight packaging, the smell somehow manages to escape and pervade its surroundings, hence the essence of Grimsby docks hanging around my desk drawer.
When writing about travel experiences, one treads a fine line: change locations too frequently, and impressions are exciting but possibly superficial; stay longer in one location, and the experiences eventually become commonplace and deemed hardly worth commenting on. I have to constantly remind myself to maintain a child’s-eye view in which everything is fresh and new. This evening, for example, I was prompted to resume the blog when I opened a drawer in my desk, to be greeted by one of the characteristic scents of Iceland – fish. Fishing is Iceland’s biggest industry, accounting for some 70% of its exports, and most of the habitable areas are coastal, so you quickly become accustomed to the smell of the sea and of fish. But why should it emanate from my desk, you may ask? Well, this has to do with an Icelandic snack for which I have acquired a taste – hardfiskur. This consists of salted and dried (but not cooked) fish, usually haddock, which is sold in most supermarkets and convenience stores. Sold in small quantities in sealed plastic bags, it is a moderately expensive (£3.25 for 66 grams) delicacy that is best consumed with a beer or two in the evening. Despite the apparently airtight packaging, the smell somehow manages to escape and pervade its surroundings, hence the essence of Grimsby docks hanging around my desk drawer.
The weather in the first ten days of September was remarkably warm, something of a heat wave, in fact, with bright sunshine and temperatures reaching 20°C. On Saturday the 4th, I finally got around to visiting Goðdalur, the ‘dale of the gods’. Located to the northeast of Hólmavik on the other side of Steinngrimsfjörður, Goðdalur is said to have been the site of a Heathen temple. In the last decade, a stone bowl was dug up there and brought to the Icelandic Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft. Forensic analysis in Reykjavik showed that it had once been a receptacle for animal blood, which ties in with what we know of the rites held in honour of the Aesir and Vanir in ancient days. The stone bowl is now on display as the prize exhibit of the Sorcery Museum. I was keen to get out to this dale in order to scout for any traces of ancient habitation and get the general ´feel´of the place. Outdoor recreation maps are widely available in Iceland, so finding it was no problem. On a scale of 1:100,000, they are not a patch on the Ordnance Survey‘s 1:25,000 maps, but they are accurate and quite adequate for my purposes. At a sharp bend in the gravel road to Kluka, I put the Vitara into 4-wheel drive and turned off along a rutted and bumpy track.
After a couple of kilometres, within sight of a cluster of summer houses, I crossed a narrow bridge across a stream and parked the car in order to approach the dale on foot. The road onward took a wide dog-leg to avoid a steep slope, and with a clear view of its continuation at the side of the river I couldn‘t resist the temptation to cut the corner. Bad mistake. I was accustomed to tramping through heather on the moors and heaths of England; heather just takes the dubbin off your boots and has an annoying habit of untying your boot laces for you. What I encountered now were dense thickets of low-level birch, no more than two feet high but as impenetrable as a low wire entanglement. These little trees grow so close together that there is no way to stomp a path through them. There were some meandering paths in between, however, also virtually overgrown with blueberry bushes and interspersed with treacherous holes that would snap your ankle with a smile. Eventually, sweating but with ankles intact, I made it back to the beaten track having taken about 15 minutes longer via the ‘shortcut’ than I would have taken if I had stuck to the road.
The dale turned out to be something of a disappointment. It was a nice walk on the whole, but somehow the place felt untidy and uncared for. There were many signs of man-made interference that could only have been accomplished with heavy-duty mechanical equipment, plus pieces of culvert pipe and rusting metal drums left here and there. And no numinous sensation whatsoever. Bishop Guðmundur may have failed to exorcise the old gods from the place, but it would appear that they packed up and left in disgust in the face of modern apathy and machinery. At the head of the dale are a couple of summer houses; there is no occupation here in the winter because of the danger of avalanches. In 1948, nine people were killed by one. This is not uncommon in Iceland. The day before my walk, I had been talking with a man from Flateyri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flateyri) who told me how he and his family had been engulfed by an avalanche and had narrowly escaped with their lives. 20 other people were not so lucky.
Within sight of the summer houses, bothered by teeming flies, I decided to turn around and go back to the car. No gods or elves this time, but I have an awful lot of Iceland to explore.
Within sight of the summer houses, bothered by teeming flies, I decided to turn around and go back to the car. No gods or elves this time, but I have an awful lot of Iceland to explore.
About five years ago, I composed a list of ‘things I want to do before I die’. One of those things was to see the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. When I first visited Iceland for 8 days in October 2008, the weather was uniformly cloudy at night, with barely a star to be seen. One of my new-found friends in Akureyri commented that she had seen the lights so often that they were commonplace. I felt very envious; oh, to see them just once!
This month, on 7 September, the weather was still extraordinarily mild and relatively windless, but the clouds cleared entirely after sunset to present a dark, starlit sky with no moon. At my altar I made a prayer to the Aesir, put on my coat and ventured out onto the rocky hillside behind the town in the hope of seeing the Northern Lights. Before very long, I saw faint streaks of luminescence; so faint at first, in fact, that I assumed they were merely clouds reflecting the lights of Hólmavik and the occasional distant car. After an hour, somewhat disappointed, I was already making my way back home when the sky in the west was lit by an unmistakable flicker of green fire that rose in a jet of ghostly light. Twisting and shifting, this pale apparition rose gradually like a curtain towards the zenith until it thinned to an elongated band to join the others that I had mistaken for high cloud. By this time it was well after midnight. Uttering my thanks to the gods, I went back to my room in the guest house where, like an excited child, I was unable to sleep until 3 a.m. and hoped that I would see this phenomenon again. I need not have worried.
The past few days brought a complete change in the weather and a bitter northerly gale has been blowing across Steingrímsfjörður, bringing rain and lashing the waters of the fjord into whitecaps. Even the gulls fly only occasionally in this tempest, preferring to cluster onshore or bob on the waves with the large flocks of eider ducks. The fishing boats do not venture out and the view from my window – sea, clouds and gulls - becomes a study in grey and white. My inclination has been to stay in the snug warmth of my room but for one, hitherto regrettable, impulse: I am an inveterate smoker and smoking is not allowed in the guest house. Elisabeth and Saevar have been very good to me, so I wouldn’t dream of flaunting this rule. Saevar, noticing my predicament, had sympathetically pointed out to me the little porch on the middle floor where I can have a smoke sheltered from the wind and rain. On the whole, this arrangement has been pretty beneficial as I now smoke only about one cigarette per hour.
While taking such a cigarette break last night, I wrapped up well and went out to the porch. The southern sky seemed to be bathed in moonlit clouds and I glanced around to discern where the moon was; it was then that I realised that the Northern Lights were all around, to the north, east, west and even the south! Great scintillating curtains of green fire magically appeared, swirled and subsided in all directions. Looking in one direction, I would become aware that some more interesting development was happening in the periphery of my vision; it was difficult to know which way to turn. Some manifestations drifted like bright clouds. New waves would start like distant searchlights, pushing up from the horizon, eclipsing the stars and extending horizontally, shifting and cascading like shovelfuls of luminous sand cast down from Asgard until the whole firmament was ablaze. It struck me that such a display ought to be accompanied by some kind of sound, the singing of a heavenly choir, but there was only stillness apart from the soughing of the wind. I watched for a long time until the cold found its way through three layers of clothing and I was forced to go back inside.
When I moved here from England, I had to seriously cut down the amount of baggage, but now I regret the fact that I don’t have a decent camera with a long exposure and steady tripod to record these wonderful experiences. Nevertheless, the memory is etched into my brain and I have fulfilled at least one of the ambitions on that list. The Northern Lights illuminate he heavens again tonight and I am thankful once more that I came to this little place at the edge of the world.
This month, on 7 September, the weather was still extraordinarily mild and relatively windless, but the clouds cleared entirely after sunset to present a dark, starlit sky with no moon. At my altar I made a prayer to the Aesir, put on my coat and ventured out onto the rocky hillside behind the town in the hope of seeing the Northern Lights. Before very long, I saw faint streaks of luminescence; so faint at first, in fact, that I assumed they were merely clouds reflecting the lights of Hólmavik and the occasional distant car. After an hour, somewhat disappointed, I was already making my way back home when the sky in the west was lit by an unmistakable flicker of green fire that rose in a jet of ghostly light. Twisting and shifting, this pale apparition rose gradually like a curtain towards the zenith until it thinned to an elongated band to join the others that I had mistaken for high cloud. By this time it was well after midnight. Uttering my thanks to the gods, I went back to my room in the guest house where, like an excited child, I was unable to sleep until 3 a.m. and hoped that I would see this phenomenon again. I need not have worried.
The past few days brought a complete change in the weather and a bitter northerly gale has been blowing across Steingrímsfjörður, bringing rain and lashing the waters of the fjord into whitecaps. Even the gulls fly only occasionally in this tempest, preferring to cluster onshore or bob on the waves with the large flocks of eider ducks. The fishing boats do not venture out and the view from my window – sea, clouds and gulls - becomes a study in grey and white. My inclination has been to stay in the snug warmth of my room but for one, hitherto regrettable, impulse: I am an inveterate smoker and smoking is not allowed in the guest house. Elisabeth and Saevar have been very good to me, so I wouldn’t dream of flaunting this rule. Saevar, noticing my predicament, had sympathetically pointed out to me the little porch on the middle floor where I can have a smoke sheltered from the wind and rain. On the whole, this arrangement has been pretty beneficial as I now smoke only about one cigarette per hour.
While taking such a cigarette break last night, I wrapped up well and went out to the porch. The southern sky seemed to be bathed in moonlit clouds and I glanced around to discern where the moon was; it was then that I realised that the Northern Lights were all around, to the north, east, west and even the south! Great scintillating curtains of green fire magically appeared, swirled and subsided in all directions. Looking in one direction, I would become aware that some more interesting development was happening in the periphery of my vision; it was difficult to know which way to turn. Some manifestations drifted like bright clouds. New waves would start like distant searchlights, pushing up from the horizon, eclipsing the stars and extending horizontally, shifting and cascading like shovelfuls of luminous sand cast down from Asgard until the whole firmament was ablaze. It struck me that such a display ought to be accompanied by some kind of sound, the singing of a heavenly choir, but there was only stillness apart from the soughing of the wind. I watched for a long time until the cold found its way through three layers of clothing and I was forced to go back inside.
When I moved here from England, I had to seriously cut down the amount of baggage, but now I regret the fact that I don’t have a decent camera with a long exposure and steady tripod to record these wonderful experiences. Nevertheless, the memory is etched into my brain and I have fulfilled at least one of the ambitions on that list. The Northern Lights illuminate he heavens again tonight and I am thankful once more that I came to this little place at the edge of the world.