A reflection on Iceland

Sitting here in the airport Keflavik just outside of Reykjavik I have found time to write on my reflections of the past week in Iceland. This is my first post on our shared blog as I have failed to write a preliminary post like my other adventuring companions. I lacked Rich’s desire to be the center of attention, the absurdist humour and sharp wit of Zeke, or Tirrill’s abject hatred for our fellow passengers (well, not really, he just got to the computer first for that particular rant).  Anywho, here goes mine, a series of rants, rambles, and musings on my experience in Iceland.

After landing in the wee hours of the morning, at which point it was as dark as 8 pm on a summer night in Chapel Hill, we packed into our rental car and set out. The first few hours in Iceland were a delightful blur of awe inspiring landscapes, mile long tunnels, copious amounts of sheep, and the giggles of sleep deprivation.  We wound through the most rapidly changing series of landscapes I have ever witnessed. Within a span of 4 hours we had gone from a craggy and misty shoreline, to fecund rolling hills, to bleak expanses of glacier covered rock, to fields of lava rock dotted with geothermal vents, to collapsed volcanic craters and tectonic fissures, and eventually to beautifully haunting black sand beaches. In the first two days alone I was privileged enough to witness the most bizarre and beautiful landscapes of my life. Which leads to my first mind blowing experience of the trip. While coming back down the east coast of the country, after having survived the barren north, I awoke from a nap to a bizarre site. Spreading out on either side of the car, as far as the eye could see were fields of moss. 

Now, everyone is familiar with moss. We see moss on rocks, on tree trunks, on the occasional abandoned house. But I doubt anyone reading this has ever seen moss on such a scale. There was so much moss that the ground beneath it was not visible. It was literally square mile upon square mile of moss. And to add to how weird this already was, the ground was uneven and choppy like a multitude of frozen waves. I assume that this moss had grown on top of a wide expanse of gnarly lava rocks, giving it this bizarre appearance. I wanted to attempt to walk across this alien surface but I was afraid that the moss might swallow me up and use my body to feed its roots as it continues to spread across Iceland. One day it will take over the entire island, completely dwarfing humans as the dominant life force. Eventually it will evolve and spread its seed across the water making its way for all of Europe and then, the world! But I digress. 

Apart from this terrifying moss the rest of Iceland's nature and scenery that it has to offer is so stunning and beautiful that I do not have the time or space to do them all justice in writing. If you want a poor substitute for what we have witnessed please visit my dear companion Rich’s photo album on facebook. So, in skipping over the hikes, and the waterfalls, and cliffs, and deserts, and radioactive lakes in which we definitely awoke a great and terrible force (a la a kaiju, the cloverfield monster, the dark lord cthulhu and so on), and black sand beaches of Vik, and Jurassic Park-esque volcanic mountains, I must come to our very last night and day in Iceland in which two very memorable experiences took place.

We spent our last night in Reykjavik, the capital. We did a little research on what this city had to offer. Apparently the nightlife of Reykjavik can be summarized only as “debaucherous”. We were excited for this opportunity to dip our clean toes into the waters of sin and hedonism. But then we realized it was a Tuesday night and all the bars closed at one, and everyone had work in the morning. Sooooo we decided we would make our own debauchery in the room of our hostel. We went to the only market still open in town (everything else closed at 6 PM). We found the beer section and we loaded up on Icelandic beers. We paid and left the store with big dumb smiles on our faces (see any photo of Rich for a good approximation of our group appearance). 

Upon returning to the room we broke out a deck of cards and began to play some drinking games. There were talks of shot-gunning beers and recording our own versions of drunk history. And after our buzz had set in Tirrill decided to google these foreign drinks and educate us on our chosen libations -This was perhaps the worse decision of the night - Tirrill soon found that every single beer we had brought back with us from the store was non-alcoholic. We had swaggered into a market, thinking we were about to show Iceland how Chapel Hill parties, and we chose the Icelandic equivalent of O’douls. Had we not found this out we would have all happily succumb to the placebo effect. Alas, we did not have that pleasure. And in true form of the non-alcoholic-beer-drinking crowd, we were asleep by 11. But that was ok. Our lack of imbibing disposed us to un-tampered appetites the next morning, which led to our next remarkably memorable event.

Up until the last day, we had yet to get a real sense of true Icelandic cuisine. Like most of Europe the day to day fare was not far from what one would get in the US: burgers, pizza, chicken sandwiches, deli meats, chips, the occasional salad. However, on this last day we were determined to break this Americanized trend.

We inquired at the hostel about a place to find proper Icelandic food. Café Loki was this place. And in a moment that would make any parent proud, the four of us dove into an Icelandic menu, eating more rye bread and smoked fish then I think any of us have had cumulatively in our lives thus far. Rich had mashed fish on rye, lamb on flatbread with butter, smoked fish with butter, fermented shark, and rye bread ice-cream (I switched this from my plate for his smoked trout with cottage cheese). 

Zeke had gratinated mashed fish (mashed fish au gratin) with rye bread and a salad. 

Tirrill had meat soup with rye bread and smoked lamb on flatbread. 

I had smoked trout on rye, mashed fish on rye, herring & egg on rye and a latte.

It was all delicious! And the portions were perfect. We were fueled and ready to explore Reykjavik and see a city in which I came to realize that I could easily see myself living. (I should probably inject my apology for the very instagram-y manner in which I had to behave to procure these pictures. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Cafe Loki had a bad-ass mural of Norse mythology spanning an entire wall that was being painted as a we ate. It was awesome, beautiful, and frightening, just like Iceland.)

Reykjavik was a delightful mix of the old and the new, something the Scandinavian countries seem to have a real knack for. The weather was beautiful and the people were dressed in two distinct ways. Either they were decked out in technical and hiking gear, looking fit for a mountain. Or they were sporting sleek urban-professional get ups (a lot of black, grey, and navy). So for anyone who knows me, this was pretty perfect. We spent hours jaunting about the city until our legs grew tired and it came time to drop off the rental car. So here I sit in the aiport with the battery about to die forcing an end to this post. If you’ve stuck through to the end then I have already taken enough of your time. I hope you stick with us through the rest of the journey and are ready for next mental unloading. Hint, it has to do with some details of car sleeping (Tirrill complained a lot) and a dog named Smidge.