August 18, 2016 – A Long Day Tour’s Journey Into Bright Light Night
The tour started at 7:40 am. A quick breakfast at seven and then it was onto the bus for a projected 14-15 hour “Day Tour.”
Spoiler Alert – We finally get back to the hotel at 12:23 am. So that’s almost 17 hours. Our tour guide told us Marcos the driver logged 798 km on our day trip.
The long haul ride on the bus meant I found my eyes drifting closed and attempts at recouping some lost sleep. I missed some of the intro talk then but Mom tried to fill me in after the fact. Sadly, it was in one ear out the other on a lot of what Vigdis the guide told Mom and then she told me. That would be a recurrent theme throughout the day, perhaps because listing to Vigdis was like listening to the adults in Peanuts – you got kinda the feel and vibe of what was being said even if you didn’t understand all the words.
I originally meant to make a big list of the toughest words for me to make out (and this is not a diss on her English – I mean, jeez, I barely speak English and to be able to converse in another language is like black magic to me – beyond my comprehension. Good on all the folks who are fluent in more than their native tongues – that’s a skill I really wish I had invested in). But ultimately the only one I could clearly remember was “meringue” – I can’t do justice to what I heard her say but we eventually puzzled out that she was referring to the thing you spread over a cake to describe the moss consistency that grows so well over the Icelandic rocks.
Iceland was settled in the 9th and and 10th centuries, and was fully settled by about 930. Lots of early settlers were from Norway but there were also plenty of people across Europe. This period was the Pagan period, the period of the Vikings. There was no written language, no reading of any kind, and runes felt like black magic. By the year 1000, Christianity reared its head and the Latin alphabet was introduced. Books rose, though they were the purview of the wealthy. One needed a lot of calves to have the calfskin to write down one’s words.
The Viking period is usually viewed as beginning in 796 with the sacking of Cumberland wherein a band of rogues marauded and robbed the place. The last heathen King of the Viking was defeated in the Battle of Hastings and the Battle at Stamford Bridge in 1066, marking the close of our Hagar-ian friends.
What followed was the Saga writing period, from approximately 1100 to 1350, a tale of epics and adventures.
A famed 13th Century Icelandic writer wrote books on Norwegian Kings and more importantly pagan beliefs. His “HOW AM MULL (my best guess phonetic spelling of the thing… I’ll google the proper name when I’m back to internet connections) was filled with Viking quotes and sayings. It was essentially a Viking Guide To Life. As it’s oft compared to the Chinese Book of Tao (or “The Way”), a book colloquially known as the Wisdom of the East, the HO AM MULL is sometimes called the “Wisdom of the North.” Game of Thrones fans will realize George R R Martin heavily sacked the Viking legends for the people of the North in his Song of Fire and Ice.
UPDATE: If my internet search is right, the writer is Snorri Sturluson and his book is called Heimskringla.
As they say in the books (and on the HBO show… which has become the zeitgeistian de facto sword and sex spectacle), “You know nothing, Jon Snow.” If that’s true, you know less than nothing, Run Kevin Run. I tried to scribble down notes as Vigdis talked or as we visited places but it’s a bit of a jumble and the Icelandic alphabet and writing is as incomprehensible to me as Egyptian hieroglyphics. I can’t sound out the words even while looking at the text and when I hear the spoken word, well, phonetics are as off as my singing voice. But I’ll try and do the best I can in summarizing what went down. I can tell you there was no running today.
The first stop was Seljalandsfoss, a 60 meter high waterfall that featured a walking path behind the falls themselves. The classic Jungle Cruise joke about seeing the backside of water came true. Amidst the swarm of tourists was a Japanese couple shooting wedding photos. Her white dress dragged through the mud as she stepped as gingerly she could and his efforts to help steady her were a reminder that chivalry isn’t dead and the desire to get a decent Facebook shot extends well beyond selfie sticks.
The path behind the water had railings and steps… occasionally… and occasionally had no help whatsoever. The most treacherous parts in fact had us scampering over the rocks, climbing amidst slimy moss and slick surfaces as if we were Tom and Huck and Becky and all the other Twain kids off on some adventure. I think Mom made the right choice in skipping it and I appreciate her supporting me bushwhacking the trail to see the falls derriere.
Just down the road from the 60 meter falls was an even more impressive but a bit less accessible 70 meter one. I think it was called Sqogar or Squagasfass or if google is right Skógafoss. Whatever the name, its plummeting, misty water provided some great visions of rainbows, including the ever more popular “double rainbow” of internet meme fame. A switchback staircase of varying degrees and steps lead to the top of the falls for a nice overhead shot. It was no Niagara Falls but it was still cool to be looking down on the cascading shower of H20.
Again, Mom wisely opted to skip the climb. I was winded going up the thing and the uneven pitch, height, and design of the steps reminded me of my Great Wall of China days. I tried to keep up with fellow Travelling Fit client Kelvin but that guy is part mountain goat. I suspect he’ll be a fast runner in the Marathon on Saturday. He’s a great guy and has the speech patterns and inflections of Andrew Scott, perhaps most famous as BBC’s Moriarty… only Kelvin is less sinister.
Lunch at this locale was a set menu of trout salad and leg of lamb. Not my top pics for food but, hey, when in Iceland… my one main complaint is I wish they sold a drinking Viking Horn that offered unlimited free refills of soda everywhere you go in the country. I really think this is a marketing gap that could easily be filled. Wouldn’t YOU buy a horn with a shoulder strap that you could get your grog on anywhere in the land of Ice? Isn’t that REALLY what we want out of life? I’ll have to buy a copy of the HOW AM MULL as I suspect on page 4 there’s a section entitled “The Secret to Viking Happiness Lies In A Bottomless Horn of Drink.”
After lunch, it was a drive out to the Reynafajaris Black Pebble Sand Beach. Anoop and Priya told us this and many of the stops along today’s tour were recently featured in a Bollywood movie’s dance number set in Iceland. Wandering the shoreline, I can see why this was a location scout’s dream assignment.
Update: A search for “Bollywood Iceland Dance Number” yielded this choice youtube clip. It’s apparently from the movie Diwale (2015).
http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/11/19/bollywood-film-clip-shot-iceland-released
Back on the bus, somebody asked if we were going to the southernmost town in Iceland. Vigdis told us we were going to Vik and while technically correct – we did go THROUGH Vik – we didn’t stop at Vik. We drove by it. I suppose had I gotten a blueberry muffin from Vigdis it would have only had a single blueberry as technically, yes, that would make it a blueberry muffin despite my expectations that it would in fact be a “blueberries” muffin. (This is a long standing issue with me as I’ve purchased no less than three (3!!) single blueberry muffins in my lifetime. Will the outrages never cease?!).
This is written in my notes app on my iPhone. I have no idea what it means. I’ll google it later but for now this is like “CROATOAN” and the Lost Colony tree trunk scratches in Roanoke: “Lakia Eruption? Hardship Mist? Drop in local temperature.”
Or maybe it’s more like the Nazi dispatches that so intrigue Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
A quick internet search would indicate these scribblings refer to the continuous volcanic eruption in Iceland from 1783 – 1785, the volcanic ash creating mist hardships that altered climate conditions and wiped out 20% of the population. Cheery thought. I assume this was part and parcel of the discussion of the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull that grounded air travel and stranded me in the UK at the time.
But the highlight of the long road trip along the southwestern coast was probably the far flung largest glacier in Iceland and in Europe. Our final destination was the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon Park, used in such Hollywood productions as A View To A Kill, Die Another Day, and Game of Thrones. Apparently 31 families own land abutting the glacier area and to get anything done on infrastructure or development beyond what is currently there the government needs to get consensus from those folks. Good luck with that – there’s a reason then that there are only two toilets at the place.
We boarded the duck boat Jokull and cruised around the Lagoon. We had unusually spectacular weather. We could even see through the clouds the tallest peak in all of Iceland, Hvannadalshnúkur, rising to a height of 2110 meters. I’m a bit spoiled on icebergs and glacier views thanks to my recent Antarctica trip but it was great fun being with the Travelling Fit folks and especially with my Mom as we sailed the seas of the Glacier Lagoon.
Our skipper and his first mate told us the temperature was approximately 2 degrees Celsius. As an Antarctic Polar Plunge veteran of tenths of degrees waters, I scoffed at such figures. But I was still glad to have a life vest, just in case. The vests enabled us to safely maneuver around each other on the teeny tiny ship deck; we were human bumper cars, careening and crashing into each other vying for a photo of frozen water. It was a fun sail.
Back on dry land, we finished up the day with a few shoreline pics and headed home. A dinner break at a National Park proved, um, ill timed. We had an hour and fifteen minutes at the place, with Vigdis telling us we could walk to the glacier if we wanted to. It was about a 45 minute return trip she said. Some people rushed off from the bus but Mom and I thought we’d get some food first. The first bit of rain was falling and it seemed silly to brave the elements if we could have a meal and see this supposedly great Icelandic Volcano Overview movie at the visitors’ center. Unfortunately, we arrived at about 6:45 PM and the café was closing at 7. They struggled to feed us all as best they could; the young man who had been essentially left alone to run the place as both server and cashier did his very best and was nothing but professional. Finally his lumbering boss came out to help and Mom and I split a sandwich.
The rain had let up and I might have been able to rush to the glacier and back but thought the movie sounded more interesting – besides I could hang with Mom which was kind of a key selling point of the trip. Mom encouraged me to go but instead we got to chatting with one of our Travelling Fit companions as she finished her soup and then decided the movie was the better option anyway.
So post-dinner conversation we tried the door to the visitors center. It was about 7:20 now… and we discovered the visitors’ center closed at 7 as well. This all felt like details that our tour guide might have been able to share with us earlier in the stop but, hey ho, that’s just one way to go. We told Mari Mar at the lagoon we didn’t realize we were taking a boat tour and she said that was good – she liked to surprise people. I’m not sure this is exactly the type of surprise she envisioned but it’s all part of the experience and the adventure of traveling.
Besides, isn’t there an old riddle about what’s the best thing in the world and the answer is that it’s the one thing you can never have? Some sort of grass is always greener maxim or some such. In any case, I can only assume this 7-minute video on Iceland’s volcanos and the history of their eruptions and impact on the world is the single greatest 420 seconds ever projected. It’s no doubt much more impressive in my head than it could ever be on screen. So there’s that.
And then there were the 3 and a half hour ride back to the hotel. A comfort stop at the same convenience store we stopped at on the way out meant I could confirm the Donald Duck joke book hadn’t been sold. I can’t believe nobody bought that thing. Knock knock jokes are ALWAYS funnier in their original Icelandic!
It was a long, long day with many adventures. No running but plenty of miles covered. I hope Mom had a good time; I did, despite any hiccups.
I close this post with what I think is a hilarious comic panel I put together using official Icelandic butter at lunch: SJMOR butter (say it aloud before viewing the comic):
