Day 11 – Saturday, 1 August
Linda’s Notes
With a 2 pm flight, we had the last morning to explore Reykjavik. In the center of town we visited a room-sized topographical map of Iceland; we could clearly see all the places we had visited. We walked to an outdoor exhibit displaying large (3 feet by 4 feet) photographs of typical Icelandic scenes and people. I was gratified to recognize at least half of the scenes – and one of the people! The old man whose brother had died – the one on the farm with the old Willys – was shown in one of the pictures seated in front of his house beside his brother.
On our way back through town, I was tremendously grateful to find an open optical shop – and a friendly Icelander willing to fix my flattened glasses.
Our last meal was at a café – sandwiches on bagels. $27 for the two of us. We met the rest of our group back at the hotel for a van ride to the airport. Of the four daily departures to the States (Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Minneapolis), passengers were on each from our group. And so we departed from the land of fire and ice.
Closing Comments……
The reason for hereness seems beyond conjecture,
There are no trees or trains or architecture,
Fruits and greens are insufficient for health
and culture is limited by lack of wealth.
The tourist sights have nothing like Stonehenge,
The literature is all about revenge,
And yet I like it if only because this nation
Enjoys a scarcity of population…..
W.H. Auden, Letters from Iceland (1936)
Iceland has come a long ways since Auden wrote these facetious lines. And we thank this spectacular country for sharing its most amazing scenery with us…..
its powerful waterfalls
smoldering lava fields and those covered with blankets of green, soft moss
glaciers extending like fingers to touch lush grasses
unpolluted seas and rivers
sheep, sheep and more sheep grazing in fields untouched by fertilizer
icecaps, hot pools, bubbling mud and geysers
marshmallow farms and cairns, cairns, cairns
midges, glorious sunsets after warm days
sagas and eddas, trolls and ghosts
puffins and skuas
shy, friendly people and a knowledgeable, patient guide
an unforgettable elemental rawness…
Thanks (Takk!) to all of you for sharing the beauty and history of Iceland with us, for your spirit, laughter, conversations and generosity. May your memories be strong and delight you for years to come, your imagination remain vivid, and may your desire to keep hiking find you on another WTW trip soon.
Kathleen Friedrich
WTW Guide
In Retrospect
January 2005
It’s winter now. When I looked up Reyjavik weather online just before Christmas, temperatures were in the 20s and 30s, with snow and rain. Sunrise was at 11 am and sunset at 3:30 pm – very short days. Brjann said the great poetry and literature were written in the winter months when the darkness and weather kept inhabitants indoors.
I’m glad we were in Iceland in the summer, during the time of very short nights. I remember thinking beforehand that we’d have insomnia. That wasn’t the case, though. Everywhere we stayed had blackout curtains at the windows. The problem was that we got up every morning at 6:30, and we were still eating dinner at 10:30 that night. After all, the sun was still out, floating without direction in the sky, giving us the illusion that it was not yet time to go to bed. I never saw a sunset; I wonder if there was one.
One of our group members, Russ, said to me, “If you want to know what Alaska used to look like, go to Iceland.” Indeed, the interplay of fire – the volcanic origin of the island – and ice – the movement and transformation of water – is spectacular, even to someone like me who has seen both volcanoes and waterfalls before. It’s difficult to describe in words, barely adequate to capture in photographs.
Iceland was a good place to go with a tour group. We knew we wanted to walk there, and that we’d be comfortable in the company of other middle-aged adventurers. Walking the World made all the arrangements for travel and lodging and food and itinerary and hiking locations. It was wonderful to have all details taken care of; our only responsibility was to be at the van with our luggage at the designated time. And, of course, having a knowledgeable Icelandic guide traveling with us vastly increased our learning.
And, for this destination, it was more than a matter of being a pampered tourist. Icelandic roads are not always paved, sometimes rutted, never wide. Summer lodging is hard to find because of the short tourist season and the many European tour groups traveling to this increasingly popular island nation. I’m sure we would have run into problems planning this trip on our own.
And, though Brjann claimed that most Icelanders speak English, we would have been hard pressed to communicate if we had run into an exception, particularly in the more remote places. Icelandic is, I would say, an unnecessarily difficult language to read, spell, speak and understand! Left on their own for nearly a thousand years, the Icelanders’ language did not change with the intermingling of other cultures. I’m told that an Icelandic child can read Beowulf, an epic poem written in Old English in about 1100 AD, in the original language.
Art and I have traveled independently to some places, without a group and a guide. We like the schedule flexibility, the personal contacts we’re able to make with the local people. It’s more work to plan an independent vacation – questions of air and car and train travel, of lodging and meals and banks and pharmacies and laundromats all have to be resolved by us.
Now that we’ve been to Iceland once, we could return on our own. Next time I’d like to arrange a series of farmstays around the country, where we can linger a few days with a local family before we move on. I’d like to slow down, sleep a little more, spend time in conversation with locals, eat at places where Icelanders eat, hear a concert by the Reykjavik Symphony, talk to schoolchildren. We’ve seen the broad sweep of the country; it would be good to experience the character of the people and the culture.
Next time.