A few years ago the Crack Team and I went to Europe aboard Iceland Air, because they had good cheap fares and fly out of Logan Airport in Boston. Like all modern long-haul airliners, the plane had little video screens at each seat, and those little screens played promotional videos about how swell it would be to visit Iceland. They worked: we added Iceland to our big list of places to visit.
After the disruptions of the Coronavirus epidemic, we were in the mood to take a trip this year, masks and tests be damned. Iceland seemed like a good destination to re-accustom ourselves to international travel. It's a relatively short flight (only 5 hours), not too expensive, and it looked about right for a one-week vacation.
During our planning, I came across what became my Bible for this trip. Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809, by the eminent botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker. Over the course of my life I've learned a valuable way to seem intelligent: if you want a good introduction to any subject, find a book by a 19th Century Briton. There will be one, if not several, because 19th Century Britons went everywhere, did everything, and wrote about it obsessively. Sir William was the third member of our party, and since I could save his book on my phone, he didn't need a plane ticket or meals.
So off we went. On Saturday afternoon, April 16, we drove out to scenic Framingham, Massachusetts, to catch the Logan Express bus to the airport (and thereby achieved a seven-fold reduction in the cost of parking). Checked in and boarded the plane, and then flew through the extra-short night to Keflavik airport at the western tip of Iceland. Got processed, picked up our rental car, and drove out into a new country.
When the British and Americans needed to put an air base in Iceland during World War II, they picked the tip of the long Reykjanes Peninsula, which sticks out of Iceland's southwestern corner. It was mostly flat, mostly uninhabited, and near the sea lanes they wanted to patrol.
It's also a very volcanically active region. The name means "smoking peninsula" because of all the steaming vents and fumaroles. That activity comes from the fact that this peninsula is actually part of the Mid-Atlantic Rift, where Europe and North America are pulling apart.
All of which means that when you leave the modern international airport which succeeded that old wartime base at Keflavik, you drive through an unearthly landscape of old lava flows, not-so-old lava flows, and recent lava flows. Here and there, seemingly at random, are little clumps of buildings like Moonbases, and in the distance the snow-covered mountains of Iceland's interior loom through the clouds of volcanic mist. It's all the result of geology and geopolitics, but the effect is a wonderful introduction to the country: you're definitely in a new and different place.
We drove east, through the gap in the mountains and down a scary escarpment into the broad low southern valley of Iceland. That region's a huge swampy alluvial fan of volcanic dirt washed down from the mountains of the interior by half a dozen meandering rivers. The ground is turf, cut by scores of little streams and ponds. Here and there one can see a few actual fields waiting to be planted. There are more towns (though still not many), and a great many horse farms. I had dark suspicions about whether those horses might show up on the menu later in our visit, but no, apparently Icelanders like their sturdy little horses a lot, and so do tourists, since every farm advertised riding tours of the area.
Sir William on horses in Iceland: "The horses of the Icelanders are small, but strong, and though, for want of a proper supply of food, generally in a miserable condition during the winters, when they for the most part are kept among the mountains to procure their subsistence as they can; yet, in the summer, when grass is plentiful, they are well furnished with flesh, and, if not worked too hard, will even grow fat. Every Icelander keeps his riding horse, and many of the peasants have, also, from fifty to sixty, or even a hundred, others for burden. These of course are useless in the winter, but, as soon as the fisheries commence, or the season for trade summons their masters to Reikevig and other ports, they are all called into employ . . . No wheel carriages of any kind can be made use of in the island: every thing is therefore transported upon horses, which renders a number of these animals of the greatest importance to those Icelanders who live at a distance from the coast."
Nowadays transport is by car, and I have to say the Icelanders I saw seem almost as car-loving as Americans, even though every drop of fuel has to be imported. There are two reasons: Iceland looks like a small country on the map, but it has vast empty expanses. It feels very big. And second, there are no trains. A landscape consisting basically of mountains, lava flows, glaciers, and swamps would be nightmarish for building a rail line, and nobody has attempted it. Building highways was probably difficult enough, and a lot of the roads in the interior of the island are unpaved and only passable in summer. The difficult terrain also means Iceland has a very busy domestic airline market, with flights from Reykjavik and Keflavik all over the island.
After driving for a couple of hours and a nap at a roadside parking lot, we stopped to visit the LAVA Centre in Hvollsvollur. This wasn't part of the plan; we mostly just wanted to find a restroom and some drinks, and it was open.
I'm very glad we stopped. The LAVA Centre is one of the best little educational museums I've seen. It's all about the geology of Iceland, and includes a viewing platform from which one can see the peak of Mount Hekla, twenty miles away. There's also a video about Iceland's volcanoes, and exhibits on different types of eruptions, different types of lava and igneous rock, and the giant magma plume underneath the island which drives all of this. We had a delightful chat with one of the geologists at the museum and went away impressed. Highly recommended if you're in that part of Iceland.
A good thing, too, because our traveling companion was little help. "I forbear to speak of the mineralogy of the island, because my ignorance of that important branch of natural history would prevent my being able to offer any remarks farther than I could collect from other authors. Few countries, perhaps, present so interesting a field for the geologist."
We couldn't stay at the LAVA Centre as long as we might have wished, as we had to push on from Hvollsvollur in order to make the noon ferry sailing from Landeyjahofn to Heimay. Landeyjahofn is literally nothing but an artificial harbor, parking lot, and a terminal for the ferry. There are no houses or businesses, except a small airport nearby. The only reason it's there is the ferry to Heimay.
I'll cover the voyage to Heimay and our stay in the Vestmannaeyjar next time.
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