With its unique mix of exquisite natural beauty, life-threatening elements and constant daylight, Iceland makes for a surreal travel experience.
In a remote Icelandic field I was voluntarily being shut in a freezer with a two-ton headless shark. The poisonous flesh reeked of ammonia, causing my eyes to stream and skin to itch. I couldn’t breathe. My host, a Viking whose name literally translated to War-Hammer, graciously attempted to bridge the language barrier to explain how he turned the horrific spectacle I saw before me into the horrific national dish called hákarl. It was day four of my Icelandic odyssey and things had been getting stranger by the minute.
After arriving at Reykjavik airport my fellow journalists and I were shuttled across a moonscape of lava fields covered by a thin stubble of green, en route to the famous hotspring known as the Blue Lagoon. While floating in the powder-blue water, coating our bodies in mud until we rose out of the misty lagoon as mere shadows of ourselves, our guide Ari, a lanky young man sporting John Lennon glasses, waxed lyrical about the curative ability of the porridgy mud. This was, in hindsight, the opening salvo of a fascinating, four-day long glimpse into the singular Icelandic character.
In spite of its big presence on the world stage, Iceland has a population of just 330,000 people (around two thirds that of Tasmania). Over the 1200 years since it was first settled, the adversity of life on this Nordic isle has been interrupted only by regular catastrophe. Plague, famine and volcanic eruptions have routinely culled as much as half the population. Settled by Nords and Scots, these disparate tribes had to overcome grievances and work together to survive in the punishing environment. Factor in a short growing season and thin topsoil and it becomes clear why Icelanders developed such disagreeable foods and agreeable personalities. On the long drive towards the region of Thingvellir, Ari answered even the simplest question with a theological discussion long enough to last an arctic winter. I watched as the stark beauty of the volcanic landscape gave way to deep gullies.
Iceland is expanding like baking bread and here, at the island center, the crust is tearing apart. Such a geologically violent act also manages to be breathtakingly beautiful. At the bottom of a ravine decorated with wildflowers a brook burbled with the effervescence of soda water. “This is where the old tribes came together and formed the world’s first parliament in the year 930,” proclaimed Ari as he waved a hand over a landscape lush with fresh summer growth.
It seemed incongruous that such a fertile terrain could be so harsh. When I inquired as to who lives in the interior, for once Ari answered directly: “Nobody. Only sheep”. Iceland’s vast glacial hinterland is wholly untouched. The rough tracks leading there quickly peter out — their sole use is to rescue people who drove down them to start with. The one main paved highway circles the island linking families, towns, waterfalls and fjords.
Icelanders differentiate between waterfalls with the same precision that Eskimos differentiate between snow. Each is deemed to have a personality all its own and, as we rejoined the coastal highway, I began to see why. A mountain range spilled river after river into a dewy basin. In the sea breeze, some waterfalls thrashed from side to side, others drooled lazily over the rock, while some dissolved into a misty rainbow. Later, while lying in bed in a Fjord-side town called Hvalfjordur, visions of waterfalls filled my mind.
Night never came that night, nor the next. It was August and the continuous daylight was turning our group quietly crazy. I couldn’t sleep but while fitfully dozing in the van the surreal environment invaded my dreams. Meal times were the strangest. We took lunch one day in a tiny coastal town where immaculate houses clung to wind ravaged bluffs and seemed intentionally positioned to prevent all but the most determined visitors. Our meal started with a blue spotted egg and was followed by smoked puffin washed down with dark beer mixed with fanta.
Ari’s reverence for Icelandic culinary culture was feverish. At one point he hurled the van through the arctic tundra (he was also a professional rally driver) to avoid being late for our appointment with an important chef. We arrived on time and found him standing in a geyser field, the fumaroles belching air at his feet. In the background a geyser erupted, startling tourists with a fine mist of sulphorous water. Our chef reached into the earth and pulled out some milk cartons. The crustless sourdough bread that had been baked in them had the juicy grain of Christmas pudding and we stood among the steaming earth plastering slice after nutty slice with lashings of butter.
In the four days I was in Iceland, I had many delicious meals with ingredients I recognised but it wasn’t these that I remembered with any real clarity. To survive in this country, locals had to put aside traditional notions of taste…and in joining them for mealtimes, I found myself having to grapple with some long-held convictions. My journalist friends and I liked to think we represented the strictest ethical standards — one hailed from National Geographic, another from a publication whose raison d’être was saving the planet — but one night in a cozy eatery whose windows cascaded with blooms we were universally drawn to one item on the menu. Whale. Minke whale, to be exact. We swore an oath of secrecy and when the sashimi arrived, as red as an injury, it was (I’m ashamed to say) absolutely delicious.
By the time War-Hammer invited us to his tasting room to sample his fermented shark, it felt impossible to say no. This method of fishing and preparation had been his family’s industry for generations and the tasting room was more a shrine to tradition. Inside, the scene revealed family heirlooms and maritime oddities in equal measure: dozens of skinned shark heads were stretched over barrels, while stuffed birds eyed us from shelves strewn with light house sculptures, family photographs and flotsam and jetsam. In one corner stood a beaten rowboat barely twenty feet long. It was this dubious craft that War-Hammer’s father used for hunting. The Greenland shark rivals the Great White in size and I imagine that when they hauled the beast on board it would have easily filled the vessel with gnashing jaws and thrashing fins. By wrestling with sharks War-Hammer’s family had survived a thousand years.
When he finally offered me the small white cube of rotten flesh I felt he was offering me more than the opportunity for a good anecdote. He was offering me the history of his people. I took two servings and held my breath.
For Icelandic road tours par excellence contact Ari Arnorsson isjakar@gmail.com
Icelands’ waterfalls make for spectacular hiking and horse riding (www.ishestar.is).
Paved roads are well maintained and traffic-free. International chains Hertz and
Budget operate from Reykjavik but no companies will provide insurance for travel to the interior (www.hertz.is).
Artists Soffia and Palli host visitors for a sumptuous dinner in their home (www.artfood.is).
Lazy days and nights await at the Blue Lagoon, even in winter (www.bluelagoon.com).
For more information visit www.icetourist.is
Words by Adam McCulloch. Originally published in Symmetry Magazine. The format has been altered to suit Tumblr.
