Iceland Idyll

We are back in Cape Breton after a two-week adventure in Iceland with Lynn and Louise. Some folks might prefer Disneyland but I’ll take Iceland’s array of distractions: glaciers and volcanoes, fumaroles and geysers, snowy mountains and vast lava plains, long fjords and big waterfalls, birds and cetaceans.

We rented a Toyota Verso and drove it nearly three thousand kilometres around the entire island. We burned the candle at both ends: July days are long in Iceland, we started early and stayed up late. Our first day on the road, July 9, we traveled from Reykjavik to Olavsik on the Snaefellsnes peninsula, checked out Deildartunguhver, Europe’s highest-volume hot spring, hiked to the Eldborg crater. For good measure we birded till midnight in the shadow of Snaefellsjokull glacier, where Jules Verne imagined the start of his Journey to the Centre of the Earth, walked the black sand beach at Djupalonssandur, waited in vain for the appearance of a starry sky. By 1:30 a.m. dawn brightened the horizon only a few degrees east of where the sun had set ninety minutes before.

Some of my favourite sites are also preferred by birds. We relished a sea watch at Mana where great skuas patrolled the headland, platoons of guillemots skimmed the littoral and snow buntings foraged among beach rocks. Our chosen vantage point commanded a fine view of Grimsey Island on the Arctic Circle. I risked losing my lunch via boat trip over choppy water to Papey Island where puffins, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and kittiwakes gather in their thousands to rear their young on jagged cliffs. From Heimaey, largest of the Westman islands, we gawked at even larger numbers of seabirds gathered on still higher sea cliffs.

Diversions varied widely. One day we rambled over a glacier, outfitted with crampons, ice axe, safety harness and helmet. Another we climbed Eldfell volcano which buried four hundred Heimaey homes in 1973 and is still very much alive: at the top, along the crater rim, volcanic vents were too hot to touch.

Iceland’s waterfalls are voluminous and spectacular. Legendary too. At Gothafoss in the year 1000 Thorgeir the Wise threw statues of Norse gods into the cataract to mark Icelanders’ conversion to Christianity. Mighty Dettifoss is the largest waterfall in Europe, set in a rugged canyon cleaving a moonscape of rock and volcanic tephra. Dramatic Skogafoss is said to conceal a treasure of gold and gems. Like all the others, huge Gullfoss attracts humans in legions, recklessly gathered ant-like at the precipice edge.

Geysir is the waterspout that lent its name to the entire geyser genre. These days Geysir has lost its edge: it steams away undramatically without blowing its top, but every few minutes its companion Strokkur blasts a steamy tower thirty metres high, to the great delight of gawkers sprayed in the blow.

We saw horses and sheep wherever we went. Horses were of particular interest to my traveling companions. At Reykjahlith on the marge of Lake Myvatn the women saddled up Iceland horses and went for a tolt. The Iceland horse is the only one in the world that still manages the ‘fifth gait’ – one foot on the ground at all times – that is so smooth a rider can hold a glass of bubbly without spilling a drop. Even without the bubbly Jan and the Twins pronounced their ride one of the highlights of the trip.

After twelve days we jettisoned the Toyota and rambled Reykjavik by shank’s mare. Intrigued by both the Vikings and the Icelandic Sagas we patronized the Settlement Museum and the Culture House display of mediaeval manuscripts, including one made of the skins of 113 calves that features the earliest existing record of Leifur Eriksson’s journey to Vinland in the New World.

Our last stop before leaving the land of fire and ice was Iceland’s answer to Disneyland, the Blue Lagoon, where people gather in dozens to soak in geothermally-heated water, while plastering their faces with white mud and enjoying an adult beverage before heading off to a buffet of sushi, salmon and lamb. Many visitors insist the Blue Lagoon is the greatest attraction Iceland has to offer; I am from a different planet and disagree, preferring the fjords, volcanoes, glaciers and seabirds.

Now we are back at the edge of the Great Bras d’Or where it is easy to bring the Icelanders to mind. My great-uncle Harrison Livingstone was a student of the Greenland and Vinland sagas. Scholars disagree on the whereabouts of Eriksson’s Vinland, but based on his careful readings of the descriptions in the sagas, Harrison had no doubt that Straumsfjord was none other than the

Great Bras d’Or, that a thousand years ago Eriksson sailed right past my present-day Big Bras d’Or shack. It is pleasant to imagine the old guy might have been right.