... and it begins with me sprinting full out from one end of Phoenix's mile-long Sky Harbor Airport to the very last concourse, which of course looks very action film terrorist red flag-like. The plane (if you can call the wee Red Bull can with wings an actual plane) from Tucson was 45 minutes late getting in due to confidence inspiring "maintenance issues", which left me with less than 10 minutes to make my connection to Denver.
"The door is closed."
I can see the plane through the window, still connected to the jetway.
"But the plane is right there."
"The door is closed. You'll have to go talk to customer service," she states in flat disciplinarian tones with barely veiled punitive relish.
By contrast the sweet great aunt US Airways desk agent's deeply apologetic about me losing a whole day in Iceland, and I simply can't get pissed at a nice old lady who's doing her best to get me out as early as possible on a different airline, and comp me rooms at an okay hotel for the night.
A disappointing start to something I've waited for and saved by eating PB&Js every lunch for a whole two years to even afford, but I spend the evening dotting the 21 sights in Reykjavik on my trusty laminated map, which totally pays off in the days to come.
Lying there, my eyes snap open with the realization my luggage's now lost in airport limboland ... and I miss my girlfriend something hard.
Day Zero: Flights of Firewater.
The first Icelandic girl that fits the "It's a nation of supermodels!" stereotype we've been fed from their continued dominance of the Miss World pageants is the stewardess. You're going to tell me it's the makeup, the little uniform, and the highly oxygenated air being pumped into the cabin that increases bloodflow to my manbits, but no, the sexy stewardess thing got marked off my libido achievement checklist six years ago. And she proceeds to liquor me up with my first taste of Icelandic alcoholic bevvies, which are free thanks to my missed plane giving me an unexpected upgrade to second class. (The downshot of this stewardess was that I thought it was only going to get better, maybe an eyecandy crescendo the like of Princess Aslaug on "Vikings". No, Gudrun was it, there would be no better. And honestly blondes are the low girl on my totem pole.)
"Gudrun, what's Birkir taste like?"
"I don't know. You'll have to give me a review."
A birch-based schnapps concocted by a lux eatery, it's like cheap cognac & bottom shelf rumplemintz had a child they quickly disowned and left exposed for the wolves. The little birch stick in the airplane bottle makes a neat au naturale swizzle stick, but the gimmick doesn't outweigh the taste. I tone down my liquor assessment for Gudrun, and ask about their large brewery beer, Gull, which was crowned the world's best lager in 2011.
It's like MGD. Lowest common denominators win beer competitions. Gudrun takes my second review in stride. "Eh. It's beer," she says, with a smile that seems to tell me you're kinda drunk. Later there's a moment where I get up to go to the lav, not even noticing she's in the aisle, and accidentally palm her cheek, evoking a complete rush of embarrassment to compliment my passing apology. Thankfully, I'm not slapped or forced out an emergency exit to pancake on the cold hard rime of passing Greenland. Note that when in the stratosphere, drinks triple in their ability to inebriate you, thus making for extra klutzy totally unintentional hiney groping. (And maybe I had a large 20 oz stout during my layover in Denver.)
In the course of 13 hours of trans-Atlantic plane ride, I witness two old men act like completely childish assholes to their patient and loving wives.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!?", says one husband to his wife.
"Fuck you! Leave me alone!", says the other husband to his wife.
On the in-flight menu there's a dessert called "Wedded Bliss Cake". I wish Gudrun would make them choke on it. And I wish my girlfriend were here to share such a cake with me.
Day 1: Mantra of Amazingness.
Deplaning, Keflavik airport's instead like a Scandinavian spa with wood walls, round windows, glass partitions, and rather amazing modern design. And here's where I discover a huge pre-trip miscalculation: the exchange rate. It's only 108 icelandic krona to the $1 USD, not the 1,008 ISK I thought, and I realized the amount that I've saved isn't going to go as far as planned. The krona looks like the British pound with large historical figures complimented by a tableau of them doing whatever it was that made them history worthy, while the coins have various fish on them. Despite my gross mathematical oversight, the stack of 32,400 ISK I convert my $300 USD into looks pretty impressive.
And if it wasn't for that fat stack of krona, I'd still be stranded at that airport right now as the Flybus coach agent tells me my $10K platinum card just got denied. I pony up a purple 5,000 ISK note for an open date round trip airport-to-door ticket, and imagine that whomever I talked to at the bank last week and gave my vacation dates to must have been too busy electronically loaning my life savings ten times over to bother approving my charges for Iceland.
On my way out of the airport, a large sculpture of Bifrost, the Norse Gods' rainbow bridge, graces the parking lot and I'm quickly exposed to the brutal landscape where fields of uneven lava are half-covered by yellowed grass hanging on for dear life. Isolated houses, many derelict, dot the windy peninsula. Inhabitants have bothered grabbing large volcanic ovalish rocks to create peaking towers or simple rock-on-rock anthropomorphic sculptures with them, like spirits that were already in the stone given form to watch over the strange tumulus.
"Oooh, Woah!" mantras out of my mouth at close, regular intervals during the 45-minute drive into Iceland's capital Reykjavik, and I can't help but be impressed by the stark beauty that the vikings must've also encountered on their first landfall.
After an odd handoff to a shuttle at the central BSI bus terminal, I find myself riding with a trio of geeks who ask if I'm in town for the Eve convention, which I discover dismaying as I usually try and go places when nothing out of the ordinary's happening so I get an honest daily presentation of the place I'm seeing. They don't seem particularly on about the game itself, but are here for the sake of the gamers' celebration. I knew Iceland managed to put itself on the gaming map by coming up with this gorgeous space-faring MMORPG, setting up a reputation as software mavens, but I'd chosen a shoulder season for travel in spring before the tourists would arrive in earnest. "You're on the wrong bus," the geeks laughingly tell me.
The city appears huge and expansive, and I wonder if my decision to walk everywhere's really a practical one.
Repeating all my school transportation experiences, I'm the last kid off. The driver has a problem finding The Flying Viking Guesthouse once he reaches the street, almost leaving me in front of another building, and not seeming to care so much about stranding a stranger in a strange land, and as there's no tipping in Iceland, why should he? We leave the bus running with the keys in the ignition, and I wonder if anyone's ever just carjacked a shuttle during one of these daily drop-offs, but it's my first encounter with the open trust Icelanders seems to have in their society, a nation built on a long history of exacting laws and specific consequences. "It's down there at the corner," he says, walking back to the shuttle before actually checking, leaving me to be sure he's right. Luckily, he is.
Hans Kristjan's apologetic about my room not being ready during the current renovations, but gives me a separate studio with my own bathroom all to myself for the night. I write my bank a really, really cross email, find that the eggy sulfurous hot shower water of Iceland isn't as bad as cranky Americans say, and that my skin actually takes a cotton to its mineral qualities.
My brain's overwhelmed by the long travel, the apparently daunting size of Reykjavik, some low-level dehydration from the booze, and the seven hour time difference. I collapse on the bottom bunk and escape into shut-eyed oblivion.
Day 2: Artifact Finding Mission.
The intention was to make this "Museum Day" so I can context all the present through the lens of the past, but my first groundpounding of Reykjavik makes me stop at every foreign thing and examine its essential foreignness. And it's all foreign, from the prolific culture based modern sculpture, to the random lending libraries that dot a city known for its bookworship, to the colorful houses that seem lined up just to please the eye. Next to the Tjorn, meaning lake (because it is a lake), there's a row of homes that the painted lady Victorians of San Francisco seem to echo, but more reserved and self-assured.
South of the Tjorn, the National Museum sits like a three floored ship containing many of Iceland's archaeological treasures. And right there at the top of the stairs to the second floor sits the bronze of Thor found in Eyrarland, an item I'd referenced endlessly on the internet, but seeing it in real life was a pilgrimage a thousand times more exciting. Sporting a mysterious shallow conical cap, Þór double grasps the bottom of his beard which even more mysteriously merges with his hammer. Sure, I hunker down like all the other tourists and take a dozen macros, but I see the greater life in the little 2.5" god who still gets thousands who supplicate to him when they focus on his enthroned figure. He's Thor.
And only six exhibits later, the Fossi Hammer sits in the same room! For a couple years now, it's been my Mjolnir of choice to wear: the zoomorphic head that may be a dragon, or serpent, or wolf (my vote), and the enigmatic see-through fylfot at the center. I take my hammer off and place it on the case for comparison:
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| [Original left, mine biting its troth ring at right, which if wolf also makes it Fenrir unsuccessfully trying to break Gleipnir.] |
Which is good as the next stop is in its way held an unexpected disappointment: Perlan, or The Pearl. After walking nearly an hour (but it looked soooo close on the top of that hill!), the glistening dome with a rotating restaurant on top was not only supposed to have the best view of Reykjavik and its surroundings, but contain the Saga Museum, a sensationalistic wax tableau of viking-riffic moments of legend & violence. Instead a sign says it's moved to new digs near the harbour ... which was soooo close to my guesthouse. Wretched outdated travel books!
Of note, on the way to Perlan I decided to take a near overgrown trail up the hill through some woods where I felt the vulnerable isolation of say certain deeps of NYC's Central Park, but even moreso, as if the place itself was watching me. Halfway up there's a clearing where a solid stone block table sits. It's sinister, like Narnia's stone table of deep magick, and I wonder if C.S. Lewis ran across it and drew his inspiration from that dark well, and if some of the middle ages hexcraft I saw evidence of at the museum perhaps took place here.
Trudging all the way back into the city at an easterly angle, I find myself at the water's edge along the paved sculpturewalk where joggers, handholding couples, and ne'er do wells stroll daily. And in the distance I see the glory of the Sólfar, Jón Gunnar Árnason's Solar Voyager! A huge modern brushed chrome aluminum abstract viking longship berthed at the shoreline, as if about to launch into the water or sail up into the sky.
Hunger dogging me at this point, I hit The Three Overcoats for my first serious Icelandic food. The counter girl at 3 Frakkar straight out decides to play the shame game over having no reservations, and two girls who later bring the food were equally scornful. "I can allow you to have that table for only an hour," she said quite loudly to a half empty restaurant. "Then let's do this!", I rejoindered much louder to make sure the staff & patrons know I'm even more serious about eating than they are and can do it under clocktick pressure. It's no wonder überjerk Anthony Bourdain liked this place. Sitting, I think if you unhappy bitches don't want to serve me, then deny me a table and don't -- otherwise get fucking nice.
The puffin appetizer looks like strings of raw liver radiating from a small pile of minced herb/veg at the center of the plate and makes me seriously question why men with lacrosse nets would bother risking their lives hanging off cliff edges to scare & capture these cute birds to eat. The taste proves why, because puffin tastes like puffin and really is an incredible delicacy worth pursuing.
As part of research for my first ride ever tomorrow, I order the horse tenderloin. While Americans balk at the thought of eating such a noble/utilitarian animal (as if it's somehow more sentient than other livestock they eat everyday), the Norse eat what they like. In pepper sauce, the horse tastes good, but it's only a few degrees above beef, which makes the $50 a fine cut pricetag more novel travel experience than culinary delight. I clock out at 45 minutes, and decide to find a cafe.
Cafe Babalu is the coffeehouse hipsters go to when they are slain by self-inflicted pretentious irony, and here are some of the few I see in Reykjavik, unfortunately. This willfully misrobed minority aside, the charming & brightly coloured two floor cafe's like a homey pastry & dessert venue with neon chalks listing all the major coffee bevs & teas (but bags not loose leaf, so points off). Looking over the rooftops from the top floor the sun's still going strong through the grey gauze of clouds and it's almost 10 pm. With the lag it's no wonder I'm half collapsing into the fantasy novel I brought with, and soon it's last call.
Day 3: Golden Tourism.
After not encountering the small bars one's usually accustomed to at a hotel (and instead abusing the liquid handsoap), finding some girl's blueberry shower gel in the caddy's the omen of a good day for touring Iceland's Golden Circle, the round of attractions that are must-visits.
Before leaving to Iceland I'd emailed Noi Sirius, makers of some of the best dark chocolate bars I've eaten (and who'd've thought Iceland for chocolate, right?), asking for a factory tour, if such a thing was possible. Instead of a polite "no", I got absolutely no reply, so when spotting the long white chocolatiering facility from the bus, I'm both pleased & tempted to shake my fist and yell out the window: "My appetite for you cannot be ignored!" Tasty jerkfaces.
The landscape is veined in white, the creeping of the frost giants' slow hands gripping the terrain, plumes of steam bleeding from random holes leading to the realm of defiant fire giants just waiting to explode from the surrounding volcanoes, retaking the world in long foretold final holocaust.
Eldhestar Horsefarm seems to have a just-throw-you-in-the-pool-and-learn-to-swim approach to first-time riders as we got the same 3-minute how-to-ride-a-horse speech everyone else did. I'd decided to finally ride a horse in Iceland as I figured the wee horsies would be easier to mount & master, plus I could get my viking raider fantasy on. But wood signs declare these are full-on horses not ponies, and they're right. Bottom line is that you are a captive of the horse, that horses are alien, and we are alien, no matter how much we try and apply our anthropomorphizing frame of human reference to them, and they semi-stoically accept our burdensome arses that they could fatally jilt at any moment. What also distinguishes an Icelandic horse from any other is a distinctive fifth gait no other horse can do: the "Tölt". The legend is that one can ride Tolt with a full glass of champagne and not spill a drop. Not true. I can't even remove my camera from an easily accessible front pocket to get off a shot, much less manage to hand-tout a high-end beverage. And how does anyone in the sagas "ride for days", much less swing a sword?!? There being no pommel on saddles in Iceland (guessing one's too busy holding reins in one hand and champagne flute in the other?), I spend much of the ride over uneven lava-lands gripping the front edge of the seat while being jostled about for an hour or so. Apparently I'm footsoldier, not cavalry. Not that it's Loftir's fault, who seems to want to stop & graze, but my faking it is not quite exemplary, but I'm passing for my first attempt. More training, please.
The tour bus coincidentally passes another site I'd seen on video: Gamla Borg, a coffeehouse out in the middle of nowhere that Sigur Ros played at for the pagans at their Þorrablót gathering.
On the other side distantly looming over sparse farmhouses is the constant threat of Mount Hekla, an active volcano. Much like the residents of coastal California's acceptance of earthquakes as just a destructive incident one moves on from, the rural Icelanders know that Hekla erupts roughly every 10 years, and is 30 years overdue, so the next one will probably be huge, but like the rest they'll just shake it off, brush the ash off the sheep & crops and resume agriculture as normal in the already difficult environment they know & love.
All the world's geysers are named after the original Geysir in Iceland's Geysir National Park. Its small loop is far less spread out than the one we have in Yellowstone which you could spend all day on, plus dodge cool bears, but ours doesn't exist without the precursor & credibility of theirs. The waters in their holes look bluer than blue with shades of orange rust and sulfur yellow, the rotten egg smell prevalent as the land's minerals get blown into the air six stories up by Strokkur (yes, the pun's totally intended) every 10 minutes. Also the big ultra sheik Geysir wool clothing store you see advertised all swanky in the magazines lives here in the visitors' center, so I score the sexiest pair of long red wool ingenue socks for my girlfriend as a tourist prize.
Next stop, Gullfoss. Coming over the hill to finally see the huge two-tiered falls, I froze and wept uncontrollably. The rainbow touches the earth and is so close you could run up it to Asgard. Shortly after the conversion, it's said a chieftain threw his idols into a waterfall, either as a sign that he'd converted or to hide his heathenry from the now official enforcement of the new religion. Either way, you can throw the statues of the gods in to try and forget them, but the irrefutable truth is that the falls themselves are the Gods. The falls supersaturate the air with moisture, making one both taste and inhale them. Ice is shaken off from the walls of the Hvítá river canyon, splashing into the maelstrom before falling into the spuming cataract. Brutal. Majestic. Divine. I'm tempted to push a few tourists in to clear my view as sacrifice to the place.
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| [Gullfoss & Bifrost. My camera made the rainbow at center appear ghostly, but in to the eye in person it looked supernaturally solid.] |
Back in Reykjavik, self-satisfied me gets off near Cafe Loki, named after the Norse god of mischief, for my second dose of traditional Icelandic food, which is what this great yellow two floor cafe's known for. Icelandic Plate #1 contains what most would consider an intimidating survey. I am not most. Mashed Fish, a Brennivin Shot and Fermented Shark supporting an Icelandic flagged toothpick, Creamed Bean Salad, Sheep-Head Jelly on Rye, Mashed Turnip, Smoked Trout on Rye. Obvious cuisine differences aside, I find their rye bread's not the firmness we know, but a moist brownie-like affair, which at first weirds me out, but by trip's end I find delightfully comforting. The jelly's like headcheese, but nice on buttered rye. And everyone will warn you away from the fermented shark. What started as a preservation method for fish somehow became a national culinary must-eat (?) touchstone. The trick to eating fermented shark, which starts out actually okay, is not chewing it more than five chews, for if you do, the lye that it's been kept in mercilessly emerges from the center of the little fish cube, and that's what most find so disagreeable. But even more disagreeable is Brennivin, the national shot of choice. A carroway-based liquor nicknamed "Black Death" to dissuade people from excessive drinking (so it must be good, right?), I had so looked forward to. After that fateful sixth chew of shark, I went for the Brennivin as a palate cleanser, but no, it's brutally medicinal, even more disagreeable than the lye fish surprise it's meant to wash down, and that is the practical joke hidden within the ol' shark 'n' shot challenge. Food aside, Cafe Loki's cosy downstairs has a great poster of its namesake by renowned Asatru artist Haukur Halldórsson that reminds me of the d'Aulaire's work, and the best view of the Hallgrimskirkja upstairs.
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| [From another Cafe Loki visit: Three pickled herrings & birch tea.] |
Day 4: Elf Rocks & Goth Clubs.
Finally getting to the Tourist Office days after the fact, there's a freaky automatic door. Instead of being sliding, it's on hinges, there's no visible sensor, and with knowing smiles two blonde children of the damned sit behind the counter, as if they'd decided to break off from their world conquering kiddie pack, to only show-off their horrific powers by mistiming when to admit tourists though the mysterious portal to their hideout. They'd be cute, if I wasn't so unsettled by the totally weird door thing.
Here Iceland's onerous value added tax of 25% (!) on the already expensive stuff you've bought at those swanky shoppes gets refunded in krona when you present refund forms and receipts, fish coins on the barrelhead. It's a bit of a wait, but worth it, and all you have to do for follow through is drop the completed envelopes in a slot at the airport before you leave.
Walking northwesterly through a neighborhood skirting the harbour, the new location of The Saga Museum is near the tip of a peninsula. A 35-minute audio tour on old MP3 players walks you through 17 legendary/sensationalistic tableaux of key persona & moments in Iceland's history. The well dressed and diorama'd wax figures are discovering, forging, looking admiringly, adjudicating, creating, foretelling, killing, and threatening to cut their own breasts off. (True!) Normally I avoid places like this, but the edutaining viking context is total badassery.
By contrast, my next stop feels like a conservative PBS show but is no less impressive. Set just below street level, the 871±2 Settlement Museum is a shadowy subterranean excavation site of one of the earliest longhouse's foundations, surrounded by high tech displays of artifacts and videos replete with ghosts re-enacting for re-wound eternity activated by your proximity, they're hunting, gathering, fishing, wool spinning, and other rituals of early life in Iceland. Push buttons, and an ignis fatuus flickers into being on the backside of an invisible plexiglass pane, showing where the settlers gathered for warmth and told their accounts of the gods. Push more buttons and doorways spring into being. Turn knobs and the house constructs and deconstructs -- which I took many unnecessary detailed pictures of in case I ever have so much money I decide to build my own for keepsies.
Exiting, I'm frozen in my tracks by a street gang dressed in Winnie the Pooh costumes. I've no fucking clue what that's about, but I'm going to stay in the museum's upstairs foyer until the unknown threat of hunny bears moves along.
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[The 100-Acre Wood Liberation Front? Later would discover high school kids do ridiculous achievement-based scavenger hunts for points so their class can win the bragging rights to pick the theme for Icelandic equivalent of prom. Seriously. Later, I'd see a cadre of Care Bears singing as they swaggered their furriness down the avenue.]
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Hressingarskálinn, or "Hresso" in its affectionate nickname, opened in 1932, a longstanding cafe, hangout of politicos, artists, and most importantly writers, so I go not only to write in the footsteps of Iceland's literati, but score some dinner. The black awning crowns a lattice of windows, which were abominably covered up with a huge advert for Eve in order to attract con-goers from their music house HQ nearby. One of few places for reasonably priced food & drink, I order a pint of Viking stout and some fish stew. Again Icelandic stew isn't stew, but after putting off eating for so long in lieu of sights, I'd already forgotten this distinction, and still enjoy the large serving of comforting fish hash and rye bread. The people watching and eavesdropping is varied. Expats and tourists speaking loudly about politics back home so as to get noticed, local youth dressed either to kill or in a studiously dismissive fashion, patient staff in identifiable tanks & tees, DJs for the night wandering in with decks in hand, headphones about their necks, and sunglasses pushed all the way up for a reverse incognito.
It being late Friday, I leave before the set begins for somewhere more my scene: Dillon Whisky Bar's monthly Reykjavík Goth Night! Earlier in the week at the guesthouse, I ran into Ines, a law undergrad exchange student from Spain. The lispy accent speaks of her love of home, but also acknowledges Spain's corrupt officials & imbalanced welfare system, and her desire to perhaps legally make it better. In addition to this, Ines offers to read my Tarot, and when I get back to the guesthouse to meet her, goths up nicely in a lacey black number that accentuates her svelte Spanish pallor, and has smartly accessorized with her Icelandic boyfriend Skarpi. Skarpi's a delightful mix of subtle Icelandic humour & culture, is one of the rare men who can pull off leather pants, looks great in a corset, and sports some sweet heathen tats. Ines also brings her friend Mytvin, a Norwegian international politics exchange student who says she's going to be a diplomatic ambassador ... yet within ten minutes I watch her intentionally provoke a heated argument with Skarpi over the superiority of Norway to Iceland and press that Olaf Tryggvason was a national hero and not a tyrant. Maybe it's too much pre-club cans of brew and nationalistic aggro-metal we're watching on YouTube, maybe not. We pick up and walk to the club.
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[This mural's riff on cosmological Yggdrasil, the world tree, faces Dillon, and the same universal tree motif persists throughout Reykjavik's artistic offerings.]
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[Skarpi & Ines. Note the candelabra. Real flame in a crowded wood room club is how they roll. And, like bad children, we totally played with those candles, which were seated in highly flammable cellophane wrap.]
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A fun girl introduces the guy behind me. "This is Alfred! Everyone wants to fuck his superhot girlfriend!"
"Nice to meet you, Guillermo! ... You're not going to try to fuck my girlfriend, are you?"
Back at the bar, there's a most interesting looking bottle on the very tippy-toppy shelf, 30 feet above floor level. Over the noise, I point at it. "That one?!? You are my favourite person!" The bartender commences to straddle the front and back of the bar, placing a foot on each, drapes an arm over an overhanging crossbeam, pulls her legs up, and reaches her free limb out to grab the bottle, monkeying back down to pour me a shot. Everyone forgets how long they've been waiting and claps. Big, big tip for the agile bartender ... on top of what turned out to be a $33 shot. Smooth, smokey, complex, worth it.
By my third shot I'm dancing, and as always I forget how good it feels since it's always far too long inbetween. While Skarpi works the room, I fill-in partner with Ines. The two speaker stands are more than loud. By contrast Iceland itself makes good music, Bjork-wards and after, but doesn't listen their own or others' anywhere, filling its businesses with dorked out europop and top 40 rubbish. But here it does. The set is solid, and the crowd packs the humble 5'x8' space in front of the DJs table, even knocking over a huge speaker during a stompier metal cut. Quick teamwork sets it back up again, and the dark party just keeps getting better.
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[Spin, spin, pale sugar!]
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"Skarpi, why's Reykjavik's Goth Night only once a month? It seems you've alot of enthusiastic heads."
"Well, no one gets paid. It's all just for the love of it! Plus, if they did it more than once a month people would probably become bored. It gives them something to look forward to." In a land where nearly everyone's creative or an artist, it's the very few who get paid for art, which makes for richer culture, but less financial rewards for pursuing it.
Earlier at the guesthouse, Ines strongly suggested I enjoy an Icelandic hot dog baptism, and I'm suddenly game for it. At a nearby boothlike storefront, the tipsy mob surrounds a pair of good humoured blonde ladies framed by bags of crisps and candy packets in their little window. The hot dog with a generous everything's got caramelized onions, spicy mustard, and a few other toppings my pickled brain can't discern. The dog's not all that, but it is definitely post-club drunk food rewarding. They've romanticized it, since at this point of the night you're either taking someone home to bang, or eating the savoury comfort food that is the Icelandic hot dog. To parallel Tucson, it's their street cuisine burrito. (Days later I'd make it to Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, supposedly the best hot dog stand in Reykajvik, or Iceland for that matter. [It's still no burrito de al pastor, but then what is?])
In an appropriate segue back home, Ines makes another wiener-based tourist suggestion: "You should go to the penis museum! They have alot of penis!"
Me: "I'm consistently told I already possess quite alot of penis, thanks."
Day 5: The Asatruar.
Rainkjavik! This is the weather I was told to expect. And it's nice for a change, seeing the city slicked with drizzle, shiny cobbles and coloured walls under steel skies, the blessings of Thor coming down and keeping me cool as I attempt the long walk from the downtown 101 toward the interior's 108.
Half an hour later going in what I thought was East, I'm rather lost. Then the rain's become not so gentle, and for the first time ever my BlackBerry unexpectedly gets wet through the nylon of my windbreaker, it's screen a live blank, the red alert light glaring angrily up at me. Soaked, I take refuge in a residential driveway that looks abandoned as the whole garage door's been tagged with 6-foot letters. A minute later, an old man pops out of the front door, his Icelandic an aggressive staccato. I put up my hands in the international sign for surrender. "Whoa! Hey! Just stopped to dry off and figure out where I am." In my hoodie, he surely suspects I'm the tagger come back to put the finishing touches on his garage. Going inside to tell someone else that there's an interloper, this interloper decides to quickly move along before he finds out if this household's occupied by the nation's many gun owners, which is a well protected 1/3 of the population. (Effect note: Violent crime is very rare in Iceland.)
After making heads 'n' tails of my map & compass, I finally locate the Ásatrúarfélagið for their weekly open house. In an off the main roads retail/warehouse strip area, Iceland's heathen stronghold seems a very secular small 7 table cafeteria-like space. There's some bright familiar conversation happening on both sides of the center aisle amongst the 15 or so people there, no viking costumery or weapons on anyone (not that I expected it). After signing the gestabók (guestbooks with fancy wood covers are big ticket items in giftshoppes, btw), totally starving me makes a b-line for the cardtable full of cheese, cakes, and hot coffee. Strangely, there's a familiar face waving me over: the couple at the National Museum who were savvy enough to suggest they take my camera for this picture:
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[Can't even see out of that helmet.]
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Taking a closer look around the room, there's a godpole of Njord, a wood case with books, a carved horn in a stand behind glass, and a large bronze brazier with a runic pattern in its bowl hulking in the entryway to an adjoining small office & kitchen. The walls have pricetagged lopi, scarves, gloves, and hats, but with a distinctly heathen difference: They have Asatru motifs knitted into them! Hammers, ravens, Odin's eye, and knotwork beasts adorn the backs of hands, collars, and proudly badge breasts & torsos. A septuagenarian member, Gunnar Valtan, who's knitter wife died, honoured her by learning to take up the needles himself, and gives the proceeds from his work to the Ásatrúarfélagið. They're very reasonable for being the only officially heathen-themed knitwear in the whole country: rough, honest, and beautiful in their intentions & execution.
After the clutch ends, by the door sits a two foot larger brilliant carving of the little Thor statue I saw earlier from the museum. I place my hand on the warm wood, the conical cap smooth, the god smiling, and I'm glad I stuck with the plan and made the walk to meet a roomful of practicing heathens at their ground zero, which gives me alot to contemplate and compare during the long trek back.
Later in town, I duck into the locals' pub, Ölstofan. Quite different in character, it's tucked away, has no windows, and is completely no nonsense. I order a Brio, the much lauded pilsner brewed specifically for this pub. All I can report is that it's the Heineken of Iceland. Not so good, if you dislike Heineken, which I dislike. I get organized in a half booth against a wall, taking in the low light, brass fixtures over wood, framed magazine clippings full of local/national colour, and music so low key you'd have to make an effort to pay attention to it, which is a nice change in a bar when you want to conduct conversation.
For dinner, I try Svartibar for hardy bread bowl lamb soup. On a cold night, the soup's nice. Marble cafe tables are surrounded by questionable ethnic decor, and suddenly I get the svarti- ("dark") prefix in the name. Black people get alot of love in Iceland as exotics, so I presume all the African caricature and blackface depictions are done in a spirit of affection, but I wonder if anyone ever calls them on it?
Night's end finds me at Sky Lounge & Bar, a penthouse rooftop bar atop Centerhotel Arnarhvoll. A bottle of Einsbock Viking Coffee Porter costs $9, so I'm essentially paying for the view. Ultramodern, plentiful pillows, low close-the-deal lighting. The few groups that are up here seem to be from the Eve con, and are looking out across the harbour, but I'm seated looking into the city, the cars slowly moving down and across the building corridors, lights blinking dreamily in the wet air. It's total date material and I sigh for the hundredth time, pretending my girlfriend can see it with me.
Day 6: Best. Cocktails. Ever. No. Really.
Nearby, nice bells I'd not heard before pleasantly rouse me. (My girl would later point out via chat: "Those were church bells, you heathen!" "Maybe they were for Sunna school?", I countered.)
On weekends a staple of Reykjavik's commerce is their Kolaportid Flea Market. Housed in a huge warehouse hear the harbour, it's vendors with tables or booths with many good deals to be found, and a food area. After trolling the aisles of t-shirts, media, hardware, bookstalls, candy, sweaters, raw shark, ground horse, dried fish, and baked goods, I hit the food court for an open-faced smoked lamb sandwich. The court currently sports a gallery of comic-based fine pop art for exorbitant amounts. The one where Thor's giving Superman a beatdown with Mjollnir makes me wrongfully cheer inside. Post-lunch, I b-line back to buy the coolest item in the building: a ram's head statue for only 1,000 krona (≈ $9 USD)! It's really a museum quality fine art score, and something quintessentially Icelandic, as my time here has exposed me to more public and private sculpture on display in parks & neighborhood windows than my last decade in the US.
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"Um, absolutely nothing." He smiles sheepishly, shrugging.
"That's okay -- I'll just make something up." (Frozen magic animal that will spring forth whole to guard its owner in battle? Oracular head that whispers secrets only on Midwinter Night? A stone summoning animal sigil for the god Heimdall? Could be ... .)
Outside, the harbour lunch crowd mills about. Smokers sit on benches, looking at the view, being able to relax from the restrictions all throughout the rest of the city.
The open-faced sandwich wears off while I'm in yet another bookshop, so I decide to go whale hunting. No, not on a boat (which does happen here) -- on a plate. At Cafe Paris there's a huge gathering of be-seen crowds, and from its windows and outdoor tables, one can peoplewatch from a point of superiority. The restaurant provides blankies & heat lamps so the diners can still sit outside and judge passersby in Austurvöllur square. It's sunny yet blustery, and designer sunglasses & high-end handbags camp the tables. Much less foolishly, I sit at a high-table inside. Staff proves both haughty & nice, depending who you get, since there seems to be no set sections for servers. The grilled Minke whale pepper steak arrives, reminding one that oh yeah it's a mammal not a fish. It's good but has a strange aftertaste, which chef may have been covering up with her selection of Madagascar pepper sauce. A foodie co-worker would later jokingly remonstrate: "That aftertaste is the flavour of guilt!", but I counter that it's probably just plankton-fed meat weirdness. Conclusion: Leave the whales alone. Unless you've got a whole starving village to feed immediately, there's really not much of a flavour sensation to be found in taking down an animal who weighs in at 10 tons.
I spend the rest of the bright night reading a latter-day Elric novel at Loftid, which proves to be the fanciest bar ever. Boggled at first by the huge black cross leaning against the downstairs street entry, the upstairs unfolds into a large room decorated in a tailoring theme. Bolts of cloth, spindles, sewing machines, chalk marked jacket pieces, dressmaker torsos, with the only thing missing being an on-site tailor to use it all. Instead a vested young bartender pops into the completely empty room, and we have a wonderfully out of continent discussion about mezcal. On the wall the cursive drink menu's written in black chalk, implying a shifting mixology of the first order, which after racking up a $77 bar tab for an Icelandic Iced Tea infused with lavender, a mezcal-based Blue Fire cocktail rimmed in lava salt, and a honeyed scotch Asian Fashion, I know it totally is.
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[Diamond tufted leather club chairs, inlaid wood tables, golden squirrel cage lighting. Sexy!]
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These thoughts and others slide through my head as I nurse unparalleled spirit mixes and enjoy the nuances of it all before closing my tab and walking home in the beautiful gloaming.
Day 7: Eat like a Viking.
During my lifetime, I've bought into the American advertising trope that driving oneself equals complete freedom. But to confess, part of that is an inordinate fear of getting lost on a bus, ending up miles away from where one's supposed to be, and helplessly marooned fuck no one even knows where. (See Day 1 entry's shuttle drop-off for near realization of this legitimate context.) Armed with extra krona fish coins as fare, a bus schedule, and a carefully taken route photo off a sign, I've prepared as much as I can for another leg outside of Reykjavik.
Before risking the foreign public transport, I also fortify lunchwise at fine harbour seafood eatery Höfnin for a bowl of the local blue mussels. Steamed with three beers and accompanied by three (!) distinct sauces, the huge bowl turns out to be more than the light lunch I'd planned on. If the mussels weren't so good, I'd accuse this place of only selling their view. Of course my low-rent camera & average photo skills cannot capture the great harbour splayed outside their picture window with any justice. And in the middle of it all a good omen: A red boat named Freya, after the Norse goddess of love. (... The Love Boat?)
Needing to walk off the unexpectedly big lunch, I detour to some jewelry stores for a quest object: a sterling silver ægishjálmr. A nice girl with immaculately styled purple hair at the fourth shoppe I hunted at sold me a thick 1" helm of terror for a whopping $14,000+ ISK (oh, what price magickal items?), which would be solid enough to hang from my nametag at work back home. Also, if the acquisition of glittery precious treasure is one of your things, lots of inventive jewelry using combinations of precious & natural materials proves to be one of the cornerstones of modern Icelandic design. The boldly pronged rings of Sign and the world-class timepieces of JS Watch Company are especially worth noting.
Finally digesting enough to brave the bus, I'm relieved to discover that the system's very akin to that of London's, perhaps even improved with a mildly sexy gynobot voice announcing all the stops (which is a trade-off for double deckers, so you call it). Weaving through metro Reykjavik, across outer suburbs, and along the coastline, I eventually reach the municipality of Hafnarfjörður.
And just down the road from the bus station's the famous Fjörukráin Viking Village. Made of wood in the style of the original 1000-year-old wood stave buildings, this is the world's ultimate viking-themed restaurant & hotel! Locals think it's kitschy & embarrassing, while haughty tourists scorn it as a trap, but it was one man's grand vision of a heathen-themed dream made manifest. In passing you might mistake this for a "hey, stop here!" roadside attraction, but when you do stop and examine it, the level of detail is awe inspiring, with round shields on cottages, godposts placed thoughout the property, dragonheaded exterior crossbeams, reproduction runestones, and statuary. It was even more ornate on the inside with jelling knots & creatures carved into most surfaces, framed mythic/legendary/historic illustrations, and a wider spread of gods & goddesses represented across the Aesir pantheon than all the giftshops back in Reykjavik, with more godposts, tapestries, and even a small altar complete with candles & horns behind the bar. Taking it all in, there's the slow dawning that there's a tru love there. Plus, it appears to be the only place that serves mead in all of Iceland, and brewed there at that.
When the traditional Þorrablót sheep's head landed on the table in a wood trencher, offered not even close to Midwinter but always available on their menu, served by a girl in a tunic, I knew it was worth the trip. That's the moment the viking fantasy got real, and you find the most challenging bit of eating an animal's face is the eye. Not because of any silently conveyed post-mortem accusation (and if you're even thinking this, you should leave eating meat to the rest of us), but because of the explosion of gelatinous vitreous humour inside the eyeball when you chew down on it. You'll find though that the cheek's a tender delight. After the meal, I asked about "the cave" where the viking re-enactors make off with "kidnapped" tourists, and they were nice enough to unlock it just for me. With bronze age Aesir & fylfot pictogylphs, more statues, taxidermy wolves & bears, and a stream running through it, the cave only reinforces the evident dedication to something made complete. Up in the hotel lounges & halls, framed art of gods, trolls, alfar, jotuns, and Ragnarök adorns everything. My favourite piece of all was a four-foot stone Odin statue, set at a focal point at the end of the rows of cottages, done in the Eyrarland style, with his beard instead merging into Draupnir.
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[Odin speaks.]
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The huge amount of lamb & its accompanying horn of mead collapses me into a postmeal crash bed sprawl. Five hours later, I wake to see no-one outside. Not a soul in my double window downtown view of a 300,000+ city of souls. Dew coats glimmering surfaces. The lights on the music hall blink like a yule tree.
Beautiful.
Day 8: The Trickery of Many Beverages.
Finding space for all the random memorabilia, statues, treasure, and the collected brick of wicked cool postcards in the one suitcase took awhile, but I finally managed it before heading out to my last full day.
Originally I'd scoffed at Stofan Cafe, a yellow house on low stilts on the south side of the central town square, Ingolfstorg. It looked like the overcrowded nesting place of rich hipster wanks who have naught better to do than nurse a dollar coffee for three hours. Yet passing by today, the cafe seemed to have more than fair seating, and I needed a place to pen my 12 postcards. And I take back my first impression, as Stofan proved to be one of the homiest and most comfortable spots I'd ever decided to stop at. Arguably the best place to hang, the environment perhaps invented the word cozy. Broken in velvet chairs with artist type velvet-dressed people who seem to actually be busy doing something artful, all on wood floors & vintage tables. Quintessentially Iceland, with Miles Davis caliber jazz, and not the goofy pop or gutless folk you get annoyed with everywhere else. While the coffee could maybe be two notches better, the environment wins. After capping my fountain pen, a guy asks if he can sit on the couch across from me, and introduces himself. "I'm Hafþór! It means 'Sea Thor'." And within only 15 minutes it somehow gets wayyyyy deep, the conversation going from places of origin, into personal ontologies, comparative national politics, alls the ladies, rights to cyber privacy, the reasons we travel, and more. A law student, Hafþór's late father was wrongfully imprisoned for decades on murder charges, and he's got an upcoming BBC appearance concerning the restitution over this miscarriage of justice. Impressed, I tell him it's a bold & just crusade, a modern day saga quest for family honour & societal integrity, minus the swords & longships. "Putting it like that, you must have been Icelandic in a previous life!" Sitting in Stofan chatting it up, serendipitously seeing the French family from the viking hotel wander in and wave to me, and unexpectedly engaging another guy wearing a Tucson t-shirt nearby, I truly feel like an Icelander in this lifetime, actually.
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[Seating, Stofan-style.]
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After lunch I ran into Skarpi & Ines on their way to a political party rally. "Do you really care that much about politics, Skarpi?" "Well they're giving away free beer, so we're mostly going for that." One supposes in a country not locked down by an unimaginative two-party system that free beer on your platform might get you that difficult to win majority. (Hey my Libertarians, take note!) Seeing them, melancholy grips me as I realize it's probably the last time we'll speak before I leave. We exchange contact info, hugs, and hopes that maybe I can visit Ines in Spain someday, perhaps timing it for when Skarpi's there. I watch them walk away, arms around each other's waists, charming, honest, loving.
Down the street I duck into Austur, one of the more celebrated bar/club nightspots, for an afternoon cocktail. Sportsjacketed Canadian douchbags hound a cute bartender, and attempt to show off by provoking me about my Icelandic hammer pendant, but they're too drunk to pull either worthless endeavour. Camped at a nearby table, two jerkfaced South Americans thumbing through newspapers also dismissively command Austur's staff, and seem blatantly out of place for owners. Mobsters? The Poison Oak, a Brennevin-based cocktail, uses overt sweetness to mask as opposed to mix the Brennevin, and I'm hard pressed to finish it.
Skarpi says that the best cocktails in Reykjavik get infused & crafted at Slipbarinn, the bar at Icelandair Marina Hotel, where for some alchemies they even smoke the glass. More modern scandi-deco environs, which one finds lacking character when compared to Loftid, but the cocktails are nearly almost comparable. Mixology's definitely on display, with handwritten signs on bottles & infused casks declaring that something's been combined with something else unheard of to tempt you. First bev: "The Man, The Myth". For 2,700 ISK, Japanese whisky, ginger, lemon, and aged apple vinegar! Mmmmm! Second bev: "The Pippi Gonzales". At 2,200 ISK, dill akvavit, tequila, lemon, cucumber, dill infused olive oil surface floated in polka spots! Clever presentation and refreshing. In general, however, fuck using those shallow champagne coupes for $20+ cocktails. Make that shit at least a highball! No tip for real.
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| [A room over from Slipbarinn is the hotel's library, another manifestation of bookworship in a country where 1 in 10 has written a book.] |
At my guesthouse, my head's a bit spinny, and I doctor with alot of H2O, OJ, and one of those chocolate drop cookies. It's an unrestful night, partly from the day's cascading boozefest, but mostly from the nagging reality that tomorrow I have to leave.
Day 9: Lastday, Guillermo 4.
The day of return. Before catching the 1 pm FlyBus shuttle Hans Kristjan was good enough to arrange, I hit the tourism office again for my last VAT refunds. Seeing the cool kid still at his window, I became the dorky custie by saying, "Don't you get a day off?" It's one of 10 trite things to say to retail people, and he's nice enough to laugh at it, but as soon as it left my mouth I knew I'd slipped down the retail sin-o-meter. Kid, if you're reading this, my apologies, and do come to Tucson for a retail hookup from my side of the counter.
Though I was just there yesterday, Stofan Cafe impressed me so much I stopped in again this morning for a fortifying swiss mocha and scone. Camped on the corner's green velvet couch for the best view in the place, I sit and cannot help but somehow associate everything I see with my girlfriend Michelle. I will miss Reykjavik, but not as much as I've missed my love, and I know my heart does long to be back home.
Yet there was a point on day three where I dreamed I was walking Reykajvik's streets among their coloured houses ... and in that un/consciously lucid moment Iceland became a part of me.
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[Three floor onion dome with widow's walk! My pick for the coolest house in Iceland.]
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Specific Insights:
• Hallgrimskirkja is secretly a pagan structure because if you look at it from above it's not cross-shaped like all the conventional cathedrals of the world, but hammer-shaped like the Danish hammer pendants with no top cross bar, and not situated East-West to face the rising sun, but North-South. Plus in 1875 it was the site of site of the first public Ásatrú Blót. Syncretization at play.
• The Air. As soon as you leave airport you realize how pure oxygen can taste. They live longer than we do, possibly by the sheer purity of their atmosphere. Its clarity's astounding, like breathing a glass of well filtered water, the rejoicing of thankful lungs will stun you. If only they could bottle it for cloning. Inhale the immaculateness while you can.
• Like London, one does not brave traffic on the streets of Reykjavik. It will not stop for you, foolish ped. And if you drop a full container of Skyr while running across the road during a moment of bad late night judgment, let it go to live another day. Do not cry, even if you overpaid for it at the 10-11 market. There will be more Skyr. (Go try some at your local Whole Foods. Soooooo good!)
• Icelanders dress two ways: Smart windbreakers or wool fashions. Either way there's an unmistakable display of affluence going on as the North 66 & other outdoor gear boutiques don't cost any less than picking the luxury of woven lopi complimented by smart earthtone wool trousers. It's the uniform, and it makes climate sense whichever way you decide. And only once did ever see an idiot in shorts and a ballcap. Just one! And he was most likely a tourist jackhole, not an Icelander. The pictures you see of outlandish street fashion are the rare exception, despite what stilted exaggerations the internet's jpeg populi decides to over-repin.
• All is expensive. $12 USD's a cheap meal. Small silver pendants fetch $65-$125 USD (when as of this writing silver's just under $20 USD a troy ounce). Why? Post-2008's global financial crisis, Iceland decided to close its economy which in turn set prices on food and other items produced from local materials made by Icelanders for use by Icelanders and for sale to Iceland's stream of tourists. This bootstrap strategy only increased the pride Icelanders feel in what they create and provide. Big love, big money. Ergo, anything made of their native sheep's wool, out of wood (in a land where near total deforestation quickly happened in their history's first 100 years, all wood is rare), or the ornately collared lopi sweater (a WW2 convention when housewives were too busy finding food to bother spinning their wool neatly, leaving the surface rough & loose), all are treated as national gold. On the other hand, tipping's not part of their daily commerce. Go figure. The trade on that is that you must take pains to wrangle your server half the time.
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[OOAK rune pyrographed knapkin rings made of horn!]
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[See that morning sun streaming through the upstairs window at Cafe Babalu? Wrong! The time is 10:30p, and they're about to throw us out by asking very nicely and thanking us for coming. Would run into the couch couple on the Golden Circle tour bus the next day, and trade waves.]
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Epilogue:
To realize the value of home, you have to separate yourself from it to truly know what you've got. This is one of the lessons of travel, and it can cut or mend you both ways.
It's like the Dia de Los Muertos Procession in Tucson where people just show up in skullface costumes without really reflecting or perceiving what it's about. In Iceland there's still an uninterrupted continuity of feasting, drinking communal things (þing!) to attend, still running outside to watch the auroras & volcanos in wonder, and while they don't acknowledge the gods in these rituals, they still celebrate these miracles where the spirit manifests itself in the material and you connect with the divinities still present within it all.
Thank you, Iceland, for being the place where the vikings still live, and your streets are named after the Gods whose roads you still travel.
While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.
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