Janos Gereben - the Post [5/22/05]
AKUREYRI - The first thing you learn about Iceland on this first visit is how tremendously huge and awesome neighboring Greenland is. Being on the first commercial nonstop flight from San Francisco to Iceland provided the unprecedented opportunity to observe the frozen moonscape of Greenland for a long, long time - flying over just its southern end for about an hour and a half.
The inaugural flight of an Icelandair 767 presented this new closeup - of an incredible, inhospitable, forbidding land, called GREEN but as saturated in ICE as anything can be.
Then there is another hour of flight over the North Atlantic and here comes ICEland with brilliant sunshine (dimming but never disappearing at "night"), about 55 degrees, no ice, no snow - clearly, there had been a mistake in naming these two strange lands. There are plenty of stories about it (www.straightdope.com), but don't bother with that now.
As to the toasty May weather, it can transform quickly, and by the time you stand before the majestic Gullfoss waterfalls, steady, powerful gusts wring tears from the eyes, chilling the bones. Fortunately, it's just a few minutes to Geysir, hot steam blowing high from the geyser that gave the name to all thermal blowholes.
So what does Iceland look like? On first visit, it really feels like coming home... to Hawaii. No, not the palm trees and crowded beaches, but the endless, flat lava fields of the Big Island with volcanic mountains surrounding them. On the north side, at magnificent Akureyri, it's a mix of New Zealand and Switzerland. Plus deep, dramatic fissures, showing the strain of Iceland literally coming apart, the North American and Eurasian continental plates moving away from each other, at a steady speed of two inches a year. A land breaking apart with the speed of the growth of human nail. Meanwhile, a land to see and be surprised by in a hundred ways.
The deja vu of Big Island is amazing. For someone who drove weekly roundtrips from Kona to Hilo, traveling through Iceland is a series of flashbacks to the Saddle Road, Kohala, Ka'u, etc. And, as the eskimos have different words for snow, volcanic islands name lava various ways. Hawaii's aa (rough lava) is ufithhraun here, the smooth, billowy pahoehoe is helluhraun, etc.
Iceland feels enormous and wild, but in fact, you can drive around it in three days, fly from any coastal town to any other in just an hour. With a population of 300,000, there should be lots of space to spread out, but the inhabitable portions of the island account for only the size of Oakland (with its 400,000 people).
To explain the country's improbably burgeoning economy (construction all around, Icelandair tickets from San Francisco sold out for months), consider the instructional tale of the missing swimsuit.
The situation arose from simple (and dumb) neglect to pack one on a trip to the mecca of thermal baths. Where to buy one, I asked Augusta, lording kindly over reception at the Nordica Hotel. Why not rent, she asked. Taken aback, I still insisted on getting one of my own. Augusta gave directions to a nearby mall, and I found a typical, nondescript shopping center that could be at home in Santa Rosa, New Jersey or anywhere in the Americanized universe.
Found sports store, spotted basic Speedo, matched it in memory with a swimsuit obtained at home from Sears for $15, looked at price tag, translated the currency to $110 in "real money." Clearly, a mistake. Checked others, including ones "on sale," prices ranged from $100 to $150. Shaking head vigorously, I returned to the hotel, reported my findings to Augusta (who smiled with a kindly, unspoken "I told you so"), and then I asked, rather rhetorically, "how do you manage with such prices?!"
Without missing a beat, Augusta replied: "We rent."
We had a good laugh over that, but Iceland's cost of living is no joke, probably among the highest in the world. From the $30 small pizza to a $700 iPod, ownership is a problem here. Still, the rent metaphor is imprecise because owning homes is a high priority for Icelanders, even if seemingly they can't afford a house or condominium.
Take 38% tax and a 24% VAT from the annual average income of $40,000, and what do you have? Not much. And yet, there is evident prosperity, twice the number of cars as people, no visible homelessness, and a prison population under 200. Also, there is something strange at work for tourists. At McDonald's, the Big Mac costs $12, but at the world-class VOX restaurant, dinner and wine prices are comparable with what you can expect at San Francisco's top restaurants!
So, perhaps, "let them eat steak," instead of burgers? That, with only a small tweaking of linear narration, brings to mind one of the finest local urban legends. You must have heard of the *facts* of Iceland giving the world the first parliament, the first woman president, etc., but surely you don't know the French revolution started here?
That's what they say, the earnest, straight-faced tour guides of Iceland Rovers: that the 1783 eruption of Mount Laki - from a line of 135 craters, throwing 12 cubic kilometers of magma into the air - not only killed one-fifth of the country's population, but covered most of Europe with black, insidious, killing dust. Agriculture suffered a major, long-lasting blow in France, and by the time the dialogue with Marie Antoinette took place ("Let 'em eat Big Macs!"), it was curtains for royalty, a revolution made in the volcanoes of Iceland.
So who are these people living on unsteady ground, with high prices, and a long all-dark winter? In unscientific and politically incorrect terminology, with generalization outrageous even for a journalist, the report from here is that they appear to have the best of good Scandinavian characteristics (strong, straightforward, honest - how about that tiny prison? - helpful and kind), without the bad ones (cold, brooding, or downright Bergmanesque). Not surprisingly, no Mediterranean warmth is evident, but once you make contact, people are kind and gracious, they seem to become friends for life.
In the face of the weird midnight sun (and winter darkness), people are steady and lively, in contrast with the wistful music of Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" that ran nonstop in my mind during the visit here:
The sun sits low, / Diffusing its usual glow.
The vespers ring, / The nightingale's waiting to sing, / The rest of us wait on a string. / Perpetual sunset / Is rather an unset- / Tling thing.
The sun won't set, / It's fruitless to hope or to fret, / It's dark as it's going to get. / The hands on the clock turn, / But don't sing a nocturne / Just yet. / The evening air / Doesn't feel quite right... / In the not-quite glare / Of the not-quite night, / And it's-- / Wait! Is that a star?
The atmosphere's becoming heady, / The ambiance thrilling. / The spirits unsteady, / The flesh far from willing. / To be perpetually ready / Is far from fulfilling.
Take a look: http://www.linknot.com/Iceland.htm