On October 9th I flew alone to Reykjavíc, Iceland, for a week of exploration. I’m updating this page with photographs and notes from the experience.
The “main character” mindset in travel resents the presence of other people when they’re not advancing your plot. On this trip I’m experimenting with a “side character” mindset in which I am a prop or a witness in service of any actual main characters who may encounter me. In the past I would try to find settings where I could feel profound feelings, could make the scene match the hero’s journey I was writing in my head. Being a side character is much easier and, really, more interesting.
Of course I’m here to see some geologic beauty too, but even the natural scenes are more interesting, not less, with people in them. Is this waterfall six feet across, or sixty? What about the glacier below (phone holders may have to look more closely than most)?
Regardless of mindset, how are you going to be brought into authentic, or even merely friendly, contact with people in a place where you don’t know anyone? This is not a thing I’m good at. But one surefire way to do it is to spend money. Commerce will always bring people together, and it’s not a bad way to go. I paid 17,900 króna to go on a walk all around Reykjavík and eat five small courses of dinner with a dozen people. Highly recommended as a shortcut to the walking, talking and eating stage, and you get some great tips about where to eat later in the trip.
This man, Oscar, asked me at one point if I had any Nordic in me, and I said yes, Swedish, and I was thereafter referred to by him as “my Swedish friend”. Later he asked me if I played any instruments — I said I used to play guitar — whereupon I became “my guitar-playing Swedish friend”, two of the things that perhaps least define me. But, this is what it means to be a supporting character!
Chris and I ate lunch together, swapped thumbnail sketches of ourselves, and walked with each other intermittently. At the end of the day we waded up a small river through a narrow opening in the cliffs; inside, the river opened into a rocky atrium filled with mist by a hidden waterfall, smaller than many, but made immense through proximity. Chris was plainly, shamelessly exhilarated by this sight, and his enthusiasm was catching; my smile here is almost more his than mine.
I read of a pagan temple under construction in Reykjavík, the first one in a thousand years. Wikipedia said it’s been under construction since 2016 and still very much unfinished. I thought, maybe the Wikipedia page is out of date? Maybe they’ve finished it by now?
Well I scootered on down there, and they definitely haven’t finished it. They might not, ever, but pagans necessarily work on longer time scales than most of us.
Jane, left, lives in New York City and is originally from the Phillipines. The day before this photo was her birthday, and she’d been out till one o’clock in the morning on a northern lights tour. The tour guide had tried three locations in the fog and rain before, somehow, finding an opening. She arrived back in town, exhilarated and ready for a meal or at least a drink, only to find every restaurant and bar in town closed.
It occurred to me that she might be open to getting dinner, and if so perhaps another solo traveler on our bus would like to join us as well. We could call it Jane’s belated birthday dinner. But then Jane mentioned a 70 year old lady she’d met, who could drink like a racehorse, and who wanted to meet up with her again — said she was not going to do it, that she needed a break. The way she phrased it gave me the impression that she needed some solitary downtime, so I didn’t actually put the birthday dinner idea to her. Looking back, I might have gotten that wrong. But then again, I might have gotten it right.
Here in Thingvellir, the world’s oldest surviving parliament was formed, 1,100 years ago.
A couple of the Icelandic people I spoke with mentioned that their grandparents or great-grandparents lived in and gave birth in caves, not by choice. They described some the food practices (horse meat, fermented shark, offal use) as having resulted, partially, from starvation and famine conditions. In America we think of the Great Depression as a pretty bad time, but it was brief and comfortable by comparison with the subsistence poverty that existed here for generations until World War II.
I went late one evening to Sundhöllin, a public swimming pool which makes use of geothermal water piped in from a few kilometers away. No cameras allowed, but someone made a short film about the pool and its pedestrian ritual significance.
Here I was recognized by Ion, the driver from one of my trips. We got to talking. He invited me to follow him on his routine: “normal” hot tub → cold tub → steam bath → cold tub again → really hot hot tub → normal hot tub again. I’ve long been fond of a sauna, but sitting up to my neck in ice cold water was a level up from my typical cold shower practice.
Ion asked me what I thought of Elon Musk; was evasive when I asked him how long he’d been in Iceland (he’s originally from Romania); cross-examined me about how I’d changed as a person since my 20s, while people around us sent paragraphs of Icelandic patter over our heads.
“Side character” mindset has been productive, without being as generative of serendipity as I had theorized and secretly hoped. It got me out of my head and into conversation. But unreasonably lucky connection requires, probably, concrete goals, some shared hardship. This motivates me to ask not only “what will I see?”, but, “what will I attempt?”
