Well, that was amazing. And so necessary. There is still a lot for me to personally process from the trip to Iceland, and leaving my journal in the plane probably won't help the process. I hope I can put together something similar to the Africa trip, but most likely I'll just offer reflections with a few paragraphs and pictures.
Going to Iceland was in many ways like going Home. Icelandic is an awesome language, related to Old Norse and quite intelligible from 1100 on. (Icelanders read the Sagas in Old Icelandic without too much difficulty. This would be roughly comparable to us being able to read Beowulf without too much difficulty.) My German background stood me in good stead here, as many of the words are cognate with German and English, both. For example, styyki is cognate with Stueck, and means "a piece." Bær is cognate with Bauer and bower, and means "a farm." The English is less transparent here, but we still use the word in the game of Euchre, which calls the jacks the right and left bowers. Staðir is "stead," as in "homestead." Það is "that." Kirkja is Kirche is "church." And so on. Pronunciation requires a deft tongue.
Iceland is beautiful. The scenery was so new that I took 500 pictures the first day. I deleted over half of them, and in the course of going through nine solid days of travel, I'm paring them down even more. There are a lot of random waterfalls along the roads—small ones from glaciers. The water is pristine: I don't think we crossed any sort of befouled water source while we were there, although I did bathe in a hot spring at Mývatn while it was snowing on my head. You could drink from the streams. I ate a 1000-year-old piece of glacier and submerged my feet in the Arctic Ocean. (I figured that would be the last one to fall, but that distinction now probably lies with the Indian.)
It was sunny about 22 hours a day, with some small sunsets and dusk. It was never totally dark. This made getting up easier, although I would've preferred to get a bit more sleep.
The accommodations were nice, the people were nice, and they make a really good meat soup (meat in Iceland means lamb). While it wasn't quite culinary heaven, there were a lot of really good dishes. The two best were the first meat soup I had and a seafood soup following—with fish caught that day, I'm sure. I also had a scallop and sea urchin straight from the ocean on a boat tour: opened up right in front of me and satisfying. I'll skip sea urchin next time, though.
I took a march on a volcano in fierce wind and snow and nearly burned my hand in the crevasses near the surface. I walked behind a waterfall and visited an ancient Viking settlement. I climbed on a glacier.
It was a busy and full trip...and it was good for the soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment