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1,017

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Downtown Ísafjörður in the Westfjords

Downtown Ísafjörður in the Westfjords

It took a while, but now I have all 1,017 photographs I took in Iceland (minus a few obvious nixies) available on Yahoo! Flickr. You can see them by clicking here.

Eventually, I will take the hundred or so best pictures, create title pictures and maps, and add a soundtrack. Then I’ll try to get some cloud space and store it there. At that point, I will let you know how to access it..

Every once in a while, you will see a dark vertical line at the right edge of the picture. That started happening when I accidentally dropped my camera on Austurstræti in Reykjavík. Now when I take a picture, the camera makes a funny noise and some, but not all, of the pictures have the dark line. Otherwise, they seem to be all right.

 

From Point A to Point B—Without Crowflies

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Beautiful But Deadly

The Westfjords of Iceland have only some 7,000 residents. Although many formerly cinder-only roads are now paved, there are several very good reasons why visiting motorists outrageously underestimate the driving time between two points. For instance, let’s take the land route between Reykjavík and Isafjördur. As the crow flies, the distance only amounts to 222 kilometers; but, alas, there are no crowflies in Iceland.

If you insist on paved roads all the way, it takes between 6-7 hours to take the Ring Road and branch off north of Bogarnes to Route 61 via Holmavík. That part’s fairly straightforward, but then you have follow the fjords as they zig and zag along Isafjördurup for some three hours. That’s about 30 km (18 miles) of the air distance per hour. Check out this circuitous route:

Check Out the Road South East of Isafjördur

Check Out the Road South East of Isafjördur to Holmavík

For over three hours from Isafjördur south, one must follow the contours of the fjords and of the giant basaltic hogbacks that stretch out like fingers and define them. Only at one point is there a bridge that cuts the distance—slightly.

A slightly faster option is to drive to Stykkisholmur and take the Baldur car ferry to Brianslækur, driving the 90% cinder Route 60 due north to Isafjördur. (The only benefit on this route is that one gets to see the falls at Dynjandi, which is one of the most lovely in all of Iceland.) It takes an hour less, but driving this road will take its toll on you in other ways. At the end is a spectacular tunnel between Þingeyri and Isafjördur. (Without that tunnel, I don’t know whether it is even possible to visit the southern part of the Westfjords without air transport.)

I suspect that many tourists just fly to the Westfjords and rent a car there.

Many long-distance buses in the Westfjords only run three days a week. The Sterna bus between Isafjördur and Holmavík on a Sunday was so full of backpackers and their impedimenta that there was barely room to get in or out.

But was it worth it? Yes, indeed. And I’d to it again!

Dental Brinkmanship

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I Was Taking a Big Chance

I Was Taking a Big Chance

Just before I was about to leave for Iceland, I noticed that I not only had a cavity, but that it felt big enough to park a Chevy Suburban with room to spare. Moreover, when I ran my tongue over the spot, it felt sharp. I knew there wasn’t time to get the problem fixed before liftoff on June 19, so I took a big chance. After all, the worst that could happen was that I would have to see an Icelandic dentist.

On Saturday and today, I saw my own dentist; and he confirmed what happened. My crown on the second last top molar was breached both from the top and from the side. What I was feeling with my tongue was the sharp edge of what remained of the crown. There was a 50/50 chance that I would have to see a consulting dentist on an emergency basis for a quick root canal. Fortunately, Dr. Sun informed me that there were a few molecules of tooth tissue separating the cavity from the molar’s nerves. I lucked out.

This morning, he built up what was for all intents and purposes a new tooth on top of the foundation rubble that remained of my molar. First, he put in some insulating material called dycal to prevent the nerve from being irritated by the reinforced concrete with rebar that formed my repaired tooth. Later, he will replace the broken crown with a new one made with industrial diamonds.

All in all, I think I got off rather cheaply.

The Touch Screen Fugitive

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This Interface Is Not for Me!

This Interface Is Not for Me!

When I lost my cell phone at the Ringling Brothers circus about ten days ago, all my friends assumed that I would replace it with a smart phone. Surprise! I bought one of the rare dumb phones, an LG model that does not have a touch screen interface.

What do I have against touch screen interfaces? I guess I associate smart phones with people who don’t know what to do with their hands, so they spend their lives tweezling around with a microscreen to play games, devise phantom to-do lists, send and read e-mails, and in general replace life with a digital simulacrum .

So today during lunch hour, I took my turn waiting in line at the local AT&T store, while some bonzoid in shorts apparently tried to stage a hostile takeover of the phone company using Lithuanian zinc futures. He took so long that the rep who was helping him went off to lunch, leaving him on hold on the phone.

My cell phone, on the other hand, is used almost exclusively for making calls. I don’t even like to receive calls on my cell. But then, whenever I removed my old Samsung cell phone from its holster, it would automatically shut down the incoming call.

I’m not saying I’ll never get a cell phone, it’s just that I’m not interesting at this time in expanding my cell phone usage, or dirtying up a tiny screen, making it even harder for my bad eyes to read it.

Running Around in the Land of the Midnight Sun

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My Guesthouse in Reykjavik at 11 pm

My Guesthouse in Reykjavik at 11 pm

My first day in Iceland began with my arrival at Keflavík Airport around 6:30 am Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). (I should add that it is not Daylight Savings Time, which is not needed when it’s light 24 hours a day.) In Los Angeles time, it was only 11:30 pm on the previous day. I knew that my sleep pattern would be massively disrupted if I tried to hit the sack at that point.

What I did was to go all over the place so I wouldn’t sleep until around 11 pm GMT. To that end, here is a partial listing of what I did on the first day:

  1. The first stop was the excellent information center of The Icelandic Travel Market at Bankastræti 2, where I picked up a 3-day Reykjavík Welcome Card and some local bus schedules.
  2. In 2001, I never got a chance to visit the original saga manuscripts; so I took care of that right away by stopping in at The Culture House.
  3. Then I walked over to the city’s famous hot dog stand: Bæjarins Beztu and got eina pylsur með öllu (what they call a hot dog with everything). Very tasty!
  4. Then it was off to the old port to book a Sea Adventures puffin tour by boat to the Isle of Lundey (“Puffin Island”) in Faxafloi Bay.
  5. I had some time to kill, so it was off to the Settlement Museum, also known as Reykjavík 871±2, where I saw the ruins of one of the original farmhouses from the 9th century A.D.
  6. I hung around the Old Harbor waiting for the puffin tour, which I loved.
  7. Next: Get a great fish dinner, using my Reykjavík Welcome card 10% discount at The Fish Company, where I dined on arctic char and other Icelandic fish delicacies. It was what my British friends would call “splashing out,” but it was worth every penny!
  8. That put me in the mood for GoEcco’s Haunted Walk of Reykjavik at 8:00 pm local time.

By the time the Haunted Walk ended around 10:30 pm, I was feeling a bit haunted myself; so I trudged back to the Guesthouse Odínn, ready to hit the sack.

The Sack

The Sack

I expected to have trouble dealing with the sun being up 24 hours on the longest day of the year, so I had purchased a sleep mask. All that did was make my head sweat, so I decided I would just deal with it. I laid it aside, never to pick it back up, and sank into a deep, dreamless sleep. I woke briefly around 3:00 am and saw the sun still up. Having warn myself out with all my running around, I had no trouble sinking back into sleep.

 

The Word for World Is Hraun

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Hraun Is the Icelandic Word for Volcanic Waste

Hraun Is the Icelandic Word for “Volcanic Waste”

Few countries lay out such an uninviting welcome mat as Iceland. The International Airport at Keflavik (KEF) is on the barren Reykjanes Peninsula, most of which is described as Hraun, or volcanic waste. The photo above shows the Þáinsskjaldarhraun around Vogar, which is succeeded by the Kapelluhraun as you approach the gigantic aluminum smelter just south of Hafnarfjörður. It doesn’t look very inviting, does it?

As a form of visual punctuation, from the road one can see volcanic steam rising from the ground south around Krysuvik.

And yet just about everyone I meet repeats the old chestnut that Iceland is Green and Greenland is, well, ice. Not exactly. Large stretches of Iceland—approximately 10%—are ice, in the form of glaciers. Another 50-60% are volcanic wastelands, especially in the interior of the country. Look at a map of the island, and you will notice that there are no towns in the interior—nada, zero, zip. Just about everyone lives either on the coast or in one of the scattered fertile valleys near the coast in which the lava has been around long enough to form topsoil. (Where it hasn’t, the enterprising Icelanders have planted lupines,which help the process along.)

Below is a field of lupines at the edge of a volcanic ridge:

Lupines

Lupines

As you get closer to Reykjavik (the airport is 30 km southwest), you begin to see grasses and trees; and you get to feel somewhat better about your vacation choice.

I remember my first encounter with the hraun landscapes in 2001, which made me ask myself, “What are you letting yourself in for, Jim? This looks like the Mojave Desert on ice.”

 

Beauty and Melancholia

Mabel Normand

Mabel Normand

I have found a definition of the Beautiful, of my own conception of the Beautiful. It is something intense and sad, something a little vague, leaving scope for conjecture. I am ready, if you will, to apply my ideas to a sentient object, to that object, for example, which Society finds the most interesting of all, a woman’s face. A beautiful and seductive head, a woman’s head, I mean, makes one dream, but in a confused fashion, at once of pleasure and of sadness; conveys an idea of melancholy, of lassitude, even of satiety—a contradictory impression, of an ardour, that is to say, and a desire for life together with a bitterness which flows back upon them as if from a sense of deprivation and hopelessness. Mystery and regret are also characteristics of the Beautiful.

A beautiful male head has no need to convey, to the eyes of a man, at any rate—though perhaps to those of a woman—this impression of voluptuousness which, in a woman’s face, is a provocation all the more attractive the more the face is generally melancholy. But this head will also suggest ardours and passions—spiritual longings—ambitions darkly repressed—powers turned to bitterness through lack of employment—traces, sometimes, of a revengeful coldness., … sometimes, also—and this is one of the most interesting characteristics of Beauty—of mystery, and last of all (let me admit the exact point to which I am a modern in my aesthetics) of Unhappiness. I do not pretend that Joy cannot associate with Beauty, but I will maintain that that Joy is one of her most vulgar adornments, while Melancholy may be called an illustrious spouse—so much so that I can scarcely conceive (is my brain a witch’s mirror?) a type of Beauty which has nothing to do with Sorrow. In pursuit of—others might say obsessed by—these ideas, it may be supposed that I have difficulty in not concluding that the most perfect type of manly beauty is Satan—as Milton saw him.—Charles Beaudelaire, Intimate Journals (trans. by Christopher Isherwood)

Does It Pay To Take a Chance?

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KFC in Keflavik

KFC in Keflavik

During my recent visit to Iceland, I saw a number of American fast food chains represented, including KFC (see above photograph), Subway, Quizno’s, and several others—but, curiously, no hamburger chains. McDonald’s was there, but is gone now. I guess they couldn’t make a go of it.

As I would avoid most of these chains at home, I didn’t care to patronize them on my vacation either. Mostly, I looked for fish dishes, which were always fresh and delicious. Once I had a hamburger on the main drag in Isafjördur at Hamraborg and found it by no means inferior to  American burgers. In fact, I thought the béchamel sauce was a nice touch.

Not all of Hamraborg’s offerings looked quite so appetizing:

A Local Specialty I Decided Not to Try

A Local Specialty I Decided Not to Try

It looked as if it were loaded with sugar anyhow.

As in California, the type of restaurants I preferred were one-of-a-kind. At Háholt in Mossfellsbær, for example, I had a long wait; so I passed by the KFC and Subway and found a delightful little place near the local Bonus Supermarket:

I Was Probably the First American To Eat Here

I Was Probably the First American To Eat Here

Now the sign doesn’t really tell you very much, does it? (I know the last line refers to coffee and cakes, however.) But I talked to the owner as he moved some tables and chairs outside and I decided to eat there. I had some great soup and a delicious piece of codfish with fresh vegetables. The owner was a bit of a health nut, and that fit in perfectly with my dietary restrictions. That was probably my best lunch in Iceland. I told the owner I was delighted not to have to eat at Subway or KFC, which were the only other choices within walking range.

Sometimes it pays to take a chance.

 

Not Just About Rocks

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Zion National Park

Zion National Park

Geology is one of those subjects I would like to know much more about. Although I took the subject in college during late Ordovician times, it was all dictated by synclines, geosynclines, and anticlines, which I never quite understood—nor did the geologists who promulgated the notion.

Living as I do in the American Southwest, where the rocks are not covered by all that dirt, geology is something that seems more immediate. All the more so when the earth shakes as the tectonic plates are slowly marching on their pre-ordained paths to their next destination.

Geology is the history of what lies under our feet. It’s not just the study of rocks—though I can see where that could be interesting—but the study of long, slow processes that are changing the face of the earth. I saw some of those processes in action at Vatnajökull Glacier in Iceland, which has retreated hundreds of meters since the 1930s, when a road around the whole of the country was a laughable ides. Even now, the road across the black sands drained by the glacier is only a temporary expedient.

But then we are all temporary. If we want to see how small we are, we could make a study of the stars. But why go that far? The earth under our feet can be just as bizarre and alien. We talk about global warming as if it had never occurred before. It is just as likely that the currents of the oceans will reverse, bringing cold weather southward; and the glaciers may just start to re-form. We just don’t know.

I just finished reading John McPhee’s book In Suspect Terrain, about the forces that formed the eastern part of the United States, mostly the Appalachian Mountains. Plate tectonics explains some things, but as one geologist remarked, “While geologists argue, the rocks just sit there. And sometimes they seem to smile.”

This and the other titles in McPhee’s geological tetralogy, are good books to read if you want to puncture a few misconceptions.

Puffin Safari

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Never Did I Think It Would Be So Difficult

Never Did I Think It Would Be So Difficult

On one hand, I saw literally thousand of puffins. On the other hand, I had no idea they were such agile little buggers. They hang out along the tops of cliffs, where they create burrows in the topsoil to serve as nests. If you try to approach them, there is a good chance the soil will collapse into one of their burrows, sending you catapulting over the edge.

Icelanders eat puffins. They catch them by dangling on a rope from the top of the cliff and catching the puffins with a net that looks something like a lacrosse stick. But I was not interested in eating any puffins—although I had the chance—because, well, I started to admire these clownfaced little birds.

The above photo, and the cropped and heavily manipulated photo below is taken from the above picture, just so that you can get a close-up view of a real live wild puffin (Fratercula arctica).

Close-Up from the Top Photo

Close-Up from the Top Photo

All in all, I saw puffins on Lundey Island in Faxaflói Bay, on the Westman Islands (by the thousands), and on Vigur Island on Isafjarðardjúp fjord. The above photo was taken on Vigur, where the wind and rain kept the puffins from venturing into its teeth. The pictures were taken with the maximum telephoto setting on my Nikon CoolPix s630. I had to work fast, because the puffins would dart around quickly, and it took several seconds between pictures for my camera to reset.

It’s not like Argentina, where Martine and I paid a visit to several hundred thousand Magellanic penguins, who just stood by quizzically wondering whether we were good to eat, or what. That enabled me to get lots of close-ups, because they weren’t exactly flying off.

Because Martine was not with me on this trip, I wanted to at least get some good puffin pictures to show her. We had looked for puffins in Scotland in 1998, but we were too early. I looked for them in Heimaey in 2001, but I was too late.

I guess the puffins, in the end, were easier to photograph than moose. They weren’t quite so shy, they were around in great abundance—but you had to act fast.