Daði Jóhan­nes­son, the Dis­trict Com­mis­sion­er for Snæfell­snes og Hnap­padalssýs­la drove me across a great part of the dis­trict. He stopped at a soli­tary farm­house to deliv­er advance bal­lots for the upcom­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al ref­er­en­dum, which will be held in Octo­ber. Along the way, we dis­cussed the dis­tric­t’s social prob­lems, which con­sist­ed, for the most part, of noth­ing more dra­mat­ic than a few bar fights. Read more »

After the con­stant rain of the last few days, it was won­der­ful to be out in the bright sun­light, so I thought some hik­ing would be in order. I walked through the qui­et val­ley of Skálafell, a place of no par­tic­u­lar impor­tance from a touris­tic point of view. The val­ley, tend­ing north­west by south­east, is defined by high plateaux on either side. Even this ear­ly in the year, there are some patch­es of fresh snow on top. The slopes curve down in almost per­fect arcs. The bot­tom of the val­ley has some rich graz­ing land, and is dot­ted with sheep, cat­tle, hors­es and ducks, all ami­ably graz­ing togeth­er.  Read more »

The Law Rock at Þingvellir

I was dri­ven direct­ly to Þin­vel­lir by Ingi Bjar­na­son, a geo­physi­cist who has done con­sid­er­able work on Iceland´s man­tle plume. If you are going to study plate tec­ton­ics, you could hard­ly pick a bet­ter spot than this, where the Amer­i­can and Euro­pean tec­ton­ic plates are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sep­a­rat­ing and shear­ing.  Read more »

Ice­land is famous for hav­ing a very high lev­el of read­ing, and I saw plen­ty of evi­dence of this. Reykyavik’s core has a half-dozen fair­ly large book­stores, well stocked with both Ice­landic and Eng­lish books, and they are always crowd­ed. A Cana­di­an city of this size would be lucky to have one. I vis­it­ed a sec­ond-hand book­store, and mar­velled at the large selec­tion of old books in Ice­landic, dat­ing back to the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, when the pop­u­la­tion of the island was tiny. These includ­ed both trans­la­tions of the world’s out­put, but quite a lot of orig­i­nal works in Ice­landic. My will-pow­er broke down, and I pur­chased a two-vol­ume set of Sagas. These are use­less to me, as they are in Ice­landic, but they are beau­ti­ful, and I ratio­nal­ized the pur­chase as the vis­i­ble sou­venir of my trip that will look at me hand­some­ly from my book­shelf. Per­haps a wan­der­ing Ice­landic schol­ar will drop by and read them.

A rather gloomy and rainy day, but not too wet to pre­vent me from tak­ing a long urban hike of about thir­ty kilo­me­ters that would give me a good idea of the lay­out and neigh­bour­hoods of greater Reyk­javik. My start­ing point was the Höfðy, the old house where Ronald Rea­gan and Mikhael Gor­bochev held their famous sum­mit meet­ing in 1986. I first went north­east from the cen­ter to Sun­dahöfn Har­bour. One end of the har­bour has some huge cruise ships; the oth­er is con­tain­er port, look­ing very mod­ern, but qui­et these days. I then turned south through the Lau­gardalur, a large park con­tain­ing var­i­ous urban amuse­ments, includ­ing a zoo and one of the most pop­u­lar geot­her­mal pools.  Read more »

Kåre Hede­brant is a Swedish actor who starred in Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte kom­ma in] (2008), Amors Baller (2011), and the sci­ence fic­tion tele­vi­sion series Real Humans [Äkta män­niskor] (2012–2014)

After a flight enlivened by bone-rat­tling tur­bu­lence and a mad­woman mak­ing a scene in the plane, my first glimpse of Ice­land was, appro­pri­ate­ly, the bright glac­i­er of Snae­fell­sjökell (see pre­vi­ous entry), fol­lowed by a rapid descent into Keflavik. From the air­port, it was a hour´s bus ride across chaot­ic black lava fields to Reyk­javik. Read more »

In about three weeks, I’ll be land­ing at Keflavik Air­port, in Ice­land. While I do have some pre-set appoint­ments, for the most part, I’ll be explor­ing that inter­est­ing coun­try in my usu­al unplanned, eccen­tric way. I must cram as much expe­ri­ence as I can into a mere ten days ― not much time, con­sid­er­ing how much that coun­try has fas­ci­nat­ed me over the years, and how much I’ve read about it. But read­ing about a place, no mat­ter how thor­ough­ly, is no sub­sti­tute for walk­ing in it, talk­ing to its peo­ple, get­ting the smell of the air and the lay of the land.  Read more »