We never made it to Borgarnes and the Settlement Centre. What would have been the point? What’s interesting about Iceland is that it’s new. There was never an Indigenous population here. People came from elsewhere and populated it, and now are the original settlers of this land. They occupied the land, these people from Europe, these old Vikings, but they didn’t colonize another people. How many places in the world can be characterized in this way? Iceland is the only Arctic country without an Indigenous population. A land where there’s no internal conflict threatening to rip it apart… you, know, beyond the shrinking glaciers. There are lots of hot springs… and I mean hot. The water in the below picture is coming out at about the boiling point of water. I sat in a cooled version of it, all that sulphur in the air, the smell of our planet.

In the port of Reykjavik, there are two whaling trawlers. They are apparently owned by rich Icelandic moguls who like to hunt humpback whales, but the local population has been petitioning to stop this activity, especially in the bay outside the city, where numerous whales feed in the abundant hunting ground. You can see the blows from these animals for long distances, they are that high. I can’t imagine hunting a creature like this, just to say that you can. 

There’s an island just off the coast of Reykjavik populated by thirty thousand puffins. They’re amazing little creatures. Flap their wings so fast and whip around in groups, warding off the larger birds that are looking to make meals of the pufflings. Those little creatures burrow in the earth, safe from harm, until they’re about six weeks old and ready to fend for themselves. The survival rate of pufflings is about 95%. Great parenting, I reckon. Puffins, by the way, are monogamous. They mate for life, and even after a few months apart, partners find each other. There are also same-sex puffins that mate for life. 

Volcanically, Iceland is active. There are hundreds of lava tunnels under the ground. When lava flows, it moves like ketchup; that’s how viscous it is. But eventually, the lava on top cools and hardens, covering for the flow underneath, forming a long tunnel. It can take a decade for that underground lava flow to cool, contracting and shrinking, turning into boulders, exposing long caves that occasionally skylight into the world. These are spectral places of intense colour – yellow, orange, red and black. Extremophiles, bacteria able to survive in darkness and in low oxygen environments, thrive here, feeding on the iron in the lava tunnels. The thought is that this type of bacteria may live on Mars, too.

The wind here is so incredible that it makes water go backwards. I’ve never seen a windier place. They say Greenland is badly named, and Iceland too, but no one ever talks about the wind. It’s so intense. In Stykkishólmur, I felt like I was going to be blown off the top of the hill with its red lighthouse. Once, Iceland was 40% covered by trees, but the Vikings deforested it to the extreme. They’re not reforesting the country, and you see strands of these plantings. 

There are golf courses here. More than I would have expected. Why do people golf in Iceland? It seems like a waste of land, a waste of time, and a terrible way to be outside in the glory of this country. We hiked a canyon, all the way up, you rise so quickly when you’re concentrating on climbing, altitude is attained more easily than you expect, and then you circle the canyon and the air gets cold, wet, it blasts you from every direction until you head down the hill. That is the way to enjoy the country, I think. But down there, you see a golf course and wonder what those little dots are on the fairways and the greens. People? Or something else?

I’m sitting outside staring at a mountain, finishing ‘white spaces where we learn to breathe’ by Murgatroyd Monaghan. Heard of her? She’s not Icelandic. I have a lot of thoughts about this book and will put them out there, but here’s the mountain. Some water in front of it, and that’s all I have to say about that at the moment.