By T. Bennison

Yes, you read that properly: Iceland. Why Iceland? With some of the most beautiful, unspoiled terrain in the world, cheap flights to the capital, and it’s being the middle point between here and Europe, why the hell not?

We’d been planning our trip to visit relatives in France for some time, but ran into a problem three months before we were to leave when we found that the average ticket to Paris ran around $1,000. After much calling around and internet research, we found a flight for $700 through Icelandair with an option to remain in the capital of Reykjavík for a few days before heading on to the continent.

I’ve always had a strange hankering to visit the place, obsessed as I am with windswept, cliff-ringed northern lands. I don’t know why, but give me a choice between the Bahamas and the Outer Hebrides, and I’ll have donned my oilskins before you can say “Bolstarðahlið.”

The name of this damn street dogged me every minute of our brief stay. I always pride myself with at least being able to approximate the sound of foreign words, but Bolstarðahlið (which sounds something like “Bol-star-tha-hlith,” but not quite like it at all) was like a high school bully, sitting on my chest, administering repeated noogies to my head. I’d been preparing its pronunciation through the duration of our flight to Reykjavík (“Ray-kya-veek”), and felt sure I could master it by the time we hailed the taxi.

Once we’d arrived, I puffed out my chest, loaded the family and luggage, turned to the cabbie proudly, and lisped, “Central Guesthouse, 8 Bothithithihith...ith,” and was met with an amused grin. “I apologize, but could you please repeat the name of your destination?” he replied in flawless English. I pointed out its location on the map, folded my arms in sour defeat, and pulled out the easiest and most useful word in my Icelandic arsenal: “Takk” (“Thanks”). Dammit. Icelandic is the closest surviving branch of ancient Norse, making it one of the oldest spoken European languages and one of the most difficult to master. The letters “ð” (or “eth,” pronounced like the “th” in “thing”), “þ” (“thorn,” like the unvoiced “th” sound of “the”) and “æ” (or “ash,” spoken like “eye”), are remnants of the old runic alphabet, futhark, employed by the Viking settlers who fled here from Scandinavia in the late 800s. Likewise, Icelandic names use the old Norse system of patronymics. For example, Einar and Finna have a son they name Bjorn. He becomes Bjorn Einarsson (son of Einar) and their daughter Briet becomes Briet Einarsdottir (daughter of Einar). Their parents have completely different surnames taken from their respective fathers. If you want to find Bjorn Einarsson in the phonebook, turn to the “Bs,” as all people are listed and addressed by their first names. To preserve the purity of the language, all immigrants are required by law to adopt an Icelandic name, and foreign terms are translated into Icelandic by a government-appointed linguistic committee, making “cell phone,” for instance, translate literally as “thief of peace.”

The average Icelander can read medieval Icelandic texts effortlessly - a bit like you making sense of “And witteth wel that bothe two ben vices: Mistrusten alle, or elles alle leue” without having studied Chaucer in college - and phrases and tales from their sagas (essentially vast, adventure-filled historical soap operas) are well-known to every Icelander. The sagas form the core of Icelandic identity, tracing the lineage of many families back to the original Viking settlers. Among the most famous and beloved of these is “Egil’s Saga,” reputedly written by Snorri Sturlusson in the 1200s, featuring the colorfully paradoxical Egil Skalagrimsson, a sort of medieval Charles Bukowski. By turns killer and sensitive father, pugilistic drunkard and poet, brilliant lawyer and farmer, Egil is renowned for a drinking session which ends in his vomiting all over his host, Arnod, nearly suffocating him in the process. According to many guides, beer is prohibitively expensive in Iceland. It’s certainly not cheap (around $6 for a 20 oz. pint), but it doesn’t keep people out of the bars. Some attribute alcohol’s high price to the phenomenon of runtur, when a week’s worth of hard work and frugality lets loose in a city-wide, weekend-long pub crawl. The outrageously high price of other goods doesn’t stop Icelanders from being the most technologically savvy culture in the world either, and in Reykjavík, the iPod (a smaller version you won’t see until next year) is as ubiquitous as the cell phone. I saw a codger of at least 80 (in a Volcom jacket, no less) fiddling with one at a bus stop. It’s a trendy place for sure, with more clubs, pubs, cafes, vegetarian restaurants, and thrift stores than you can shake a battleaxe at, and though it may never become the next Paris or London, its compact size, small population, and accessiblity are what make Reykjavík eminently hipper.

The weather is sure to keep out the bandwagon-types who wrecked Ibiza and are currently planning a full-scale invasion and systematic ruination of your favorite tropical hideaway. Iceland is not a place for weaklings. It can rain (violently) and clear up several times during the day, and though blessed with a fairly temperate climate considering its location, it can get frighteningly cold. In many outlying areas a casual, impromptu hike can be a flirtation with death. A look northward down the busy street of Laugavegur reveals a roiling, frigid sea flecked with white caps and Mt. Esja beyond; angry, vengeful-looking clouds curling into a dark fist over its peak. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited, not so much for what I actually saw, but for what the surrounding scenery intimated.

Riddled with glaciers and craters, very active volcanoes, geysirs, massive fjords, and boiling hot springs, Iceland is, geologically, one of the youngest lands on the planet and is still in a state of flux. In 1963, some fisherman working off of the Westmann Islands noticed a black column of smoke pluming from the ocean surface. They radioed the shore, and a plane was sent in to investigate the cause of the spectacle: a volcano which had broken through the waves, creating the world’s youngest island, Surtsey. The Icelander’s avail themselves of this natural heat source and channel it into the many outdoor public pools throughout the country, and there’s nothing quite like basking in these geothermal tubs while freezing winds nip vainly at your ears.

But this notion of Iceland’s being...um...icy, is somewhat undeserved. In reality, neighbor Greenland is the frostier one, Iceland the greener. The passing Gulf Stream has rewarded the country with swathes of vibrant green pastures on which graze hordes of prized lamb, reputedly the best available. The fertility of the soil lends them their delicious flavor (and untainted milk) and the same can be said of their fish (their most popular export; nearly all cod and smoked salmon come from Iceland), which thrive in impossibly pure waters. A salmon fishing license in one of their streams costs around $1,000 per day.
When abroad, I usually seek out representative dishes of the culture, but with Icelandic delicacies like hákarl (rotten shark meat), roast puffin, svið (singed sheep’s head - eyes, teeth and all), and súrsadir hrútspungar (pickled ram’s testicles), we thought it best to try some lamb. For days we’d been cooking in the hostel kitchen to save money, but for our last night in town we decided to splurge for a proper meal. I took grilled lamb medallions with a game salad of moose and reindeer, and my wife took a lamb shank. With each dish costing around 4500 Icelandic kronur (about $45), it was the most expensive we’ve ever ordered...and the tenderest, tastiest we’ve ever eaten.

Perhaps it was the warmth of the meal and the coziness of the restaurant which made the winds seem more frigid and intense than previous nights, but we simply couldn’t subject our 6 month-old daughter to another freezing walk back over the hill to our guesthouse on the other side of town. This wasn’t just a wind, it was Thor’s breath, and images of Maud and Emelia covered in icicles shot fear through my heart.
We’ve all heard tell of people fuelled by adrenaline in panicked states exhibiting amazing feats of strength - lifting cars off victims and suchlike. Somehow, the need to find shelter and warmth coursed adrenaline through my vocal cords. In what seemed one fluid instant, I stepped in front of a passing taxi, bundled the family in, shouted “Bolstarðahlið,” and off we went in the right direction. I’d said it. No pat on the back, no smile of congratulation, only the quiet satisfaction of having conquered the name like a bloodthirsty Viking.
The next morning, we left for the airport, past the eerie lunar landscape of the country’s exterior, steam rising from distant crevasses. “Farewell, old Bolstarðahlið,” I said to myself, “and takk for the memories.”