Reykjavik

Reykjavik

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Reykjavik Holiday Dairy

Day One: Arrival Day

Unpacked our stuff at the Airbnb, then went to find a supermarket. Everything is very expensive, and as we speak no Icelandic, it was quite an adventure. A man overheard us debating the milk, and kindly showed us which one was semi-skimmed (yellow top). I later overheard some Americans trying to find ‘half-and-half’ and mistakenly picking up baby-milk. “That’s breast-milk!” one exclaimed, which made me laugh.

Wandered round the waterfront. The air is cool and clear. There seem to be a lot of tourists, a lot of gay couples, lots of Viking stuff, a lot of pink hair. The painted houses are rather cheerful. They have big blank windows, which I don’t understand in a country that has constant summer daylight (when I would want thick curtains) followed by almost constant winter darkness (when I would still want thick curtains). I find it confusing; the houses and shops look the same. Sometimes I think I’m looking into a café window, and I realise I’m watching a bloke cut his toenails in his lounge!

Viking Stuff

We ate lamb burgers in Fjallkonan, a buzzing restaurant full of chatty people. Excellent food, comfortable chairs (it matters!) It cost £60 for two burgers, one beer, and a sparkling water. Not a cheap city.

Day Two: Drive from Reykjavik

Terrible night’s sleep due to constant daylight. Need to invest in some eye-masks. Got up 6am, read Bible and had coffee, dragged Husband out for a run.

Showered—it stinks of sulphur. The hot water is pumped straight from the ground, which makes incredibly cheap heating/hot water systems. But it’s smelly. Hoping I get used to it; holding my breath for the length of the shower was a near-death experience. Maybe will buy an oxygen tank and mask when I buy the eye-mask (though Husband is bound to make comments). However, the cold water in Iceland is good, very pure, and perfect for drinking straight from the tap. Don’t waste money on bottled water in Iceland.

Decided to go for a drive as the weather forecast is wet. Driving here is fairly easy as long as you remember which side of the road to be on. Good quality wide roads (not like the warrens of Madeira). There are several gravel/unmade roads, but our hire car agreement doesn’t allow us to use those (for which I am grateful). We drove towards Glymur Waterfall, stopping to eat a picnic lunch on the way. Husband made comments about the bread knife (I don’t like making sandwiches, easier to do it at the time). Ate looking at black mountains with white patches of snow.

Drove NorthWest to Kolbeinsstadhir. (Icelandic is a bit like Welsh, every word is crammed full of consonants.) Stopped to look at some thermal water. It was shut, due to Covid, but we ignored the sign and walked up anyway. There was a hot spring, which was piped, so looked a bit like someone had randomly put a tap in the middle of wasteland. There was steam. Husband was more impressed than me.

We saw several herds of horses. Icelandic horses are a thing. They are classified as horses (though I’m pretty sure they are ponies really) and they’re very pretty. If you remove one from Iceland, it’s not allowed back, which keeps the line pure. Some restaurants serve horse meat, but I like to think the beauties I saw were kept for riding.

Beautiful Icelandic Horses

We got home about 4:30pm. I saw lots of very flat plains, black mountains, spectacular waterfalls, and thousands of blue lupins. But not many trees. There’s a saying: “If you see three trees in Iceland, you’re in a forest.” Or a joke: “If you’re lost in a forest in Iceland, stand up!” I guess repeated lava flows doesn’t encourage long life for trees, and the earth below the surface is too hot for deep roots. There were trees, but not many, and none were ancient. I still prefer Scotland for scenery.

Dinner at Messinn. I started with a dirty plate, and was then given a sticky menu, so not a great start. But they served traditional fish stew, with potatoes and vegetables and hunks of lava bread. Lava bread is good. It’s rye bread, and the dough is cooked in a pot in the hot ground. I thought it tasted a bit like malt loaf but without the fruit, and it was nice with butter and a cup of tea. But they also chuck lumps of it into their fish stews.

Thanks for reading. In my next blog I’ll describe the most difficult walk of my life, going to see a puffin colony. Hope you have a good week.
Love, Anne x

The verse I tried to learn in Iceland was 2 Chronicles 7:14. Have you managed to remember any? Read it again to refresh your memory:

(NIV)

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

(OHB)

וְיִכָּנְעוּ עַמִּי אֲשֶׁר נִֽקְרָא־שְׁמִי עֲלֵיהֶם וְיִֽתְפַּֽלְלוּ וִֽיבַקְשׁוּ פָנַי וְיָשֻׁבוּ מִדַּרְכֵיהֶם הָרָעִים וַאֲנִי אֶשְׁמַע 

מִן־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶסְלַח לְחַטָּאתָם וְאֶרְפָּא אֶת־אַרְצָֽם׃

(CCB) 

而这些被称为我名下的子民若谦卑下来，祈祷、寻求我的面，离开恶道，我必从天上垂听，赦免他们的罪，医治他们的土地。

Anne E. Thompson
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Running in Reykjavík

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While we were in Iceland, we tried to run each morning. I never changed my watch (Iceland is an hour behind of English time) so it was easy to get up early. Iceland is a country of flat plains and steep mountains. The city is built on a hill, and I don’t run on hills. Luckily, our Airbnb was near Hijomskalagardur Park, which was flat, so we could could walk down the hill, do a lap of the lake, and run/stagger home. The park had ducks (always good) and swans, lots of interesting statues, and a view back up the hill of the city. In the distance were black mountains with patches of white snow. Wherever we went in Iceland, there were always black mountains with patches of white snow. Panda mountains.

I loved the statues, and made up stories about them as I ran. I took photos to show you:

I loved this one. Make of it what you will, but to me it spoke of the burden of having to work in an office.
Pompous man making a speech…
…while his embarrassed friend listens.
Beautiful mermaid (with bird on her head)…
…besotted admirer despairs of being able to reach her.
Woman uses toilet while wishing her husband would go away! (Reminds me of ‘Out by Ten’. Better read a copy if you don’t understand.)
Big hero with big hammer needs to rest on the strength of a gentle woman.
Man with big shield slays the dragon with his sword and rescues the naked woman (not sure why she needs to be naked) while she keeps hold of her friendly ghost. (I don’t understand the ghost either, maybe the spirit of the slain dragon? Perhaps they were friends and the man misunderstood the situation.)

There was also a lovely view of the city, though you can’t see the black mountains in this photo. They’re off to the right.

Reykjavík

While running, I tried to learn some more of 2 Chronicles 7:14. How much can you remember now?

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

וְיִכָּנְעוּ עַמִּי אֲשֶׁר נִֽקְרָא־שְׁמִי עֲלֵיהֶם וְיִֽתְפַּֽלְלוּ וִֽיבַקְשׁוּ פָנַי וְיָשֻׁבוּ מִדַּרְכֵיהֶם הָרָעִים וַאֲנִי אֶשְׁמַע מִן־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶסְלַח לְחַטָּאתָם וְאֶרְפָּא אֶת־אַרְצָֽם׃

Thanks for reading.

anneethompson.com
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‘Iceland is Beautiful,’ they said…

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‘Iceland is beautiful,’ they said… ‘Iceland is my favourite country in the world,’ they said… ‘You’ve never been?’ they said, ‘You should plan to visit.’ So we did.

I prepared for our trip by watching Icelandic films, hoping to learn the odd phrase and perhaps see a little of the culture. This was a mistake, as I mostly watched crime films. I therefore stepped off the flight, entered the arrivals hall and was confronted by a line of serial killers holding name placards. Luckily we had rented a car, so avoided all the psychopaths and edged our way to the Avis desk. Avis had queues of people, very little space, and lots of signs about wind (the weather version). Wind is a thing in Iceland.

Known as the land of ice and fire, it should also be called the land of blue lupins. They were everywhere, lining the roads, growing on ancient mounds of lava, covering every hill and plain. Iceland in June is blue. Blue and grey. People told me that Iceland is beautiful, and it’s true that many parts were, but there’s an awful lot of grey. As we drove from the airport the landscape reminded me mostly of the groundwork when a new motorway is being built —mounds of grey rubble. Volcanoes are not tidy, and Iceland was produced by a string of eruptions. I guess there’s no point in clearing up the lava flow, so it sits there, pretending to be builder’s rubble, until the lupins move in to cover it in blue.

We rented an Airbnb in Reykjavik. This turned out to be wonderful, a converted printing works that consisted of one huge room filled with plants and nicknacks, with separate bedrooms and bathroom. It was used in the Netflix series Sense8, though most of the furniture was different.

Reykjavik is more town than city, with mostly wooden houses covered in colourful corrugated iron. It has clean streets, happy people in weird clothes (though to be honest, I think the clothes of most people younger than me are weird) and high prices. Iceland is expensive. The city also has a harbour, and a huge church (which looks like a cathedral) high on a hill, seen above the city. 

A cool church building, towering over Reykjavík.
Pretending to be a Viking, outside the big church.

We were told that in June, it would only be dark for a few hours each night, between midnight and 2 am. This was a lie. I got up in the night to check, and it was never dark. Slightly gloomy perhaps, like a grey day at home, but never dark. I took a photo for evidence…

No streetlights needed: 2am and definitely NOT dark.

The June weather was cold, but not freezing. I needed a warm sweater and a coat, but not a ski jacket (which is lucky, as I don’t own one!) A woolly hat is fairly essential, not so much for warmth but more for hair control. Husband declined repeated offers to borrow a hat, and the hair style wasn’t good. As I said, wind is a thing in Iceland. 

We saw some amazing stuff while we were there, but I’ll tell you about our trips in another blog. Is Iceland beautiful? Beauty is very subjective, and I never really saw past the grey rocks, the black mountains, and the lack of trees. Especially the trees. Most other people have a different view, so I’ll leave you with some pictures and you can decide for yourself.

Thanks for reading. Take care.

Love, Anne x

I try to learn a little more Hebrew whenever I run (it helps take my mind off the pain!) In Iceland I began to learn 2 Chronicles 7: 14. You could try to learn it too?
*Note to Mother: Please learn the English version and we can make another Facebook video!
I will add it to the end of each Iceland blog:

If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 

2 Chronicles 7:14

וְיִכָּנְעוּ עַמִּי אֲשֶׁר נִֽקְרָא־שְׁמִי עֲלֵיהֶם וְיִֽתְפַּֽלְלוּ וִֽיבַקְשׁוּ פָנַי וְיָשֻׁבוּ מִדַּרְכֵיהֶם הָרָעִים וַאֲנִי אֶשְׁמַע מִן־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶסְלַח
 לְחַטָּאתָם וְאֶרְפָּא אֶת־אַרְצָֽם׃

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