June 26: Reykjavik

by Geoff Hart

Previous installment: June 25 travel and arrival in Iceland

Happy birthday Shoshanna! Sadly, her birthday gift was a poor night’s sleep. And it wouldn’t have been a long sleep anyway, since we had to get up early enough to have breakfast before the restaurant closed at 10, and we’d only gone to sleep around 3 AM once all the settling in was done. But on the plus side, we woke to a gloriously sunny day. Not something necessarily to be counted on; the weather here tends to be rapidly changeable, and Richard told us they’ve had pouring rain and gale-force winds on previous trips.

Forced ourselves awake at 8:30 to get ourselves onto Iceland time and get down to breakfast. We have the morning free, then meet at noon for a guided city tour. The coffe wasn’t as good as I'd hoped, but it was abundant, and having 50%+ of my blood volume composed of coffee was helpful in getting the day started. (Pace the Scots, coffee is the real "water of life".) Less than 5 hours sleep for me to, so I expected that by the end of the day we’d be zombies, chemical stimulants notwithstanding. The breakfast buffet was decent, with good rye bread, lots of fruit, a bunch of cold cuts, pickled herring, eggs (an omelette served in a casserole dish), bacon, and “Swedish” meatballs. (Ground pork. I’ve had these from my former Danish in-laws and at Ikea, so they were familiar and tasty, if a bit dry.)

While Shoshanna went upstairs to shower, I picked up a local walking map at the front desk and walked around the hotel to scope out the lay of the land. Not originally much in the way of trees in Iceland, but they’re trying to get some established where they can. So the hotel is surrounded by poplars (possibly balsam?), pines (possibly the Nordic equivalent of lodgepole?), and what I thought was mountain-ash but is probably rowan. Also, groves of dandelions. They’re pretty yellow flowers and as courageously persistant as Icelanders, so I can see why they don’t go out of their way to exterminate them. If they didn’t destroy lawns and irritate the neighbors, I’d probably be happy to let them grow at home; among other things, the leaves are tasty (if bitter) salad greens.

I was looking forward to talking to locals about their take on “terraforming” Iceland. Given how far north we are, vegetation doesn’t grow well or quickly, and the soils are very immature, so it’s unlikely to become as lush as Japan (which has a similar volcanic origin) or the British Isles (which are farther south) any time soon. The trees are apparently mostly imports from Alaska, and the fields of purple flowers I'd seen yesterday indeed turned out to be arctic lupen. They're one of those cases of being too successful for your own good: as had been hoped, they established themselves joyfully and began doing their job of holding down the loose soil and starting to improve it. Unfortunately, unlike in Alaska, they didn't conveniently die out after a year or two, allowing native vegetation to flourish. Instead, they became a major problem, since everyone loved them and started spreading their seeds. As a result, they're driving out the native vegetation in many areas. I have some suspicion that in a decade or two, they'll be outcompeted by shrubs and trees, which will hold them in check and let the native vegetation recover. But that might not happen soon enough without creating a lot of refugia for the indigenous vegetation and exterminating the lupen around it.

Today’s tour goals: to visit some geology of interest, some infrastructure of earnest, and downtown Reykjavik. Our local guide was Guthrun, a lovely older woman who seemed to know Dick and his wife Suzanne quite well from previous trips.

We started with a trip out past the burbs to tour an area of what are called “pseudo-craters”. Though weathered, they’re still clearly craters. The “pseudo” part is because they lack a volcanic vent at their center. Instead, they're created when lava flows across a wetland, vaporizing the water trapped beneath it fast enough to cause an explosion. Voila: instant crater! The heat also cooked the clay and other sediments beneath the lava, thereby forming a rich red shell in parts of the lava, and an interesting layer-cake effect. Much of the crater area was mined for construction materials until the government decided to protect the landscape. Now, it’s a beautiful geological memento. In the following photoa, note the clear layer of lava draped like melted toffee over the brick red clay and the purple lupens.

From the pseudo-craters, we went to “The Pearl”, a shining silver dome perched atop four huge tanks that serve as Reykjavic’s hot water reserves. There’s a beautiful view from the rooftop terrace around the dome, including one of the best views you can get of the city and its suburbs without hiring an aircraft. Here's a shot of the approach to the facility:

Beautiful views of the bay beside the city and of the distant mountains, and you can really see how high Hallgrimskirkja (Hallgrim’s church) rises above the city. This took nearly 40 years to create, including several years past the architect’s demise, and it’s something of a cause for controversy among Icelanders. On the one hand, it’s certainly striking; on the other, it’s not necessarily a thing of great beauty. Here's a shot of it from atop the Pearl and from closer at hand:

I’m not sure what to make of Hallgrimskirkja. The spire is interesting because of its stepped architecture, supposedly shaped to resemble or inspire thoughts of lava. But that would seem to be easier to do using the abundant basalt that’s available everywehere instead of the concrete chosen by the architect. Also, the main building is fairly bland from the outside, seemingly without much to recommend it. Inside, in marked contrast with many famous European churches, the décor is spartan to the extreme: no green men, no gorgeous wooden beams, no statues of saints and martyrs and martyred saints, no stations of the cross. Fair enough; it’s a Lutheran church, and Shoshanna tells me that many protestant churches embrace radical simplicity as a reaction against the often overblown gaudiness of Catholic churches.

Our last stop as a group was the Harpa music hall, a very modern confection of glass polyhedra arranged into a drunken rectangle. It’s actually quite lovely, particularly due to the play of light inside. We were briefly tempted by a show called “How to become an Icelander in 60 minutes”, which sounded fun, but we figured we’d be too tired to really appreciate it. Here's an outside view, followed by an inside view that gives some suggestion of the play of light and shadow:

Instead, we spend the next three hours on our own, wandering around the port and the downtown area. Lots of fun window browsing and people watching. Around about 6 PM, we’d pretty much had our share of walking, and stopped at Casa Grande, a restaurant Guthrun had recommended as being a nice mix of Icelandic and Spanish. (It was Shoshanna’s birthday, so we figured we'd eat somewhere really nice, or at least as nice as our grubby hiking/wandering clothes permitted.) Appetizers were perfectly fried sweet potato fries dipped in horseradish sauce and really good focaccia bread dipped in olive oil and cheese crumbles. While I worked on the bread, Shoshanna enjoyed a huge bowl of blue mussels. We chose to share a four-course tasting menu. First course was smoked arctic char, which was melt-in-your-mouth tender and tasty, but confirmed my dislike of the texture of raw fish. Second would have been puffin (!), but they were out of puffin and offered minke whale instead. Neither of us will eat cetacean, but they were willing to swap it for beef carpaccio. Again, tasty and very, very tender, but confirmed that I’m not fond of raw meat either. Still, it's good to try such things. Third was Iceland lamb, which was beautifully tender and savory. We finished with a platter of lemon sherbet with passion fruit sugar, skyr panne cotta (delicious sweet yogurt almost as firm as jello), with lingonberries, a solitary blueberry, a solitary ground cherry, and an amaretto plus caramel drizzle. All very yummy, washed down with a Tuborg Classic draft beer (not Icelandic, but Danish, thus close) and a closing shot of brennivin (the Icelandic equivalent of Danish akvavit, with strong licorice and caraway overtones and a pretty good kick to it).

Finished the day walking a couple kilometers along the waterfront, back to the hotel. Enough energy left to copy over the photos, blog and collapse into bed.

Next installment: June 27th on the Reykjanes Peninsula

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