Reykjavík Grapevine - 25.08.2006, Síða 22

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I’ve been in Iceland three years, and have pub-
lished about 250,000 words on the culture and
tourism industry here. You name a personal-
ity, politician, fjord or puffin, and I figured
I’d covered it. As I got ready to leave, though,
I looked through my notes and found a few
places that I’d never gotten out to. These last
few destinations that I’d missed reminded me
of everything I love about this island. In fact, I
came to the sad realisation that, after 250,000
words, I hadn’t covered that much, and after
three years, I was only just catching on to the
charm of Iceland.
It all starts in a Toyota Camry, the back seat
full of large, menacing Icelanders, and Valdi,
lead singer of the Nine Elevens, driving 130
km an hour down a dirt road in the West
Fjords towards his home, Ísafjörður. Through
miraculous gift of gab, Valdi had recruited
us to drive him home and join his Mýrarbolti
– or Mud Ball –team for the annual competi-
tion in the most remote large town in Iceland.
He insisted that Ísafjörður was only five hours
away, and that Mýrarbolti was the safest sport
in the history of man. So somehow, despite
the fact that only minutes before he invited us,
he had explained his prodigious achievements
in fighting hygiene, among them touring for
three weeks wearing the same pair of boots
and never taking them off, we had agreed to
come along.
Ísafjörður is not five hours from Rey-
kjavík. For a normal driver, in ideal condi-
tions, you’re talking about seven hours. Hence
Valdi taking over the wheel in frustration after
I had driven the speed limit for the first few
hours.
Highway 61, which takes you through the
West Fjords is an attraction in and of itself.
Somehow always balanced on a mountain’s
edge, it lends gorgeous views of a more
ancient-looking landscape than you can see in
the rest of Iceland.
Driving along at unsuitable speeds, I
couldn’t help but point out that this would not
be a good road to drive in the dark. Or in rain.
Or even cloudy weather. My companions,
all native to Reykjavík except Valdi, agreed
quickly.
As it happened, we made it to Ísafjörður in a
little over five hours, our stomachs wrecked
from nerves. Valdi did the only conscien-
tious thing a native of Ísafjörður can do.
He brought us straight to the most homey,
relaxed, and wholesome fish restaurant in the
world, Tjöruhúsið. You can read more about it
elsewhere in this issue, but I can only say that,
from the moment we walked in and saw the
band Lack of Talent hanging from the rafters,
while the restaurant owners cleared a spot
and served up heaping bowls of plokkfiskur,
we knew we’d found happiness. Or four of us
had. The heartiest of us, a man who worked
fishing boats regularly, was forced to call it an
evening, still suffering from motion sickness
after Valdi’s driving.
On that first night, Ísafjörður felt like
a hippie commune. As a few of us got up
to play some songs on the makeshift stage
at Tjöruhúsið, the club filled with assorted
20-somethings from around Iceland who had
come out to the country to enjoy summer the
way it should be. As we went to bed, we were
told that the poet Eirikur Norðdahl was host-
ing an enormous party, and the whole town’s
elite would be there. This, it would turn out,
is a nightly thing in town. Yes, there is a town
in the world where poets are rock stars.
We were in Ísafjörður to compete, though,
not to hold conversations with the intelligent-
sia. For this reason, we passed out just after
midnight, woke up early, and set out trying
to find liquor, our team’s captain, Valdi, and
shoes—yes, we’d forgotten shoes.
Mercifully, it took us longer than expected
to round up these items, and we arrived just
after the 10 am start time for Mýrarbolti. This
meant that our “team” didn’t get to the first
match, and substitutes filled in for us. Good
substitutes. Who won. It would be our only
victory.
Mýrarbolti (a direct translation is swamp
ball) is the brain child of some fun-lov-
ing Finns, but it has truly found a home in
Ísafjörður. I have never seen such a collec-
tion of oddballs, all local products, in my
life. This is a town where two 19-year-olds
were elected to city council after promising
to import moose to the area. This is a town
where the mayor is highly regarded for his
excellent whale jerky, the home not just to
Mugison, but to Reykjavík! the Nine Elevens,
the President of Iceland, (not the band, but
the guy, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson). The City
of Reykjavík markets itself as “Pure Energy”.
Ísafjörður outdoes Reykjavík not only in
the energy department, but also in the more
important department of CHANNELING it.
Thus we watched 12 young men dressed
in shorts that barely concealed their darkest
secrets, screaming “Team Hot Pants” and run-
ning into the mud to do battle against more
athletic types. We saw various takes on the
superhero wardrobe by teams of bold, often
straight-faced women. We saw 200 competi-
tors, all one step more absurd than the next, in
a town of 5,000.
I should move on to discuss the game
itself. Mýrarbolti is soccer, played in mud,
sometimes mud of up to two feet thickness.
The mud makes players look silly, even the
most skilled athlete looks drunk on the field.
As for drunks, they too look silly.
So our team prepared for our second game
by sipping liquor and enjoying the view on a
crisp summer morning. During our first real
game, I discovered the reason nobody ever
tried to market an alcoholic version of Gato-
raid. Running in the mud proved difficult.
Running in the mud with stomach turning,
and head spinning, proved embarrassing.
I know we lost. I don’t know by how
much.
When we finished, a few of us switched
to water, and the experience got much more
pleasant. Social lubricant isn’t necessity when
you’re talking to 12 men in ventilation suits
Things You Should Do in Iceland Before You Die... or Turn 31
One last trip around the Ring Road
by bart cameron photo by skari
travel
Outside Reykjavík
Hringvegurinn
travel
and thong underwear who have spent the
night partying with the local poet.
The rest of the games, which lasted
another eight hours, passed in a pleasant blur
for most of us. Unfortunately, our captain,
Valdi, had tempted fate by bragging about
how safe Mýrarbolti was, and he broke his
leg in an early game. Disturbing as the injury
sounds, it seemed fine to those of us who
weren’t injured. At day’s end, the visitors from
Reykjavík had sworn to return and avenge our
many defeats.
There are likely better ways to describe
Ísafjörður. I discussed them with Eirikur
Norðdahl when he showed up at the com-
petition, and when the evening came, and
somehow Norðdahl was going to host another
party, and we talked about the lack of pre-
tension, of how overall good humour made
Ísafjörður the kind of place to live where you
could be proud of your town, and not in the
postmodern sense. He also pointed out that
Ísafjörður acted a bit like an opiate on people
who had spent too much time in the city.
His favourite example was a recent visit
from former prime minister, Halldór Ás-
grímsson. The conservative politician had
taken in too much Ísafjörður air, accosted
Norðdahl, told him “You are my children. You
are the future of this country,” and then gave
him his personal cell phone number, in case
anything should come up.
Joining the Masses
We left Ísafjörður on a quiet Sunday morn-
ing and set off for the Ring Road for one last
trip around Iceland. The bad weather we had
feared encountering on Highway 61 greeted
us, but driving at the posted speed limit was
comfortable enough. In four hours, we were
on the road to Akureyri, with bumper to
bumper SUV traffic.
For all the travelling done for the Grape-
vine, I had never set out on a traditional trav-
elling weekend. At such a time, the uniformly
single-lane highway slows, as campers, trail-
ers, and enormous tires aren’t great for speed.
We lasted just under an hour on the Ring
Road, before pulling off and changing our
destination from Mývatn to Siglufjörður.
You won’t likely believe this, but Siglufjörður
boasts the best museum in Iceland, and it’s de-
voted to Iceland’s herring boom. I had heard
about the Herring Museum, which is spread
out over three buildings and covers everything
from boat culture to the industrialisation of
Iceland, but to see it was to see a new art form.
The f lights of fancy in creating this over-the-
top museum are jaw-dropping. Were every-
thing not so authentic and respectful to actual
history, it would call to mind the grandeur of
a Disney exhibit.
A day at the Herring Museum felt like
a day engaged in the best kind of novel, in
which you learn, live someone else’s life, and
eventually step out dazed but more attuned
than you were before.
Beyond the Herring Museum, the town
offers a Museum of Icelandic Folk Music,
which is a more standard, tasteful museum.
For my Icelandic travel partner, the Folk
Music Museum was fascinating—for someone
less connected to the language and who didn’t
grow up with Icelandic folk songs being sung
to me, it was not quite as impressive.
Even had the Herring Museum not
proved so compelling, (I still have the video
they showed on the Iceland presentation at
the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, in which
Siglufjörður and its gorgeous herring girls
were featured prominently, in my head), the
brief journey off the Ring Road offered respite
from tourists and travellers. For every kilome-
tre you go from the main road, you seem to
reduce traffic by 10%.
When we got back on the Ring Road, life was
fine enough. We set out for Mývatn, where we
hoped to hit up a pizza stand we used to like,
only to find that Mývatn had modernised a
little: the pizza stand now holds an enormous,
and busy, tourist information centre. Instead,
I chewed the world’s worst hot dog, and we
made our way off the Ring Road to Dettifoss.
Dettifoss is the most powerful waterfall in
Europe. Located an uncomfortable 90-minute
drive from Mývatn, but it can be done in
any vehicle for a few months in the summer.
We drove it in bad weather, in a sedan, and
spent two happy hours dazed by the waterfall
– much as I’ve written about natural wonders,
for something like Dettifoss, description isn’t
that necessary. Watching a 100 metre wide
waterfall discharge of glacial material at 500
cubic metres a second… it’s like watching
God’s truck stop toilet f lush.
Popular in the 30s… in Germany
We returned to the Ring Road, through the
desert of the Northeast, where, for my first
time as a driver, I saw no reindeer. From
the desert, we came upon Egilsstaðir, which
seems to have doubled in only 12 months, due
to the huge amount of money passing through
the area for the forthcoming aluminium
smelter.
Considering the town was currently
hosting protestors from throughout Europe,
everybody in the area seemed at ease. When I
bought gas, I was brief ly confused for some-
one who was heading to Kárhanjúkar. The
question from the brooding local: “Are there
going to be any more concerts up there?”
At another brooding local’s suggestion,
Grapevine co-editor Sveinn Birkir Björns-
son, we chose not to spend the night in
Egilsstaðir, but in the nearby forest, Hal-
lormsstaðaskógur. There we found trees.
Again, fascinating to my Icelandic compan-
ion, who grew up without trees, but not so
fascinating, somehow, to Wisconsin-raised
me.
A short drive from Hallormsstaðaskógur
is Skriðuklaustur, the arts centre created from
the one-time home of celebrated Icelandic
novelist Gunnar Gunnarsson. It is hard to
discuss the Gunnar Gunnarsson Institute,
housed in Skriðklaustur, without blushing.
The home was designed by celebrated Ger-
man architect Johann Höger, in 1939. And
it looks… well, it looks like Hitler’s dream
bungalow.
If you aren’t wincing yet, then you would
if you toured the Gunnar Gunnarsson
Institute and saw the praise for the writers
celebrity in the Nordic countries and espe-
cially Germany in the 1930s, “the best-selling
author behind Goethe” one sign told guests.
Our tour guide, a robust blonde, was
ecstatic about Gunnarsson’s popularity, even
today, with German tourists. And she repeat-
edly offered to give us more information
about the writer.
Eventually, it is quite likely that an ur-
bane magazine will stop at this museum and
mock it for ignoring history the way it does,
and that will be a sad moment. Gunnars-
son seems to have been well-intentioned, he
left his home to Iceland for use as a hospital,
if need be, for example. But it is hard to
celebrate an author who made his fortune
and reputation telling Germans and Danes to
get back to the country and rustic lifestyle in
the 1920s and 30s, when we know what that
movement was associated with. It is also very
difficult to tolerate a museum that ignores
a little section in history called the Second
World War, all while celebrating the life of a
writer who benefited from the attitudes that
caused it.
When you add to the museum experience
the knowledge that recently, inside Iceland,
there has been a right-wing drive to claim
Gunnarsson was betrayed and denied a Nobel
Prize based on his Nazi sympathies, and
not the dated-even-at-its-time quality of his
Romantic prose, you may understand why I
wouldn’t recommend the Gunnar Gunnars-
son Institute for those not blessed with a very
relaxed temper. You are touring a museum
built on lines like the following, from his
popular-in-Nazi-Germany book The Good
Shepherd: “For it could hardly be the inten-
tion of the Creator that the poor beasts which
stray into this wilderness and are overlooked
at the autumn sheep gathering should be left
to their own devices, when he, Benedikt, had
passed away? That was inconceivable. For
even though sheep are but sheep, they are still
creatures of f lesh and blood - f lesh, blood and
soul. Or was Eitil perhaps a soulless being?
- Or Leo? - Or Faxe? Was their innocence
and trust of lesser value than the fickle faith
of human beings? Benedikt shook his head.
Whomever might take his place, he could not
wish any better companions. Whoever has
such friends is not alone in this world.”
Depressed over Gunnarsson’s bad writing and
his likely confused good intentions, I decided
to finish up my drive around the Ring Road
Valdi-style. We made only two more major
stops. First, we went to the always shockingly
beautiful Jökulsárlón, the glacial lagoon. I
found the chunks of ice calming, the seals
playing in the sun picturesque, and the tour-
ists to be a pretty decent bunch. My compan-
ion saw only the Arctic Terns, bitter about
childhood encounters with the territorial
birds.
The drive across Suðurland, a route we
at the Grapevine take monthly, yielded a few
surprises. Instead of seeing dozens of Toyota
Yaris rental cars, we saw dozens of bicyclists,
tents and packs carried in saddle bags or bike
trailers. In addition to these new tourists who
likely connect with Iceland better than the
rest, we saw a new group of tourists who take
oblivion to a new level. At Skaftafell National
Park, the largest park in Europe, we found a
women hiking with her attention devoted not
to Vatnajokull glacier, but to her glacial white
iPod. She was power-walking. A few kilome-
tres later, we saw a similar tourist doing Yoga
with a CD player.
We stayed our last night in Kirkjubæjark-
laustur, the active small town that produced
Iceland’s most famous living artist, Erró,
and that looks, with its rolling hills and
Technicolor green moss, much like the Shire.
Kirkjubæjarklaustur is an attraction mainly
because of its view of Vatnajökull and Mýrd-
alsjökull glaciers, but for me, as a traveller, I
have always been impressed, most of all, with
the accommodations in the area – this is eas-
ily the least expensive, and most professional
place to sleep in Southern Iceland.
Then the trip was over. The drive from
Kirkjubæjarklaustur to Reykjavík is gentle
and unimposing. My last seven hours in the
Icelandic countryside were peaceful. I was
lucky enough to get sun and warmth when
driving past Hveragerði, a favourite local
jaunt. And then we were done. My three
years, all used up. My girlfriend’s 27 years
here, done. It was the worst way to say good-
bye to Iceland. Tired, happy, and staring out
at the most peaceful landscape in the world.
Mercifully, we hit rain just outside Rey-
kjavík, and we got stuck in a massive traffic
jam that reminded us that life in Iceland isn’t
always as it is during the holidays.
– Car provided by Hertz Car Rental, Flugval-
larvegi, 101 Reykjavík, Tel.: 505-0600, www.
hertz.is
– Accommodations provided by Hótel Edda, Tel.:
444-4000, www.hoteledda.is
“I have never seen such a collection of oddballs,
all local products, in my life. This is a town where
two 19-year-olds were elected to city council after
promising to import moose to the area. This is a town
where the mayor is highly regarded for his excellent
whale jerky...”
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