Reykjavík Grapevine - 25.08.2006, Síða 27

“We expect it to break down from one day to the other”
explains Þóra, who seems to be almost emotionally connected
to the power plant, and to enjoy especially the roughness of her
summer occupation.
I am guided through the menu. The focus is on traditional
Icelandic food. Home-made bread is baked everyday in the hot
springs on the plateau up there, five km from here. The more
I get entangled in the magic of the place, the less I can believe
what I see and hear. And again that bittersweet sensation of
old-times something. Here you have one of the most charming
places in Iceland, three young women who deliberately bother
to make food as their grandparents did, exploiting the energy
from a cracking dam and power plant built in the 1930s… and
probably, at this very moment, even on a day like this – 20°
outside and bright sky above – 80% of Reykjavík population
are numbing their brains with such TV anaesthetics as Rock-
star: Supernova, or sinking into a nightlife that all too often
nears the profundities of a Mexican brothel.
“We are very ambitious” is the crystal-clear explanation I
am offered. Of course. Blessed youth.
The night is a joyful one. I start boozing around in the hot
tubs. People hand me a can of beer. I feel I am going com-
pletely native: what’s more Icelandic than drinking beer inside
a pool of hot water? Professional deformation: after all, this
paper I keep somewhere at home states that I am an anthropol-
ogist. And then it is endless chatting and more drinking until
late in the night. It is a diversified socialscape: members of the
Icelandic Glaciological Society (lovely people, who still talk
of the old days at the ski school with heartfelt and touching
passion), a hardcore feminist mountain guide, a German artist
in search for inspiration, two volunteers from the rescue team.
The necromantic fortress turns out to hold a core of fairy tale.
I spend the next day in Kerlingarfjöll, relaxing, enjoying
further nice weather, exploring the highest peaks and the amaz-
ing horizons they disclose in a sunny day, and getting lectured
about moraines (Magda has come to Iceland from Krakow in
the context of a study program in geological sciences).
As soon as I take my seat on the bus that will drive me
back to Reykjavík on Friday afternoon, a sudden sense of
tearing melancholy assails me. I go through all the stages of
the journey – my uneasiness the first days, the heaviness of the
weather, the omens in the unnatural stillness and then the
warnings in the wind – and I am finally given to understand.
As I leave this place, I am not unchanged.
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