Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.08.2007, Side 24

to cycle to Hvítárvatn. It begins to rain for real
and the wind picks up. After an hour in the
rain the worries about the dust cloud are as
good as gone. My spirits are soaring. Two more
hours in the rain, fighting a strong headwind,
and my mood has changed. A car hasn’t come
this way in half an hour. When your spirits
begin to sink up here and you are alone there
is nothing to stop it. You just continue to sink.
The rocks, the grey sand, the gravel and the
grey sky massed with sombre clouds, are of
little help. Should I ever be inclined to believe
in a death instinct it will probably be in this
kind of setting. Finally, a van with foreign plates
passes by and as it has two mountain bikes on
its bike stand I pause for a moment and turn
my head. This proves to be enough to stop
the car some 30 meters down the road.
The passenger door opens and I can see the
face of a young woman holding a map in the
soft yellow light. I turn my bike and discover I
don’t have to peddle to the car in the strong
wind. “Could you tell me how far I’m from
Hvítárvatn?”, I ask. The woman looks at the
map and points to a spot she has circled with
a blue pen. “Yes,” I say. “It’s too far,” she
says, “you’ll never make it that far tonight.”
“Never,” her boyfriend chimes in. “And the
weather isn’t any better over there. It’s the
same rain as here,” he adds. I tell them it’s good
to know. In that case I shall probably pitch my
tent somewhere around here. “Good luck,”
they say and drive on. But I have no intention
of pitching a tent out here. These friendly and
warm voices have somehow given me enough
energy to cycle to Akureyri tonight. I peddle
on and on, but eventually my spirits begin to
sink again.
Hvítárnes
At midnight I come to the cross road to Hví-
tárnes and discover it is still 8 kilometres to
the hut. My memory had said 5 kilometres – a
difference of twenty minutes in this terrain.
Shadows are forming in the landscape now
and every other rock looks like a hut. I’ve
calculated my average speed over the last
four hours and know full well that I am only
managing 8 kilometres an hour. Still, I fool
myself and begin to look for the hut after
only fifteen minutes. The sand seems littered
with huts and I have to make an effort to see
things for what they are. I have been following
fresh footprints in the dirt road but I can’t see
them anymore.
When I’ve pretty much convinced myself
I’ve cycled past the hut - an awful prospect
- I come to a sloping sign pointing straight to
the ground. It looks like a scythe someone has
carelessly stuck to the ground before deser-
ting the place but it reads “Hvítárnes (hut)”
and that’s all that matters now. Hvítárnes is a
sublime spot on earth but for some reason the
8 kilometres have always seemed too much
of a detour when I have travelled Kjölur by
car. The sweat, the aching muscles, wet feet,
overworked lungs, stiff limbs and strained
joints add to the immense pleasure of arriving
unaided in this woodless area late at night.
I’m alone in the Touring Club hut at Hvítár-
nes - built in 1930 it is the oldest of its kind in
Iceland - and vaguely remember stories about
the place. There is supposed to be at least one
ghost up here. But I’m too tired to entertain
notions or look for supernatural meaning be-
hind the serene sounds here. Besides, nothing
can break the stillness of this mighty glacier
world. Not even a ghost. Should I ever become
a ghost myself I wouldn’t mind spending some
days here, especially in early July.
The still lake, the glacier that seems to slope
right into the lake in one place, the black hills,
the green pastures around the white hut, the
geese and the ducks and birds I have never
heard from before - not to mention again the
sand and the rocks and that clear blue river
north east of here. Can you ask for a cooler
resting place, dead or alive?
Róbert H. Haraldsson is a 47 year old University
teacher who has recently taken up cycling. The
second half of Haraldsson’s story will be printed
in the next issue of the Reykjavík Grapevine
and available at www.grapevine.is.
30_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 13_007_TRAVEL/KJÖLUR
When the opportunity to cycle across Iceland
came my way, I only had a day and a half to
get ready. I guess I had been preparing for a trip
like this for over a year but now I was suddenly
confronted with the challenge. I had little time
to waste, indeed, as I had things to do at my
place of work, the University of Iceland, before
I could take off and I didn’t have a car to scurry
between shops in Reykjavík.
My wife and I had been planning a trip to
Akureyri but when she picked me up at work
on Monday she said she’d take the kids in the
car but I could cycle and meet them there, if I
liked to and was feeling up to it. Was I?
I had always assumed that were I to get
the chance to cycle from Reykjavík to Akureyri
I’d simply take Highway One and overnight at
farms along the road. Fast but romantic. I’d ride
my prized possession, a Trek X01, cyclocross
bike which I have come to love for roughly the
same reason Icelanders say they love horses.
I refer to the cooperation between rider and
bike, although in the case of a bike the rider
does the work, as is only appropriate.
“I think you should go Kjölur,” my wife
says before I could respond to her surprising-
ly generous offer. And she is right. Kjölur is
a highland route which takes you between
Iceland’s second and third largest glaciers and
past the colourful mudsprings at Hveravellir.
The shortest route between the south and the
north region of Iceland, but on account of its
poor conditions, it is the road less travelled. But
Kjölur means it is unwise and even impossible to
ride the cyclocross bike and that, in turn, means
I need to get my mountain bike, a Giant XTC,
ready in a jiffy. It takes the rest of Monday for
this fact to sink in.
Getting a Late Start
When I leave Reykjavík at 4:30 pm on Wednes-
day I have already cycled 35 kilometres in and
around Reykjavík. First to a bike shop for a rack
and mudguards. The guy at the shop says he can
have the bike ready on Tuesday, roughly three
days after I’m supposed to arrive in Akureyri. We
negotiate and I give up when I have it down to
two days. Instead I borrow the necessary tools
from the janitor at the University when I find
a free hour between meetings and set up my
own little bike shop next to the trash cans, the
wheelie bin variety, behind the University’s Main
Building. Having five thumbs on each hand, I
tend to forget how elevating and enjoyable it
is to fix things yourself. After the last meeting,
I peddle to an outdoor shop to buy a tent but
leave the store with a sleeping bag, a mattress,
a stove, a super light titanium pot along with
an expensive solo tent. My philosophy is to buy
few but good things. I hate it when I stray far
from this philosophy which is often enough.
The highland interior of Iceland looms large
with its desert, glaciers and uncertain weather
conditions, and I stick resolutely to my philo-
sophy today.
Eight hundred meters from my home, nor-
thbound, I have a flat tire next to the shopping
mall in my neighbourhood. After unloading the
bike and replacing the tube, I reward myself
with greasy junk food from Domino’s across the
parking lot. A friend walks by. I eat, we talk. How
far I think I’ll make it tonight? “Þingvellir,” I tell
him, “Possibly, Laugarvatn.” He is impressed.
I scoop up the creamy sauce with a chip. My
friend is divorced but he has a lady friend and
he thinks their relationship is doomed. He says
he’ll treat her to a dinner tonight and tell her
it’s all over, he will break off the relationship. As
we talk I sense that he is afraid she might be
about to leave him for another man and that
he is only trying to soften the blow with this
pre-emptive strike. I tell him of my suspicion.
He nods and says: “You are probably right but
I’ll end it anyway.” I ride my bike to Nesjavellir,
the hydrothermal plant at lake Þingvellir, and
have road 36 pretty much all to myself. I play
with the thought that my friend will surprise his
lady friend not by dumping her but by asking
her to marry him. After all, that is another way
of getting the uncertainty out of it.
At Nesjavellir, a sign bluntly announces a 21
kilometre distance to the camping ground in
the national park at Þingvellir. Receiving these
tidings, my legs become slightly subdued. But
the route is scenic and the scent of birch trees,
which for me has always indicated the beginning
of nature and end of town, is refreshing. The
road here is surprisingly easy on the legs. Staying
off highway one is paying off. At Þingvellir it
rains all night. The tent holds up perfectly but
its smallness borders on the ridiculous.

First Glimpse of the Highland
The next leg of my trip takes me to dear old
Gullfoss where I’ll get my first view of the
highland. The sun is out to warm me and the
gravel road through Lyngdalsheiði, a moor
between Þingvellir and Laugarvatn, is in poor
condition and I’m pleased to discover how the
mountain bike soaks up shock-waves from the
ungraded road. Arriving at Gullfoss, I’m too
tired to continue but too obstinate to give
up the idea of seeing some of that highland
today.
I weigh my options. A cloud of dust is blo-
wing from West to East, across road F35, called
Kjalvegur. I decide to rest over a small bowl
of Icelandic meat soup at Café Gullfoss. It is
surprisingly authentic although the ingredients
are diced too neatly into small equal cubes
for my taste. I like my jaw to have something
more rugged to work on. When I come out
again I see that the cloud isn’t really blowing
anywhere, it just hangs there. I strike up a
conversation with a man in the parking lot who
looks like he knows Kjölur. He thinks I needn’t
worry too much about the dust. We talk about
the huts I could stay at tonight. The one I’m
interested in is at Hvítárvatn, a 30 km² glacier
lake some 420 meters above sea level with “the
most beautiful mountain-view in Iceland”, as I
read in one brochure. My problem tonight will
be Bláfellsháls, he says, a long mountain ridge
with a considerable elevation (600 meters). I
buy more chocolate. As the meat-soup begins
to kick in, I decide to cycle into the night and
aim for Hvítárvatn.
An hour later, some 9 kilometres from
Gullfoss, I run out of energy. I pull out my
sleeping bag, make few phone calls - my last
in forty eight hours - and fall asleep. The nap
gives me enough energy to open my food bag.
No dried fruits, noodles, soups and such like
stuff here. Apparently, I’ve packed nothing but
traditional Icelandic food, mostly lifrarpylsa
(liver sausage), sviðasulta (a confit of singed
sheep-head), along with some Icelandic and
Danish cheeses, whole grain bread and cho-
colate. What true and tried cyclists would say
about this stuff I can only guess but it tastes
delicious to me, and amazingly refreshing. Plus,
this is the grazing land of the sheep that will
supply the ingredients for next year’s sviðasulta
and lifrarpylsa.
A second time in one afternoon I resolve
Kjölur by Bike – Part One
Text and photos by Róbert H. Haraldsson
Hvítárnes is a sublime
spot on earth but for some
reason the 8 kilometres
have always seemed too
much of a detour when I
have travelled Kjölur by
car.
REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 13_007_TRAVEL/KJÖLUR_31
When your spirits be-
gin to sink up here and
you are alone there is
nothing to stop it. You
just continue to sink...
Should I ever be inclined
to believe in a death in-
stinct it will probably be
in this kind of setting.
Cappuccino + bagle + yoghurt = 650 kr.