Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.10.2012, Blaðsíða 32

Bradford-born man of letters J.B. Priest-
ley once took a tour of 1930s Britain and
chronicled the voyage in his book ‘An
English Journey,’ boarding a series of
“motor coaches,” described indulgently
as “voluptuous, sybaritic, of doubtful
morality.” Locals may have to consult a
dictionary for the first two words; the
last two shouldn’t be a problem.
Icelanders don’t do public transport
Priestley, of course, never had to take
the number 12 from Breiðholt to Hlem-
mur on a leaden-skied midweek morn-
ing. Icelanders do many things better
than anyone; however they don’t do
public transport.
First of all, this is a land with-
out trains. Back home in Britain, the
railways were what helped us take
over the world—it was only when we
stopped doing them well that we lost
everything. Every English train jour-
ney is a novel in its own right, replete
with characters and stories: the chirpy
ticket-stamper, the bookish student
girl returning home for the weekend;
the lonely thirty-something on busi-
ness who awkwardly makes eyes at her;
the bored single journeying across the
country for a weekend with her online
romance; the ratty elderly widow holi-
daying alone.
If I were Mayor of Reykjavík, I’d
build a railway track over the urban des-
ert of Vatnsmýri just so young Iceland-
ers might know the thrill of taking the
train. It would be an absurd luxury and
a massive waste of money—so it would
probably suit this city rather well.
Public buses may be a familiar
sight, but are still looked down upon:
the dominion of early morning mini-
mum wage workers, daytime vodka
connoisseurs and carless students.
One of many quotes attributed (almost
certainly falsely) to Margaret Thatcher
goes: “Any man who takes the bus to
work after the age of 26 is a failure.”
The Icelanders are several degrees less
sympathetic.
Taking the new route 57 to Akureyri
So the only good reason I can suggest
why the city’s bus operator Strætó has
just extended its Route 57 to go all the
way up north to Akureyri—Iceland’s
“capital of the north,” population
17,000—is because it could make a
great novel.
It would however be a novel without
too many characters—we would pick
up about half a dozen on our way. When
I boarded the bus for Akureyri at Mjódd
station on a chilly Saturday morning for
a prompt 09:00 departure, I was one of
only three passengers. I did awkwardly
make eyes at the girl one seat ahead and
at the other side of the aisle to me, but
there were no ratty elderly widows or
online romantics—it didn’t look set to
be a particularly great novel. But then
neither was Steinbeck’s.
The vehicles that take on the tem-
peramental surfaces of Iceland’s north-
bound ring road are fortunately not
the mostly empty municipal yellow
city buses that swarm round Reykjavík
from morning till night.
That Saturday morning, the bus to
the north was a Hópbílar Renault Ilade,
over ten metres long, weighing well
over 11,000 kilos, decked out with a
Euro 3 engine, and packing a walloping
punch at 340hp. The only similarity it
bears to the metropolitan bus f leet is
the red-and-yellow capital S symbol and
the electronic sign on board telling the
name of the next stop accompanied by
the dutiful lady’s voice announcing it.
Taking in the scenic drive
The unpromising dawn gave way to
a fresh, sunlit morning as we left the
capital area and headed for the centre
of Akranes. We travelled almost six
kilometres through the Hvalfjörður
Tunnel which forges underneath the
notorious fjord where folklore has it the
Evil Whale Redhead once resided—an
amateur fishmonger who drove him-
self crazy and was transformed into a
whale by an angry elf-woman he had
impregnated. (You’ve got to be very
careful not to get on the wrong side of
the elf-women around here.)
In sleepy Akranes, we paused at the
feet of the grandiose, great-footed sea-
man statue on the town’s central round-
about. By 10:00 we were away from the
city, and finally pushing ahead on the
long drive up Iceland’s Route 1.
When you see the steady stream of
traffic coursing through downtown
Reykjavík, it is easy to forget just how
far the Icelandic wilderness spreads.
For miles seemingly unending, the
view from the coach window was of a
desolate, murky, rugged outback—an
occasional farmhouse the only sign
of habitation all the way to the rising
mountainous horizon. Even on the
country’s largest arterial highway, only
rarely did another car pass by; some-
where near Varmahlíð, we had to over-
take a tractor.
At Bifröst, a small settlement about
an hour’s ride from Akranes, a pair of
pale, white-blonde youngsters on bikes
stopped in their tracks and watched
with dropped jaws as our coach drew
monstrously into town like a vast war-
ship harbouring at some tiny fishing
village.
We stopped for a respite at the
Staðarskáli service station nearly three
hours into our journey, taking a break
for a pylsa and a visit to the restroom (in
case the coach’s on-board toilet facili-
ties weren’t to the taste of respectable
passengers). From then we carried on
towards Hvammstangi, Blönduós and
Varmahlíð.
The last chapter of the novel
Along with the mainline coach service,
Strætó operates a f leet of private cars,
which take passengers from pre-select-
ed stops to destinations out in the coun-
try. A couple of teenagers on the coach
alit at Hvammstangavegur and took a
car marked with the Strætó ‘S’ for their
final homebound leg.
The white-dusted peaks and ridges
that line up on either side of Road 1 on
the final strait towards Akureyri were
all that shared the vista for the last
hour or so. I was the only passenger
that morning to stay the course from
Reykjavík all the way to our final des-
tination. I could stay there for a little
longer; my chauffeur had to take pas-
sengers straight back to Reykjavík for
the 15.45 from Akureyri Hof.
The new service, paid for by mu-
nicipalities in West, Northwest and
Northeast Iceland, has attracted crit-
ics. Tour company Sterna had previ-
ously been charging as much as 11,800
ISK for the one-way journey; now that
Strætó, which charges 7,700 ISK, has
taken control of the route, some have
complained that it doesn’t serve rural
areas as well, with time-wasting stops
in the Reykjavík suburbs and long waits
for buses from Mjódd on to Kringlan
or BSÍ where many head. Not to men-
tion, there’s no bus from Akureyri until
Saturday afternoon, meaning weekend
visitors have to take Friday afternoon
off in order to make the trip.
But hey, you could always spend the
time on the road writing a novel about
the journey instead.
Words
Mark O'Brien
Illustration
Strætó
I Get My Kicks On Route 57
Public buses have never had much of a tradition in the western literary canon. One of
Steinbeck’s lesser-beloved novels ‘The Wayward Bus’ is a rare example: a story-less
tapestry of internal monologues telling the secret passions and the sexual politics between
the motley gang of passengers on a small country bus as it wends its way through wildest
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32 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 16 — 2012TRAVEL
Strætó departs from Reykjavík’s Mjódd station to Akureyri’s Hof station twice daily
except for Saturdays when it departs once at 9:00 AM. The one-way fare is 7,700 ISK.
See www.straeto.is for more information. Accomodation was provided by Akureyri
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“
I did awkwardly make
eyes at the girl one seat
ahead and at the other side of
the aisle to me, but there were
no ratty elderly widows or online
romantics—it didn’t look set to be
a particularly great novel. But
then neither was
Steinbeck’s.„
Track The Bus
You can see where the buses are
in realtime at
www.straeto.is/rauntimakort
and www.gulur.is shows you
when a bus is due to arrive at a
stop near you, if you have a loca-
tion aware smartphone.