Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.05.2014, Blaðsíða 35

“In Iceland everyone
knows who the bad
guys are.”
35 Travel The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 5 — 2014
We stood above the harbour where
the town’s main road dead ends, and
looked out to sea. In the distance wa-
terfalls spouted over the coastal cliffs,
periodically turning to mist in violent
gusts of wind before continuing their
plunge into the windswept North Atlan-
tic. Below us, hundreds of birds sought
refuge from the tempest in the calm
waters within the harbour’s rock bar-
rier. No one had answered the door at
the guesthouse. No one had answered
the phone at the number posted on
the door either. It was not yet tourist
season, and Arnarstapi appeared to
be hibernating. The only movement
we’d seen was a large RV that crawled
through town before parking at the gi-
ant stone statue to stay for the night.
I looked at the mess of camping gear
crammed into our tiny backseat and felt
a twinge of jealousy for their comfort
and convenience.
It was Nina who noticed the café as
we were driving out of town. I guess
that’s part of the beauty of having a
travel companion; they can catch the
things you miss. She suggested we
stop and ask if they had any info about
the guesthouse.
An Unexpected Evening
Walking into the place I felt a rush of
warmth and cosiness in such intoxicat-
ing contrast to the world outside that
I was sure we’d mistakenly entered
someone’s home. Shelves of books and
pictures hung on the walls, and in the
corner a young lady wrapped in a blan-
ket reclined in a chair, browsing on her
laptop. She called out to her mother in
the kitchen to announce our entry.
Pots and pans ceased to clang and
we heard the water turn off before a
short, round woman with glasses on
the end of her nose appeared before
us, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Halló. Yes?”
She couldn’t help us regarding the
guesthouse, but she did have hot tea
and shelter from the cold.
In time, small talk with the two la-
dies evolved into engaging conversa-
tion, and sips of hot tea transitioned
into nips of belly-warming Brennivín.
The two of them spoke of Iceland as
if it were a small village, their Icelandic
tongues cooing and purring in near-
perfect English as we covered every-
thing from politics and pop culture to
education systems and absurdities in
our respective countries.
“In Iceland everyone knows who
the bad guys are,” Kristrún said when
I asked about crime. I imagined these
‘bad guys’ to be a certain segment of
society. She went on to mention two
people by first name. Her mother nod-
ded in agreement. They weren’t sur-
prised, but fascinated nonetheless to
hear about the scale and complexities
of such things in the US. “Here if you
do some crime, you might not go to jail,
but everyone knows what you did and
they don’t talk to you anymore,” Kris-
trún explained. “You are no longer part
of society and you live very lonely.” Her
tone made it clear it was a punishment
worse than prison.
Not a single other soul wandered
into the café after we did, and dur-
ing those hours there seemed to be
nothing else in the world beyond our
little table. No storm outside, no stress
about where we were going to sleep
that night, just the four of us: sharing,
learning, and connecting. It was dark
beyond the windows when the mother
told us about her comical misadven-
ture to the US long ago. I followed with
the story of how I’d lost my flip-flop in
the mud earlier that day and reached
in shoulder-deep to retrieve it, only to
come up with someone else’s. They
rolled with laughter as I acted out the
whole thing. “It would be so funny to
hang it on the wall here and tell that
story,” they said.
The weather had actually cleared
a bit, and Nina and I stood outside our
tent watching a faint smearing of the
northern lights in the sky before crawl-
ing in for the night. “If it gets too cold
we’ll just sleep in there, right?” Nina
whispered with her head on my chest
as we were falling asleep. Before they’d
gone home the ladies had made a point
of showing us where they kept the key
to the café. “Of course,” I said. But for
the moment we were warm and com-
fortable, our legs intertwined at the
bottom of our sleeping bags, and we
both sank into a deep, exhausted sleep.
“Thanks so much! Goodbye.”
The next morning we used the key to
pop into the café, where we brushed
our teeth and used the bathroom be-
fore setting out on a hike to Hellnar. A
glorious sun had risen and the grasses
of the cliffs shimmered with yesterday’s
rain. The sea birds had left the harbour
and were now dancing their aerial bal-
let, diving and plunging into the churn-
ing waves below, on the hunt for the
morning feed. We’d walked the walls
and arches of perfectly geometrical
columns of black basalt all the way to
Hellnar and back to Arnarstapi when
we noticed the people in the RV just
starting to stir. My jealousy was com-
pletely gone now. Travelling in such
comfort would have insulated us from
so much more of Iceland than just its
harsh weather.
We made one more use of the
café’s restroom, locked the door and
hung the key on its nail. Before we left
I rooted around amongst our exploded
backpacks and camping gear in the
backseat, once again shoulder-deep
and searching for something. But this
time when I pulled out the anonymous
pink flip-flop it was exactly what I was
looking for. I grabbed a pen from the
dashboard and wrote a quick message
on it. When I hung it on the front door
handle of the café Nina appeared at
my side and chuckled. “That’s perfect,”
she said. I pictured the ladies’ reactions
when they’d come in later to open the
place and I smiled. The flip-flop shone
bright pink in the sunlight. The four
words I’d written were almost all the
Icelandic I knew, but the message was
nothing short of exactly what I wanted
to say: Takk fyrir! Bless bless. Nina and
Tony.
Words
Tony Pandola
In spite of the weather, we’d managed to make something out of the morning. We’d had
that hot spring all to ourselves, and successfully followed our little treasure hunt to that car-
bonated spring where we stood triumphantly in the freezing wind and rain, laughing and
taking turns chugging sweet, sparkling water from its natural source. But the hours since
had been a monotonous drive through a bleak tunnel of grey that left the splendour of the
Snaefellsnes peninsula—beyond the hundred feet of visible road in front of us—only to our
imaginations. Every stroke of our windshield wipers ticked off another precious second of
one of our limited days in Iceland. By the time we pulled into Arnarstapi that afternoon the
possibility that this day would wind up mostly wasted hung in the air of our rental car as
thick and dreary as the clouds that shrouded the scenery beyond its fogged up windows.
Tony Pandola
Opening hours September — May
9:00 — 18:00 weekdays
10:00 — 17:00 saturdays
12:00 — 17:00 sundays
Aðalstræti 10, Reykjavík
Museum of Design and Applied Art, Garðabær
(354) 517 7797 — kraum@kraum.is
Find us on Facebook
Distance from Reykjavík: 190kmArnarstapi1
The Bright Side
Of The Storm
From low point to highlight in Arnarstapi
Daníel Freyr Atlason