Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.06.2014, Síða 30

30 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 08 — 2014OPINION
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Something
In The Water
Maybe your first glass of tap water in
Reykjavík had the fine bouquet of a batch
of rotten eggs, or the masking scent of a
match struck in closed quarters. Maybe
it was the stench of the Yellowstone cal-
dera on an afternoon picnic at Old Faith-
ful. I still recall the smell coming off of my
first glass: a trace of frigid iron mixed with
the acidity of decaying organic matter. It
wasn’t overly strong, but it wasn’t too ap-
petizing either.
If any Icelanders are reading this,
they’re probably gnashing their teeth by
now, so let me get
my caveats out of
the way. Yes, I know
it’s supposedly only
the hot water that
smells like sulphur,
and that you’re all
very sure that the
cold water smells
like cold water. And
yes, I know that the
smell isn’t indicative
of anything unsafe, and that the water is
perfectly potable. And yes, I know that
according to the scientific literature on
the subject, Icelandic tap water is about
as clean as water can be, and that it pre-
sumably originates from melting glaciers
that formed centuries before the Industrial
Revolution introduced all those invisible
poisons into our hydraulic cycle, wrecking
our taste buds along the way.
Icelanders are incredibly proud of
their water. According to a recent OECD
study, a full 97% of the country’s popula-
tion is satisfied with the water quality. I’ve
been encouraged multiple times by locals
to go drink water straight from streams
in the countryside, because “you can do
that here.” (Where ‘there’ is, and what you
can or can’t do there, is always politely left
unsaid.) Based on the way Icelanders talk
about their water, you might think it best
suited for washing stains of ambrosia and
nectar off of cherubs’ bums. And in all fair-
ness, the pride is well placed. I have yet to
encounter Icelandic water that tastes any-
thing other than watery. So far, so good.
There’s more to a drink than just taste,
however. For starters, there’s also what
it does to the inanimate objects it comes
in contact with. Wine stains your car-
pet purple. Spilled beer makes your floor
sticky. And the hard water that comes out
of faucets in Reykjavík, if left unchecked,
cakes tiles and shower doors with a thin,
hard crust of cloudy minerals. This is ul-
timately harmless, almost quaint. But the
pleasures of drinking,
like eating, are also
largely about smell
too, and there’s noth-
ing at all quaint about
being greeted by sul-
phur every other time
you draw a glass from
the tap. If you turn on
a faucet at just the
right (or wrong) mo-
ment, what you get is
essentially a miniature upside-down gey-
ser, including all the damp, acrid odours
but minus the steam, gawking tourists and
awkward cheering after a big eruption.
Speaking of eruptions, there’s another
noxious aspect of Reykjavík tap water
that needs to be mentioned: what it can
do to your internal plumbing. I recently
tagged along with a group of four other
American tourists for a Sunday-afternoon
drive around the Golden Circle, and on the
stretch between Þingvellir and Geysir one
of our fellow travellers excused himself
sheepishly for something that hadn’t even
happened yet. “Um, guys… I uh… drank a
lot of water during breakfast this morning,
and it uh… smelled a lot like sulphur, so
I’m sorry if I uh… get a little gassy.”
The poor man had good reason to be
worried. Sulphur is a well-known cause
of flatus, and while I haven’t conducted a
comprehensive survey on this topic (and
highly doubt I would get many people to
answer my survey questions if I tried), I
suspect many visitors to Iceland experi-
ence an uptick in flatulence shortly after
putting back their first glass of water.
For anyone spending the entire day driv-
ing around the frozen countryside, this is
particularly unfortunate. It’s bad enough
when someone farts in a car under normal
circumstances, but Icelandic water can
give this scenario a truly hellacious twist—
enough fire and brimstone to knock down
the roofs onto the heads of all the sinners
in Sodom and Gomorrah. Or, as Sartre
was once badly paraphrased: Hell is other
people’s indigestion.
Then again, this isn’t Hell we’re talking
about—it’s Iceland. Homes here are pow-
ered by geothermal energy, not gastro-
intestinal energy. Mountain streams run
clear, not yellow. And the tap water has a
refreshing good taste. Seriously, it really
does, even if it smells funky sometimes
and has you playing the gut flute more
than usual. So drink it. Drink a lot of it. Slap
some natives on the back and yuk it up
with them about how fortunate they are
to enjoy such a great water supply. Just
whatever you do, before drinking from the
tap, let the water run cold for 10 seconds
or 10 minutes or however long it takes to
get rid of the smell. And if you’re planning
to spend a day in the car with friends,
please, please, please, drink responsibly.
Jonathan Pattishall is an editor and a
translator from North Carolina.
If you’re a carbon-based life form, you probably need water. If you’re a perpetually de-
hydrated carbon-based life form, like me, then you probably need a lot of water. And if
you’re a perpetually dehydrated carbon-based life form who recently moved to Reykja-
vík, also like me, then one of the first things you probably noticed when you got here was
the unmistakable whiff of sulphur almost every time you turned on a faucet.
Words
Jonathan Pattishall
Photo
Nanna Dís
“Icelanders are incred-
ibly proud of their water.
According to a recent
OECD study, a full 97%
of the country’s popula-
tion is satisfied with the
water quality.”