Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.10.2014, Side 29

29The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 16 — 2014 TRAVEL
million. And the sound was most distinct
from the top of the cliff or at low tide; at
the shore’s deeper edge everything was
engulfed by the crashing waves.
The West Fjords
We detoured off of the Ring Road again
and up to the West Fjords, where we
heard the eerie hum of our vehicle in the
one-lane tunnel from Flateyri to Ísafjörður,
along with the gasps from fellow driving
companions over what to do when there’s
an oncoming car in a one-lane tunnel.
(Answer: if you’re driving west, pull off
into one of the side nooks, take a deep
breath, wait, listen to the exceedingly long
sustained whoossshhhh of the passing
vehicle, and then proceed.) Above ground
we heard the shrieks of Arctic terns as we
desperately tried not to invade their terri-
tory, but they swooped down on us any-
way. Then, we heard silence: the equally
eerie nothingness of a snow-covered
heath, the white-out creating a muffled
pillow of the world.
Passing through farmland of the
northwest of Iceland, the weather was
much more pasto-
ral. We encountered
the October sheep
round-up. This is cer-
tainly one of the most
cacophonous sounds
in the country: all the
bleating sheep, being carted into pens by
farmers (and sometimes tractors), and a
bunch of excited children running around
helping/screaming, everything covered in
mud.
The North
We continued on the Ring Road to the
north of Iceland, fuelling up in the north-
ernmost cultural hub of Akureyri, and
coming to rest at Lake Mývatn. We dis-
covered a few geothermal-related sounds
at Bjarnarflag. There were bubbling steam
vents and mud pots, recalling both a pre-
historic past and an apocalyptic future. It’s
difficult to get a recorded sense of what
the mud pots sound like—there were so
many bubblings, wheezings, crunchings,
and gurglings that you might even mistake
the overall sound for a waterfall.
We stood over an
output pipe from the
geothermal activity,
which loudly gushed
water at an alarming
rate into a toxic-looking
white-blue lake. There
were the geothermal steam towers, which
collect and process the pressurized steam
from small geothermal power plants. The
towers groan with a strange low howl, a
bit unnerving and even a little creepy. It’s
a sound just unpredictable and quiver-
ing enough that you might have second
thoughts about standing close to it with
delicate recording equipment.
Even further north from Mývatn,
we stopped for a night in a very windy
Húsavík. Normally folks come to this town
for good whale watching, but tonight the
gales were blowing the grasses and small
shrubs so hard I couldn’t hear anything
beyond a foot or two away from me. I went
for a walk on this blustery night, but didn’t
last long before scurrying back to my
rented room. My Zoom recording of that
evening sounds like a tv weather report
from the middle of a hurricane.
On a bumpy road off Route 1, seem-
ingly in the middle of a no-man’s land in
North Iceland, was Dettifoss, the waterfall
with the most volume flowing over it in all
of Europe. Dettifoss was a sneaky foss:
the drive to the falls was nearly silent and
flat, with none of the “roar in the distance”
sounds you’d expect from a waterfall this
size. We reached a small parking area with
some Mars-like rock formations, thinking,
“this is cool, but it probably isn’t it.” We
walked a few steps, and then, BOOM—a
thunderous low rumble that echoes down
the waterfall’s carved-out canyon. Its
sound is nearly overwhelming, contained
within its canyon walls.
The East
The coastline of the little town of Seyðis-
fjörður was calm when we visited, such
a change from the crashing waves of
Snæfellsnes and the roar of Dettifoss.
The main event in Seyðisfjörður that day
was the landing of the ferry that shuttles
visitors to Denmark and the Faroe Islands
once a week, and we happened to arrive
just as it was departing. The ferry let out a
belch and a whistle, and it trailed off to the
ocean. In a moment the shore was calm
again, and the waves sounded unusually
playful as they lapped up onto a black-
pebbled beach. We stayed in a hospital
that had been converted into a hostel,
and were the building’s only residents that
evening. My imagination was full of the
sounds of nurses’ feet echoing down the
long, wide halls.
The South
Traveling down the south coast, we
stopped at Höfn for a delightful swim in
the town pool, and listened to all the Ice-
landic children giggling in the hot pots and
making endless rounds down the water-
slide. Höfn was a true fishing town and its
sounds were all cantered on the port: the
birds shrieking around the fishing boats
and the shouts from fishermen to their
friends on shore.
At the Skaftafell nature preserve, I was
blessed to hear a sound reminiscent of my
family’s home in the USA: raindrops falling
on a real forest. This forest is a rare place
even for Iceland; there are some tall trees
here (okay, tall for this country, but taller
than anywhere in Reykjavík). The shower
sounded so refreshing as it dripped off
the leaves, down rocks and into a small
stream. This stream was probably a part of
the black basalt-columned waterfall Svar-
tifoss, up the hiking path. Svartifoss had
its own sound of course, but by about day
six of our trip, I’d come down with a bit of
foss-fatigue.
But then Jökulsárlón: the glacial la-
goon. We arrived as the sole visitors, and
the scenery was magical. As the icebergs
drifted out to sea from their lagoon, I could
hear them dripping, sometimes overturn-
ing with a dramatic splash as they eventu-
ally joined the ocean waters. Gulls rested
on the crests of icebergs, sometimes call-
ing out to us. Ducks quacked contentedly
in the shallow lagoon waters. The ocean
rumbled in the distance, and a quick drive
to the beach brought new sounds of the
crashing waves and washed-up remnants
of Jökulsárlón’s icebergs. I put my ear up
to them, and they gave back a faint snap-
crackle-pop, the sounds of their own
melting.
The southern town of Vík’s sound-
scape was a surprising change from the
rest of our trip: the racket of wool looms,
shuttles, and combing machines, turning
Icelandic sheep wool into the beautiful
lopapeysur you long to buy. A few tourists
were roaming about the wool factory and
gift shop, and locals were chatting in the
nearby restaurant/café/gas station. Even
the sound of french fries in a fryer sounded
pretty delightful when there hadn’t been
many restaurants in sight for a few days.
One more stop to a church in Vík brought
another fabulous organ, which of course, I
honoured with some local hymns. I noted
that the Tremolo stop was out of tune and
wobbled psychedelically, and had prob-
ably been that way for decades.
In just a few hours, we passed the
growing town of Selfoss and the green-
houses of Hveragerði, and then our SUV
reached our Reykjavík apartments, our fi-
nal destination. A few weeks after our epic
road trip, I documented the sounds of an-
other very important sonic component to
the country: Iceland Airwaves. I have great
sound-memories of the music festival too,
but it’s the more intimate noises and natu-
ral sound worlds from the rest of the coun-
try that have really stuck in my memory.
Iceland’s tones, chords, whispers, chirps,
roars, drips, shrieks, and echoing laughter
still ring in my ears and keep calling me
back.
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There were so many
bubblings, wheez-
ings, crunchings, and
gurglings that you
might even mistake
the overall sound for a
waterfall.