Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.07.2016, Page 58

TRAVEL ICONS
Alone In The
Dark
Kristīne Skrebele spent winter in the
depths of the highlands
Words & Photos JOHN ROGERS
The Icelandic highlands are a fa-
mously inhospitable region. In
the winter, deep snow and regular
storms make them unsafe to en-
ter for anyone but the most well-
prepared and experienced Arctic
traveller. The whole region is of-
ten referred to as uninhabited—
and uninhabitable.
But last winter, that wasn’t
the case. At the geothermal oa-
sis of Hveravellir, site manager
Kristīne Skrebele kept the lights
on throughout Iceland’s darkest
time. Latvian by birth, she first
came to Iceland four years ago,
and ended up working at Hver-
avellir. “It was a hard summer!”
exclaims Kristīne. “Afterwards,
I said: ‘I will never come back to
this madhouse!’ It was my first ex-
perience working with people. But
I did come back. The next year was
much easier.”
Kristīne had caught the bug for
the place. “I said I’d love to come
to celebrate New Year’s Eve,” she
says. “Then during the winter I got
a call from the boss at Gray Line
saying they needed someone to be
here all winter. So I quit my job in
Latvia, and came back.”
Getting to Hveravellir is win-
ter is challenging. It takes an
experienced driver in a modi-
fied super jeep or snowmobile,
and even then, the conditions are
sometimes too much. “If there’s
a storm, and you can’t see your
hand in front of you, the jeeps
can’t come,” says Kristīne. “But on
the right day, it’s fine, so groups
come through every few days. It’s
like another world—everything is
white. If it’s sunny, it’s like driving
through heaven.”
Buried alive
It took Kristīne some time to adapt
to her extreme surroundings. “I
was here alone, just me and Orion
the dog,” she recalls. “At first the
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11 — 2016
58
constant darkness was scary—
I’d switch on all the lights, and
turn up the music. Sometimes,
the electricity would go off, or the
heater would stop working, and I
needed to fix it by going up to the
generator on the hill. I know noth-
ing about pipes and electricity, so
people from Reykjavík would call
me and talk me through it. Now I
know a lot more.”
The highlands receive a heavy
snowfall throughout Iceland’s long
winter. At some points, the house in
which Kristīne lived was completely
buried. “Every few days I’d have to
climb out of the window to dig out
the door of the house,” she says.
“The windows were blocked. It was
like a cave. Sometimes, cars could
come by without me even knowing,
because the house was totally insu-
lated from sound, and they didn’t
expect anyone to be here.”
Kristīne even slept out under
the stars sometimes. “I have a
very good sleeping bag,” she says.
“There’s no light pollution, so you
can the aurora very clearly. And
every few days someone would
come along, so I wasn’t lonely. It’s
an extremely good experience to
be in the middle of nowhere, es-
pecially as a woman, I would say. I
really enjoyed it.”
Kristīne plans to return for the
winter again this year. So if you
should pass by the buried cabin at
Hveravellir in the dark months for
some soup and a dip in the steam-
ing geothermal pool, don’t forget
to knock.
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