Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.03.2017, Page 52

Words Parker Yamasaki Photos Kevin Takashi-Smith

OUR TRIP STARTED on a piece
of graph paper. Five dates, each
with its own column. Each col-
umn with a town. Each town
with a person, or a point of in-
terest. We’re headed south: Vík,
Skaftafell, Höfn. Early Thursday
morning we pack up and head out.
The world is getting smaller, I
hear from all directions, and nat-
urally my inner skeptic creeps out
as we pile into the car. The South
Coast of Iceland is a path-more-
travelled. The roads are narrow,
the busses are wide, and there are
parking lots at the base of every
waterfall. Perhaps that’s exactly
why I needed to get on this road—
to remember that no matter how
many versions of Seljalandsfoss
there are, it still remains one-of-
a-kind.
Stop and stay awhile
Vík is a stopover town, and the
first on our list. It’s a town on the
way to another town; a bookend
to a 179km series of sights that in-
clude Skógafoss, Sólheimajökull
and Dýrahólaey. It sits directly
south of “the” black sand beach in
Iceland, Reynisfjara, and lies di-
rectly below one of Iceland’s most
active volcanoes, Katla, forming
a comfy halfway point between
Reykjavík and the Skaftafell Na-
tional Park. Like the younger
brother of a famous athlete, Vík
always exists in relation to some-
thing else.
Ví k ’s we s t er n
horizon is punc-
tured by the ba-
salt sea columns
R e y n i s d r a n g a r ,
which are, accord-
ing to local legend,
a couple of trolls
who tried to drag a
ship from the sea,
only to be caught by
the dawn light and
t urned to stone.
Facing Reynisdran-
gar, above the black
sand, is a quiet and
st ron g a r ra n ge -
ment of stones,
dedicated to the dead seamen
shipwrecked just offshore.
One of t he most prom i-
nent sights in Vík is the church,
propped on the highest point
overlooking the town. The church
is a beautiful vantage point and a
photogenic fixture itself, and it’s
also the place locals are told to
run to the next time Katla erupts.
For a town where many people
stop but few stay, Vík is littered
with monuments to the frozen,
dead and trapped.
But you just got here...
There are two walls of windows
on the second floor of Norður Vík
hostel. One faces the mountain
that drops into Vík from the west.
The other looks toward the Atlan-
tic, out over the rooftops of the
town’s 318 residents. The storm
held us there. On the day we were
supposed to be waking up in Skaf-
tafell, I sit in this room and watch
the cars come down the mountain
road. As the road steepens, they
slow down, in reverse momen-
tum. One spins out and lands at
an awkward tilt on the side of
the road. Soon the glow of police
lights crawls up, presumably to
advise incoming travellers to find
a place to stay for the night.
At 3am the night before, all the
roads from Reyk-
javík to Þingvel-
l i r, S el foss a nd
A k r a n e s w e r e
closed. By 4am,
every road in and
out of Reykjavík
was closed. A “no
travel” storm was
moving from the
southwest to the
n or t h e a s t , pr e -
ceded by a wave of
road closures, and
followed by a pa-
rade of ice scrapers
and snowploughs.
By about 10am, the
storm reaches us in Vík. The road
is clear, carless and covered in ice.
And so, marooned in the second
storey of the Norður Vík Hostel,
we join the town’s monuments.
Practical tradition
That 10am wind swept the town in
the Icelandic tradition. It was the
kind of wind that makes you go to
the hot tub, cook potatoes, appre-
ciate wool, and drink too much. It
was a wind that reminds us we’re
spending February in Iceland,
and instead of hiking to Svarti-
foss and gazing out at Jökulsárlón,
we’ll spend it watching ice pellets
spatter across the other side of
the window, as if looking out of
a transparent dart board. We will
be drinking Americanos among
equally international and strand-
ed company in Halldórskaffi. We
will run on the black sand beach
and test the limits of wetness, and
of course, we will go to the hot tub.
Though it wasn’t what I had writ-
ten on my ink-river-illegible piece
of paper, it was as “Icelandic” an
experience as any. There is no way
to plan Iceland. Iceland just sort
of happens. And travel in general
will always find a way to maintain
its serendipity.
Besides, it turns out there is ac-
tually lot of charm in a town of 318
during the dead white of winter.
And some people really do choose
to stay in Vík, like Cristian and
Bea, a couple working at the hos-
tel, who moved to Vík from Barce-
lona. “We visited Iceland in April
2015 and fell in love with Vík,” Bea
tells us. “So we contacted Æsa, the
manager [of Norður Vík] and she
said she would be happy to hire
us.” They moved in and started
work exactly a year after their ini-
tial visit.
Where to next?
The weather did end up clearing
for the rest of our trip, and a week
later I drop off my friends at the
airport, having experienced three
up-close waterfalls, four black
sand beaches, two glacial lagoons
and a trillion glacial “toes”. As I
stand in line for the bus back to
Reykjavík, two British women in
front of me argue and laugh in
what seems like a mixture of ter-
ror, delusion, and humour with
the woman behind the Reykjavík
Excursions desk. Clearly confused
about the limited road conditions,
they scan their purses quickly to
change and cancel reservations.
“You didn’t do your research
before you came here, did you?”
the woman asks them with a huge,
unapologetic smile.
“No,” one answers. “Yes,” the
other answers simultaneously.
They look at each other.
The receptionist doesn’t break
her smile.
Each day, undaunted by histo-
ry, we look forward. But of course,
the most precise planning always
happens in retrospect, so maybe
it’s best to relinquish control from
the start and then lay it out once
it’s over. Plan ahead, plan behind,
make your checklist with circles
instead of boxes, be reckless, be
restrained. The only strategy
I can offer here is to be light on
your toes; the roads are icy, and
the only thing you can be sure of
is the wind.
SHARE & PHOTO GALLERY:
gpv.is/vik03
You’ll probably
end up in Vík
The
Certainty
In Wind
Distance from
Reykjavík
180 km
How to get there
Follow Route One southwards. Stop when you get to Vík
One spins out
and lands at
an awkward
tilt on the
side of the
road. Soon
the glow of
police lights
crawls up...
52 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 03 — 2017
Accommodation provided by
Vík Hostel, www.hostel.is