Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.04.2017, Síða 46

Words: Mark Asch
Photos: Larissa Kyzer & Art Bicnick

The greatest luxury in Icelandic
travel: turning off the Ring Road,
pausing that inexorable vacation
countdown timer, and burning one
of your precious days discovering
the answer to the question that
forever haunts memories of every
once-in-a-lifetime trip abroad: “I
wonder what’s down that way?”
Akureyri, the northern anchor
point of most Icelandic road trips,
sits at the mouth of Eyjafjörður,
Iceland’s longest fjord. If you head
east along the Ring Road to Mývatn,
you cross Eyjafjörður and continue
partway up the eastern side before
breaking inland, and you may well
feel, looking out at the farms dot-
ting both its banks, that the deep
blue finger of the fjord is beckon-
ing you. In fact, the western side of
Eyjafjörður, and the jagged north-
ern-exposed coast of the Tröllskagi
peninsula, is home to a promising
tourism infrastructure spread out
across the hour-and-a-bit it takes
to drive up from Akureyri to Si-
glufjörður.
Basalt shards &
sea stacks
First is Hjalteyri, a charming min-
iature fishing village whose sky-
line is dominated by an old fish
factory—even seen from above, as
you coast down the hill towards
the water, it looms like a leviathan
in weather-scarred concrete. In
summer, part of the factory is the
Verksmiðjan art space, which hosts
photo exhibitions and more in a
practically post-human hall. From
the same complex, a local tour op-
erator, Strytan, leads experienced
divers on scuba trips to the fjord’s
underwater sea stacks. A well-
maintained hot pot rests amid the
tumble of basalt shards on the quay
next to the factory, offering views
of the largely uninhabited eastern
bank, which extends onwards, high
and indifferent, up towards the ho-
rizon, its high rocky cliff sides par-
tially covered with snow and look-
ing like a burnt meringue.
There’s a small whale-watch-
ing company in Hauganes, and a
catch-of-the-day restaurant, open
in summer, with a deck in the
shape of a Viking longboat. From
the slightly more built-up harbour
of Árskógssandur, the island of
Hrísey is almost close enough that
you can imagine neighbors peeping
through each other’s windows from
opposite sides of the water. Ár-
skógssandur’s main claim to fame
is Kaldi, Iceland’s first indepen-
dently owned brewery—you can’t
miss it, it’s the biggest building in
town, the one with the big Kaldi
bottle wallbangers on the side.
Their tour involves a brief circuit
around the copse of silver vats—
suitable for tapping—and, on a re-
cent day this not-quite-spring, the
preparations for a shareholder’s
meeting, seemingly to be held on
card tables and folding chairs atop
the recently mopped factory floor.
Aside from the samples at the
brewery itself, you can’t get Kaldi
in Árskógssandur, but you can in
Dalvík, at Kaffihús Bakkabræðra.
Named for three bumbling broth-
ers of local folklore, this two-story
bar and café is finished, seemingly,
entirely in unvarnished wood; aro-
matic soup and fresh bread is served
on mismatched summer-cottage
crockery, and vintage cross-country
skis lean in every corner. The nearby
folk museum spotlights one of the
town’s most famous sons, Johann
Svarfdaeling, who was really very
tall. (At seven feet, seven inches, he
may have been the tallest man alive
in the mid-twentieth century.)
Arctic emptiness
Outside of Dalvík the road rises
above the fjord, up the slope of the
cliffs that line it; the view across
the water is vast, the vista crisp
and almost Arctic in its emptiness.
Ólafsfjörður comes next, after a
long one-way tunnel, with plenty
of pull-outs for when you see head-
lamps emerging from the murk.
The town boasts a substantial
outdoor swimming
pool, with waterslide;
next to it, a ramp juts
down, and ultimately
up again. Is that… a
ski jump? Reader, I’m
pretty sure it’s a ski
jump.
N e x t c o m e s
Héðinsfjörður: unin-
habited, but easily ac-
cessible via new tun-
nels. In bygone days,
farmers visited their neighbors by
boat, or a hard day’s journey over
the mountains, or worse, along the
wind-battered coastline. Today,
it’s profoundly still—the domain
of birds and the occasional walker,
ambling along lightly
used paths.
The climax of
all this is Siglufjörður,
home to the world’s
greatest herring mu-
seum (see issue 5,
2017), a ski slope in
winter, and a golf
course in the summer.
The centre of town is
the small “marina vil-
lage,” like a very, very
miniature version of Copenhagen’s
Nyhavn, with brightly colored res-
taurants, and outdoor seating fac-
ing a decorative array of small craft
at anchor. Continue west and south
down the other side of the Trölls-
kagi and eventually you’ll find the
historic trade and religious centres
of Hofsos and Hólar before you hit
Skagafjörður and, eventually, rejoin
the Ring Road. But I’m afraid I can’t
say any more than that—I’ve never
been there. And yes, I do wonder
what’s down that way.
SHARE & PHOTO GALLERY:
gpv.is/nor06
North (The Rush Is On) Distance from Reykjavík438 kmHow to get thereFollow Route One to Akureyri, then turn northwards to Siglufjörður.
“Is that… a
ski jump?
Reader, I’m
pretty sure
it’s a ski
jump.”
46 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 06 — 2017
Kaffihús Bakkabræðra
Peaceful Hjalteyri