Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.10.2018, Blaðsíða 46

The more miles I log on Iceland’s
country roads, absorbing each land-
scape as it melts into the next, the
more I find myself grasping for a
vocabulary, an idiom, a metaphor
to convey how each mountain, cliff,
and waterfall fits into the grand,
immersive masterwork of the Ice-
landic wild. Waking up on the is-
land’s east coast, after a slow, steady
slog across the moors, farmlands,
and glacial floodplains of the south,
I scrutinise the eastern mountains
of Berufjörður: layers upon layers
of grey-brown rock, each narrow-
er than the one beneath, but just
as tall. Immediately, and without
imaginative intervention, they seem
like massive steps, hewn in metic-
ulously even intervals to allow an
easy ascent—but for whom?
In early medieval Britain, the An-
glo-Saxons surmised that only an-
cient giants could have wrought the
Neolithic monuments and Roman
masonry they encountered in their
new home. Here in Berufjörður, the
uncanny familiarity of these geo-
logical forms conjures up images
of giants larger and older than the
Anglo-Saxons could have dreamt of.
This pre-coffee reverie leads me to
the metaphor I’ve been seeking: Ice-
land, it turns out, is the crumbling
ruin of a sprawling titan metropo-
lis; each district has a unique archi-
tectural f lavour, changing gradu-
ally or suddenly into the style of the
next. It appears the giants of the
East Fjords, like the Pre-Columbian
Maya, had a thing for steps.
It’s easy to lapse into such fan-
tasies while traveling in the east.
Unlike the south, where crowded
ca r pa rk s ma rk the presence of
something spectacular, few visitors
and tourist facilities tether the east
to the banal realities of Iceland’s
tourism moment. At times, there
are more reindeer grazing alongside
Route One than cars winding down
it. Although towns dot the coast, jut-
ting out on peninsulas or nestled
within fjords, the feeling of remote-
ness is difficult to shake; it’s about
as far as one can drive from the cafés
and clubs of 101 Reykjavík.
An unexpected refuge
It’s all the more surprising, there-
fore, to discover Havarí, a hostel,
music venue, and vegetarian café
housed in a repurposed sheep barn
between Djúpivogur and Breiðdals-
v í k . Sv av a r Pét u r Eystei n sson,
known to Icelandic music fans as
Prins Póló, and his wife Berglind
Häsler bought the farm in 2014 and
gradually converted it into a cultur-
al and culinary waystation in the
middle of nowhere. The couple had
already begun flirting with agrar-
ian ambitions in 2013 when they
started producing Bulsur—vegan
sausages concocted from organic
grains, beans and seeds grown in
the east. Having spent most of their
lives in Reykjavík, they knew, more
or less, what the future would look
like there. ‘We wanted to see what
would happen if we tried something
completely different,’ Svavar tells
me over breakfast at the café. The
fare—an omelet alongside a grilled
cheese sandwich stuffed with flat-
tened Bulsur—is a welcome depar-
ture from the pyslur and potato
chips that punctuated the previous
day’s journey from Reykjavík.
The café occupies one corner of
Havarí’s concert venue—a taste-
fully sparse hall, decorated with
paintings that feature Prins Póló’s
signature crown. ‘Is it too late for
coffee?’ asks the text on the paint-
ings; it ’s just gone 10 and the an-
swer is unequivocally, ‘No.’ At the
other end of the hall is the stage,
graced this summer by numerous
Reykjavík acts—FM Belfast, Sóley,
and Úlfur Úlfur, to name a few.
Packing the house has hardly been
an issue for Svavar. The audiences
mostly comprise Icelanders from
near and far, he says, but some for-
eign visitors—unsuspecting guests
at Havarí’s hostel—find themselves
dumbstruck to have stumbled upon
such vibrant events this far from
any city.
Like the venue, the hostel is styl-
ish ly spartan: exposed concrete
betrays the building’s past life as a
sheep enclosure. Cosy rooms—pri-
vate and shared—open onto a com-
munal hall with tables and a small
kitchen. Gender-neutral bathrooms
and a neatly organised system for
compost and recycling quietly and
unpretentiously attest to a spirit of
inclusivity and sustainability. It ’s
a warm, peaceful haven, pregnant
with social and cultural possibili-
ties amidst the isolation of Iceland’s
eastern coast. By the same virtue,
it ’s also a perfect place to launch
headlong and alone into the wilder-
ness that encompasses it.
Bygone giants
My first stop, l ike Havarí, is an
anomaly in the landscape, albeit of
a geological sort. From afar, the Blue
Cliffs (Blábjörg) of Berufjörður seem
unremarkably grey. However, as I
near the small cliff wall, grey gives
way to a gentle blue hue. Fragments
of the same tuff lie scattered along
Travel
Distance from
Reykjavík:
651km

Accomidation
provided by:
havari.is
Car provided by:
gocarrental.is
How to get there:
Route One South,
all the way
46The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18— 2018
Antediluvian
Architecture
And Vegetarian
Sausage
A day’s jaunt in Berufjörður
Words & Photos: Eli Petzold
gpv.is/travel
Follow all our
travels Svavar, co-owner of Havarí and Prins of the eastThe cosy café at Havarí