Iceland review - 2013, Side 45

ICELAND REVIEW 43
in the photo, I’m an early 70s me: dark hair in
sausage curls, wearing a long white dress. My
date Bill is handsome in a blue crushed-velvet
tuxedo. This was Catholic Central High School’s
Junior Prom, whose theme was ‘Imagine’ after the
John Lennon song. It reflected the hope that seemed
everywhere around us in those halcyon days.
Now, almost four decades later, I was going to
visit Viðey Island’s Imagine Peace Tower. Built by
Yoko Ono in remembrance of John Lennon, it’s a
seven-minute boat ride from the Sundahöfn har-
bor in Reykjavík. On the city bus I met two other
Americans from Oregon, and together we went to
find the Viðey ferry. With our tickets, we walked
down a nearby ramp to the ferry, a small fishing boat
for ten to 15 foot passengers. That day the sea was
calm; skies were overcast with a slight breeze as we
chugged pleasantly onward to Viðey. Once there, we
walked past the island’s café inside a stone building,
originally the home of Skúli Magnússon, the first
Icelandic governor general, representing the Danish
King in Iceland.
There’s nearly seven km (4.5 miles) of hiking
paths on Viðey, which can be walked in an hour
or two, but we headed left on the trail down to
the Imagine Peace Tower. The tower’s light is illu-
minated each year from John Lennon’s birthday,
October 9, until the date of his death, December 8,
and at several other times during the year. I once saw
the light from Hallgrímskirkja church on the top of
the Skólavörðustígur street. A single beam of bluish
light shone directly up into the night sky, seeming
to connect heaven to earth. However, that day on
Viðey we only saw the tower itself, a round structure
on a platform. Described as a ‘wishing well’ in shape,
from a distance the Imagine Peace Tower looks like a
giant white aspirin tablet sitting on the earth.
Every year from October 9 to December 8, Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Tower
shines a light from the Icelandic island of Viðey in honor of her love for
John Lennon and wish for world peace.
imagine viðey
BY deB sMitH
PHOTO BY PÁLL stefÁnsson