The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2006, Qupperneq 27

Vol. 60 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
69
66 Degrees North
by Margaret Rice
“We really are down to our back-
packs,” I remember saying to my husband,
our suitcases stowed for the week by an
obliging hotel. Clad in hiking clothes suit-
able for all sorts of Icelandic weather, we
are choosing to spend our final few days in
the country on a whimsical journey to one
of the few places with which I have no
ancestral connection. Remote, rugged and
romantic, we want to see for ourselves the
place to which the elderly protagonists of
the celebrated Icelandic film, Children of
Nature, risk everything to return. Indeed,
the more I hear such words as “elemental”
and “inaccessible” used to describe the area
simply known as the West Fjords, the more
I yearn to go there too - a magical ending to
a marvelous month of travel in Iceland.
And now the taxi is collecting us in the
never-ending light of Icelandic summer
and, en route to the bus, the driver is laugh-
ingly convincing me that he and I are relat-
ed, reminding me how much I love being
part of one large ethnically connected fam-
ity-
A local bus from Reykjavik will get us
to the port of Stykkisholmur in just under
three hours. Meanwhile, the morning
begins to unfold like a series of ever-chang-
ing postcards. First, we share the Ring
Road, Iceland’s Route One, which circum-
navigates the country for its thousand
miles, with other traffic - cars, trucks, tour
buses - on a fairly busy stretch. This, after
all, is still the environs of the capital,
Reykjavik, the city where almost half of the
country’s 250,000 inhabitants live. Then, to
our right, the landmark Mount Esja, the
most conspicuous mountain in the capital
area, is briefly visible before we enter the
new four- mile tunnel under Hvalfjord
and, on exit, continue north of the fjord to
the next stop of significance, the town of
Borgarnes, gateway to the fabled
Snaefellnes peninsula immortalized by
Jules Verne. Here, as in so much of Iceland,
the countryside is rich in saga lore, but
today we are mindful of our different des-
tination, as, departing the Ring Road, the
bus rumbles west along the distinctly less
traveled Route 54. Now there are frequent
stops to fling down newspapers or parcels
at the side of the road where a sign names a
farm, and a single-lane dirt or gravel track
leads to it.
With just a glimpse of the area’s focal
point, the elegant and mystical Snaefells
glacier, we turn sharply north for the final
portion of our trip to Stykkisholmur. It
charms us to see Helgafell once more, the “
holy mountain” which only last week we
scaled in silence and upon whose summit,
in accordance with local legend, made our
three wishes. And then abruptly, we are
arriving; but not without incident. Our
backpacks are mysteriously missing from
the bus, and with them, we are alarmed to
realize, our airline tickets home. Calm is
restored, however, when it turns out that
our “luggage” has simply been put off in
error at the filling station back up the road.
So now we are free to enjoy a ten-
minute walk down the main street of the
town to the harbour. At the offices of
Saeferdir or Sea Tours, we purchase two
tickets on the ferry Baldur to take us across
what the map shows to be Iceland’s widest
fjord. The trip over Breidafjordur from
Stykkisholmur on Snaefellnes to the West
Fjords will take almost three hours, but the
day is a warm and sunny seventeen degrees,
and this journey by water rather than over-
land is essential if we are to capture the
spirit of the characters in the movie which
has inspired this expedition.
The ferry does not leave until four in
the afternoon, but, meanwhile, we are most
content to savor our surroundings. The
harbour is full of fishing boats with evoca-
tive names like Thorsunn and Grettir while