Iceland is beyond comprehension. I like to think of myself as being very imaginative. I like to create little worlds in my head, the wackier the better, on a pretty regular basis as can be seen by my attempts at creative writing. My dreams are even more mental, the fanciful places my head takes me to couldn't be challenged by even the most Hunter S Thompson of acid trips. My imagination even breaks into the real world at times in the form of my habit of greatly over exaggerating even the most mundane stories, though this probably isn't something to brag about.
Despite all this I could never have even begun to imagine a place like Iceland. Not even in my most bizarre and thought provoking dreams could I have called up images like those I will carry in my head forever of the land of Fire and Ice. Even the most floral of exaggerations (which you may already think this is) cannot come close to creating the right impression of that small sub-arctic island. There are a lot of beautiful places in the world, I've even seen several, but I've never seen somewhere like Iceland.
Driving from Reykjavik into the countryside along the '1' road is my new happy place. Every hill you crest the entire car gasps. You can't not look, stare, ogle the view from the window, so much so that you need to stop and get out so as to a) appreciate it properly and b) avoid causing an accident because your focus is on the heartrendingly powerful landscape and not the insane bearded local in the jacked up six-wheeled truck. It is a beauty at every angle, at every dimension. In the foreground rocks the colour of obsidian hunker beneath one another, slightly aerated by tiny capillaries caused by their volcanic origins. A blanket of pale green and winter-breath-blue moss covers them, holding them snugly to the ground so that none of them can rear themselves too high. To the middle-distance harsh towers and pillars of stone spear up from the boulder fields, thrusting their granite selves out of the moss to act like obstinate teenagers, defying the elements that have carved their prehistoric surroundings down from around them. Then, towering over it all though is the far-distance. Where the stone towers are the rebellious youths, rising from the clouds behind them to loom in an awesome display of timeless gravitas are the snow capped mountains, the oldest generation, the Gods of Fire and Ice. The white of their crests is the most stark contrast to the black of the stone that surrounds them, their crowns showing their age and wisdom. Great rents in the ranges show where thousands of years ago one of their number would have violently torn themselves apart in smoke and flame and unparalleled natural rage. It is impossible not to stand in awestruck silence.
That is until you realise that the road crests again a little further up.
Then it is excitement and exhilaration once more as the car climbs the slope, (if you're particularly romantic then playing suitably emotional music at this point is a sure fire way to stoke the emotions). Upon cresting the next slope your breath catches once more.
Gone are the rock fields and the stone towers, as this time you are faced with a carpet of white. Knee deep snow envelops every square inch of land between you and the ever present mountains. As far as you can see it is perfectly mirror flat white and the temperature is somehow ten degrees lower, despite having only travelled about 200 metres. Impossibly, however, half of this snow blasted vista is also on fire. Great pillars of steam and smoke rise from the ground as though a family of ancient dragons slumber just beneath the ice.
There aren't enough adjectives. There isn't enough exaggeration. There isn't a collection of phrases, metaphors or similes to gather that could do justice to the frozen world on fire. Standing amongst it is to disbelieve, to talk about it is to lie and to show a picture is to reduce it to a fraction of its awe. This may sound like nothing but hyperbole, the talk of a creative writing major at a third rate polytechnic though if you've been there you know. On every level Iceland defies belief.
Several times as we drove though the frozen lanes of the 1 road, the improbable landscapes slipping by, I noticed in my capacity as navigator that one of our drivers would be grinning from ear to ear. Not at a joke, not at anything in particular, simply at the brilliance of being in that place. The power of what we saw was indisputable and to be travelling through it was to be blessed, not in a religious way but by a grace of fortune that brought us to that moment, to that particular song that worked so well with those friends and those surroundings.
Walking along a black sand beach whilst the sun set behind Eyjafjallajökull volcano (yes that Eyjafjallajökull volcano), gin and tonic in one hand, mostly useless camera in the other I even had a moment myself. We had seen waterfalls that had defied imagination in the morning, stood under them, behind them and even through one. We had climbed the side of a volcano to get a view of the Skogafoss cascade which lead down to the sea glistening in the cold spring sun. We had driven across scrub and rock strewn planes, through drifting snow banks in our tiny hatchback car, down deep gorges and across high plateaus. Now I was standing on a beach the colour of an eclipse, with sand more fine than the purest silica of the Maldives reflecting the last sunlight like speckled stars, the cliff faces of towering black basalt columns looming behind me. I'll admit it, I felt a tear hot on my wind and ice blasted face. It had quite simply been one of the best days in my entire life. Not because of some life changing event, some earth shattering epiphany or in fact any specific reason I could lay my hand on. It was just all of it, every moment of the trip and the knowledge of more moments to still come. I'll remember it forever, standing amongst the stars and grinning at an angry sea.
Takk Fyrir.
Click the image to see the Iceland photography post.