Fond but snarky review of visiting the only tourist destination at the arctic circle

Had a great visit to Iceland, a country of 400K nordic souls living mostly in the cold, dark, and wet island just East of Greenland. To my knowledge we have not threatened to seize it yet, fortunately. The country is mostly beautiful, as in, great mountains and natural and unusual features. Like lava caves, geysers, and active volcanoes. Great for nature enthusiasts and campers looking for an exotic place to pitch their tent, get dirty, and sleep on the cold hard ground. Visitors enjoy the excitment of potentially being personally involved in an eruption!

We chose a nice hotel.

Scenery in Iceland

We arrived in Iceland on a Thursday morning on the redeye. The airport is large for such a small country (400,000 souls, of which about 399,500 live in the area of the capital Reykjavic). Had the usual experience of getting a bus to the hotel, then FINDING the hotel from the bus stop. (No Uber or Lyft in Iceland) . For reasons unknown, the hotel we booked does not front on the street where is address is listed, nor is there any sign on said road. You have to wander around till you find the door BEHIND the building, on an alley Kuk!

In Iceland they speak an non updated version of Old Norse, e.g. what the Vikings have used since the Norwegians brought it over in 1000 AD. As such, no one else in the world has any idea how to speak this language. Point of fact, Icelanders refused to update their language when the Norwegians did so. Brilliant. Its like a code talkers rap. As a result, everyone has to learn English in school so they can communicate outside of their own citizenry. Brilliant work Icelanders! Also, they often communicate in Danish, under whose King the lived for centuries. He ran Norway too for a while. Who knew that the Scandinavians were so complicated? Really, why insist on learning 3 languages when 2 would suffice?

Listening to them yammer in Icelandic, they all sound like the Swedish baker in the old Muppet Show. I quote, “yahuda gluba gignafula yabba dabba duda hula”, which means, “shaddup and pass the haddock.”

Genuine Icelandic Cooking Show

The country was founded by a wayward Norwegian sailor (named Floki NundaFluudiHoody) who blundered into it on his way elsewhere. The news of the great farmland and warm temperatures (!) brought a flood…er..a trickle of other settlers. Note there were NO indiginous peoples there, except some Arctic foxes who got lost in 5000 bc or so. The only living beings were birds and the only signs of life, billboards touting the skills of personal injury lawyers.

The country sits at the joining of two continental shelves; the European and the American. As you may know, these move around and shift sometimes. When they do, molten lava rises up thru cracks and fissures, and voila! Lotsa dead residents, if in a populous place. Which fortuitously, Iceland is not. But, importantly for their tourist industry (the main employer outside of government) it also creates really amazing natural phenomena as previously mentioned.

I will relate the first day of our journey, a bus tour of the Golden Circle. Included in this is a stop at the GullFoss falls, which truly does rival Niagara Falls in its beauty. I highly recommend you see this. Be aware to get the obligatory close in shot on your iphone, its a very difficult trek over rocks and has steep stairs. You can’t be disabled and get close. Curiously you can book a tour which stops at a hydoponic tomato farm. You really can’t grow any veggies or other food in the cold climate there. So they grow their produce inside, powered and heated by thermal energy. See, its cheaper than importing tomatoes from Denmark; (doubtful) Sorry to say, I found this profoundly boring and did not deign to sample the tomato coffee at the snack bar. I recommend missing this unnatural phenomenon unless you are really into indoor growing.

Gullfoss Falls

I will end day one of this tour by saying the scenery alternates between bleak fields of rock, formed by the lava flowing from their volcanoes, and mountains formed from of rock, same. Curiously most of the mountains in Iceland are flat topped, because when the volcanoes erupted they ran into deep sheets of ice (glaciers) and they flowed sideways instead of up. There are a few trees and some scraggly grass, but overall much of the vistas reminded me of Arizona, or West Texas.

I will continue the gentle mocking and tourist info tomorrow or whenever I get around to it.