(10:15 a.m. PDT, 5:15 p.m in Reykjavik)
Today’s our last day in Reykjavik. We leave early tomorrow morning for four nights in Bergen, Norway, before heading on to Oslo. I feel as if we’ve been Iceland long enough to fall in love with the place. It’s quirky, iconoclastic, and as beautiful as the day is long. Yesterday we drove most of the Golden Circle, hitting Thingvellir National Park, Geysir, and Gullfoss before setting off on our own to Seljanlandfoss and Solheimajokull on the southern coast.
Much of the country resembles a moonscape, which makes sense when you consider the amount of recent volcanic activity that’s still ongoing. This is a landscape in the process of being constantly destroyed, reshaped, and rebuilt. One of the amazing things about Iceland (besides the fact that more than half the population believes in elves) is that volcanoes and glaciers exist in very close proximity to one another. Iceland has been called the land of fire and ice, and you really don’t have to go far to find either, nor do you have to travel far to find evidence of significant and often violent geological events. At Thingvellir, we walked through a volcanic rift that runs along a fault line that bisects Iceland. Turns out this isn’t a place where things hold still for very long, at least in historical terms.
Aside from the geological activity, we came almost halfway around the world to discover that the best hot dogs aren’t in fact to be found in the U.S., but rather here in Iceland, where people still talk about Bill Clinton eating at Baejarins. You’ll just have to trust me on this one, because it’s true. I also learned from watching the people here and reading about Iceland in some detail that it’s entirely possible to get along and create a functional and polite society without having to be armed to the teeth. There’s a lesson in there we could stand to learn in America…which I fear won’t happen until I discover a cure for cancer. Don’t hold your breath on either account.
Oh, and don’t get me started on our trip to the Iceland Phallological Museum this afternoon….
