Wandering jet lagged through a foreign city, cool wind and warm sunlight, written words that could have come from a fairy land, more like sigils than language ...
On the bus, passing through a long tunnel under a fjord, a long narrow corridor of concrete carved out under the crust of a volcanic land, aware of tectonic plates and magma and great pressures and the earth moving around us and we move through it ...
Rain streaming across the windows of the bus, the land outside sliding by us or us sliding through it, the land seemed to be moving as we stood still although the opposite was true, the rain wrapping us, cutting us off, travelling through a worm hole ...
A land of smoke and rain and mist and steam, steam white as cotton, drifting low over the earth, plumes of it wafting out of the earth out of rents in the earth, the breath of the planet, hot and white on the pale delicate dome of the sky ...
Black rock, black sound, black stones on the beach, gleaming on the beach, the waves sighing across them, the ancient susurrus of the ocean ...
Black stone formed from fire and earth, broken shards standing tall in the water, surf pounding the stone trying to further break it but smashing into foam as white and delicate as Irish lace, falling back to the sea, defeated ...
Drinking beer on the bus from tall cold cans, soft cheese and wheat bread and skyr, the food of the gods, flavoured with berries ...
Sky so blue it almost hurts the eyes streaked with delicate strands of white cloud arching high over sand a deep lambent gold fringed with tortured black rock, you feel it under your feet, the warmth, the heat of the heart of the planet, pulsing from somewhere deep below ...
The smell of this country is rotten eggs. Sulphur. Acid. Richness, fecundity, life, warmth, sharing the murky hot water with strangers who become familiar in this place, the environment, this shared ritual of the bath ...
Lava fields, miles and miles of them, low black ragged shapes covered in moss that is green with flashes of red going on forever outside the bus; through the window it's like it's flowing, like an ocean or a great green lake with black below, deep and bottomless going to the heart of the world ...
Long narrow vallies, incredibly green with giant fjords sprawling along their bottoms in some sinuous lazy fashion, giant bales of hay wrapped in white plastic, white blobs of sheep like tiny clouds pinned to the grass, wind moving through the long grass, undulating, and ever in the distance are mountains, frosted with white ...
Glaciers sprawl across this country, indolent and powerful like some kind of lazy gods, their waters feed the greeness of this land or their waters drown this land, the glaciers own this land, have formed this land, we travel along deep vallies that are the footprints of the glaciers, lakes that form perfect circles filled with flat water gleaming harder than any jewel ...
This is our bus, it is our home, at night we stay in little hotels all over the country but the bus is our home; Anna Laura is our mom she organizes our day and makes sure we're fed and wants us to learn and tells us when it's time to eat; Sigi is our uncle, he drives the bus for us, we like Uncle Sigi but we think we shouldn't give him the code to the lock on the beer fridge ...
These are the people on our bus: Canadians and Belgians and Australians, oh my!
This place is an island and therefore surrounded by water but it is a place affected by water in many other ways, the long salmon rivers fast and cold, the frozen water that floats as ice bergs in the lagoon, and of course the waterfalls that cut the stone that wear down the stone that break the land and fill it again with water ...
Horses. White and black and black & white and russet and gold with shaggy coats and long feral manes they move across the spines of the hills, sleep in the lee of the volcanic outcroppings, drink deep of the fast mountain streams, watch us as we watch them passing each other with only that contact ...
Every roadside diner at which we stop serves soup. It's good soup, Peasant soup, It's tasty and it's cheap. After the third day we stop eating the soup. Why? Every roadside diner at which we stop serves soup ...
The toilets in Europe don't flush with little handles. They flush with big push buttons on the top of the tank. If you want to confuse a European person, show him a handle ...
As the summer wears on the days here are getting longer. After a long day trekking through forests of volcanic rock and basking in waterfall spray Collette tries to stay up, poised in the window, camera in her hand, wanting to take a photo of the midnight sun ...
Skyr is the food of the gods. They say it is Icelandic yogurt. That is a ruse. It is a creamy rich orgasm inspiring gift of the gods. I love skyr. Skyr makes me nervous. Something this good, there has to be a catch ...
One of our tour mates is a doctor, his name is Mark. As we climb several hundred meters to view the ice cap in the thin air he quietly comes up beside Collette, hands behind his back, talking to her, watching her colour and her breathing but smiling softly and just walking with her ...
The sagas of Iceland are generally more realistic than other Viking saga's, not poetry but one of the earliest examples of something we would recognize as a novel. Many of them are family saga's or tales of accounting or legislation but still they fanciful and filled with magical characters. The sagas of Iceland are realistic. Puffins are fairy tales. Or clowns. With wings ...
I'm now scared of flying clowns ...
We see snow here on tops of mountains, in floating bergs, laying hundreds of meters thick across the backs of glaciers; it is striped from the ash of a recent volcanic disturbance, the same ash that filled the water pouring over the Dentifoss making it dun colored laced with foam ...
Iceland produces it's own beer, it has a couple of large commercial products like Viking and Egil (each come in a strong version that is always better) and a growing cottage beer industry that creates some very drinkable beers. From 1915 to 1989 beer was banned in Iceland. In the VJK lexicon that period of time is known as the Icelandic Dark Ages ...
We ate putrefied shark. That is shark that is hung in a shack, salted and allowed to rot. We ate it and we smiled. All that means: The guy who runs the shark museum is one scary old fisherman ...
Forests of stone. Cities of stone. All shapes and sizes, some surprising, groups and clusters then individual menhirs standing away from the rest as if leading the way, trailblazing, the stones moving as the thin crust of the earth moves under us ...
The most popular eating place in Iceland is a hot dog cart in Reykjavik ....
The hot dogs in Iceland are made of lamb meat ...
There is a town in northern Manitoba called Gimli, I've been there, it's a tough town. Gimli is a character in Lord of the Rings, he's a tough character. Gimli is an Icelandic surname. Our guide's grandfather heard of Gimli Manitoba because he liked the name, it means something positive. He found an old age home there in Manitoba and returned to Iceland and used it as a model for senior care. He was a tough man ...
Icelandic people are tough. They came a long way to find this island in the middle of Atlantic Ocean, glaciers and volcanoes and floods and earthquakes, no forests and decided what a lovely place to live. Several times their country has tried to kill all of them. For a long time Norway owned them. But here they stand, their own people in a place faraway, their own language their own horses their own sheep ...
A black furry dog with white flashes running on a long black sand beach with huge surf shattering just feet away from him ...
What does a tour bus smell like? Skyr and expectations ...
While in Iceland I did not hear one song by Bjork ...
The bus was our home, it took us to places we could hardly imagine. When I close my eyes, I'm still on the bus ...
In this video I tried to capture what Iceland feels like. Probably I failed. Oh well, we'll just have to go back there some day. The song is by the Icelandic band The Soul's Release
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