I am writing this after more than two months of me coming back from Iceland. I had started to write in Iceland but somehow it felt too detailed, something which Scandinavia is. Detailed yet to the point. Iceland though not a part of the Scandinavian peninsula is very close to what Scandinavia feels like. For me Scandinavia means Norway and thats the only reason I had put Iceland on the back bench since it began to surface in my mind.
‘The Northern Lights in Iceland’ read a Facebook post in September, and then whoever was posting those pictures posted a few more over the next week. Meanwhile my friends in Tromso, Norway posted their pictures of the lights and somehow it seemed like a showdown between Tromso, the official capital of the Northern Lights sighting on the planet to the entire Iceland, the new emerging sensation. I think somewhere in that period I clicked the ‘book’ button on the Air Iceland website.
For the first winter since 2011, I had done two back to back trips to North Norway and when I touched down at the Keflavik airport in Iceland at 1530 hrs, the total darkness was not a stranger. It was only when I saw the prices in the menu displayed outside the restaurants on the main street in Iceland did I completely felt like being in an extension of Norway.
The Continental Split between the Euro and North American plates. |
With no plan in my mind I woke up in my hostel bed on the first morning in Reykjavik. The coffee was free flowing in the hostel kitchen but my mind wasn't with any ideas of what to do in the 3 days I had allowed myself in Reykjavik. In those first few hours I was sure I was not going to come back here again and maybe was even telling myself, ‘relax this is a holiday and Norway is Norway’.
It took me 24 hours to go from ‘maybe not again’ to ‘have to come again’.
The cities are cities, maybe a Reykjavik or an Oslo, it is only when the raw power of nature overtakes the tar roads and man made buildings does a real country makes its presence felt. The North of Iceland and just 6 hours of travelling in it made me change my mind about Iceland. 6 hours full of geysers, mud sulphur pools, frozen waterfalls, and a hot pool in - 10 deg centigrade. But it is not the pure nature that helped me make my decision. It is the simplicity of its people too.
Like the ice-cream shop in Akureyri, still there as it was made in 1950’s, serving the locals and the house on the old street which has aged more than a 100 years and still stands with all its glimmer with the post christmas lighting, which they keep till the end of Feb. Electricity is virtually free and the surrounding dark, so wouldn’t.
When the waters are at +40 Deg C, the Air doesn't matter |
One of the many frozen Waterfalls in North Iceland |
I don't know when I will get back to this country again. A country where they say, “who needs hash, when we have ash’. Where the geo thermal activity makes it the most unique in Scandinavia, and its people who proudly display their ‘100% pure Icelandic’ tag are more friendlier than anywhere in Scandinavia.
Iceland, in winter and in summer I wish to come back to you. Right now I have just found you, there is still the discovering to be done.
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