It was dark when we arrived, and the fields of black lava were covered with snow from the largest snowfall ever recorded there. My two sisters and I had discussed taking a holiday together for years. With the clock ticking faster now, we figured we’d better do it soon and chose Iceland in February/early March. We drank coffee at the airport after getting our passports stamped at 4:25 a.m. and, as first light appeared on the eastern (polar) horizon, we walked into the cold air to find our ride to the Blue Lagoon. An hour later, after driving from nowhere to nowhere, snow covering all, I stood shivering in my old black bathing suit on a ramp. It was 28 ° (-2.22° celsius) and freezing breezes rippled across my skin. I knew I wouldn’t/couldn’t take the plunge, but siting my sister’s much-loved faces, knowing this was the real start to a holiday that would come but once, that I was the big sister, once gutsy, once a trailblazer, I dashed toward the rising mist under which lay soft iridescent blue waters, 99° (37.222° celsius) giving off an eerie sulfur hue.
Sinking up to my neck, warmth spread, even enfolding my exposed face, though it tingled slightly. I could have stayed there for the rest of my life. [Blue Lagoon on a Winter Day] And so I (we) floated, swam, paddled amidst rising mist and beyond. Louis MacNeice wrote in Letters From Iceland in 1936:
Holidays should be like this
Free from over-emphasis
Time for soul to stretch and spit
Before the world comes back on it.
And how! This one it! Out of normal time and place, our stay might have been an eternity, a month, a year, or one long day. Our other lives (our poisoned homeland) seemed unconnected to this timeless sojourn with its unusual, treeless, snow-blanketed landscape. For our pleasure were the mystical Northern Lights, geyser’s with erupting waterspouts, a galloping waterfall, quiet volcanos, a spectacular site where in 930 AD and afterwards laws were read, tribal chiefs and the entire population would gather. We viewed the flowing stream into which women convicted of something were flung to drown. (Convicted men were beheaded, we learned.) Our thorough guide Hermann – see below with my sisters – seemed to know everything there was to know.We spent an entire day together – never rushed, never overwhelmed – while Hermann gently explained, answered all questions completely, left us alone in silence for our own reveries. (I fell a little bit in love with Hermann, here was someone I should have encountered oh … twenty years ago.)
Yes, our troubled homeland felt far away, had no connection to this decent, clean, sane, compassionate nation of barely 330,000 folks, all of whom have healthcare, free education, gender equality including gender pay equality. Louis MacNeice’s Icelandic travel poem continues:
So I write these lines for you
Who have felt the death wish too,
But your lust for life prevails –
Drinking coffee, telling tales.
Our prerogatives as (wo)men
Will be cancelled who knows when;
Still I drink your health before
The gun-butt raps upon the door.
And it was so. Our ‘lust for life prevailed’ as the long days/nights stretched and stretched ahead without punctuation. We ate what the Vikings once ate: fresh fish, skyr, potatoes. We skipped dried fish as I’d read W.H. Auden’s comment (also from Letters From Iceland): ‘Dried fish … should be shredded with the fingers and eaten with butter. It varies in toughness. The tougher kind tastes like toe-nails, and the softer kind like the skin off the soles of one’s feet.’
Also skipped: Fermented shark, jellied sheep’s head, smoked Puffin though it’s supposed to taste like pastrami. In Iceland, though we barely saw nor tasted a vegetable, we loved every bite of food eaten, every careful step taken on slippery snowed-on roads and paths. Before departing, we siblings left a bit of our hearts along with our shadows there frozen evermore in time beside a gyser then flew back to hang up our watch caps and gloves and bend our necks into the pelt of the falling “hard rains.”
The highlight was when I flew back to Reykjavik from Akureyri our little plane cast a shadow on the vast plane of snow underneath all the time. Iceland is special. it makes depression and loneliness feel good.
The highlight was when I flew back to Reykjavik from Akureyri our little plane cast a shadow on the vast plane of snow underneath all the time. Iceland is special. it makes depression feel good.
Never a dull thought, Leslie. Many thanks for your comments. One and All.
This peek at your getaway is a gem. Loved it from start to its heartfelt finish.
Thanks Alice. Wish you were with us.
So beautiful, and all true. I was there!
And how !!!
SO HAPPY for you all 3—individually, and joined at the hip, for the adventure of a lifetime!!
We each have our own paradise and perhaps, through a miracle, that is where we land when we shed our bodies. The Blue Lagoon it seems is your Gan Eden. _Hanne
Some will always have Paris. We’ll always have the Blue Lagoon.
Yes, perfect, timeless, primal. Treasured time with my beloved sisters. Long awaited and worth the wait. Till next time…Thank you, my dears.
Three cheers for us !
Dear Alison, I would love to read a book-long travel diary of your trip to Iceland! Cheers, Bernd
Food for thought. Greetings.
Great description, Alison!
We DID eat a bit of fermented shark (tastes a little like a urinal might…), and had similar wonderful reactions to the Iceland experience.
I would further recommend going to one of the local pool/spa/hot bath places in Rejkyavik… (sp…??). It is free to seniors and it’s a fun place to hang with the locals!
Also, we went sea swimming…hit the North Atlantic for as long as possible (about 1-6 minutes for me) then lounge on the beach with Icelanders in the hot mineral water troughs where people are gossiping and discussing politics and hanging out and yukking it up!
Thanks for this…you are the greatest!
Only you, Phil, would swim in the sea. You’re one of a kind. Thanks for writing.
As MacNeice described “free from over-emphasis”, so did you here. Makes one really really want to make the trip which has been a dream of mine, it’s such a musical center these days too, along with the fiords or Norway. Such happy thoughts and love to both the sisters, beautiful women all three of you.
You must go!
And, the best tea on the planet! Robert and I were in the country for a few days, mostly urban, but it was a fantastic, gentle place of sanity. Jobs for everyone, including the job of child care which is government financed. The site of a young worker with six chubby babies on a cart, tooling through downtown Reykjavik as the wee ones got gurgles of love from everyone. It was a revelation.
LU. Great post
LU too, my friend.
Thank you for sharing your amazing experience with those of us who have never been there. You made it vivid and real and for a little while took us away from the ordinary. Love you.
Many thanks Roberta. I always appreciate your comments. Much love.
Beautiful Alideero. I will be travelling with my 4 sisters in October.
Oh my Gerry. Happy travels.
“our troubled homeland felt far away, had no connection to this decent, clean, sane, compassionate nation of barely 330,000 folks, all of whom had healthcare, free education, gender equality including gender pay equality.”
A Canadian friend sent me a quote from your Icelandic Journey. Your love for one another is as soothing to my soul as your descriptive narrative of beauty and peace.
Many thanks.
Oh I’m smiling and living vicariously with your delicious descriptions!
Loved reading this and imagining your joy in being away together.
Love to you 3 special ones
Loved reading this and imagining your joy in being together
Love to you 3 special beings
Just for a brief moment as I read it , I too , got a refreshing of my soul . Thanks
Just lovely!
Dear Alison.
My name is Bart. We met in Iceland, do you remember? I was there with my younger brother and aunt, who took us on this journey. When we met I made a promise to one of your sisters; I will vote for the upcoming elections in the Netherlands. In exchange I received a hand-knitted cap. The elections were yesterday, and I made it to live up to my promise! The cap is really warm and cozy! Thank you very muts (dutch word for cap)
Succes Writing! Greetings from the Netherlands
OH BART !!! OF COURSE I REMEMBER. I’LL TELL MY SISTERS ABOUT YOUR NOTE. WONDERFUL THAT YOU VOTED. HOPE YOUR CANDIDATE WON. ALL THE BEST,
ALISON (AND MAGGIE AND NANCY)
a perfect description, Alison, delicious like all your writing. Great quotes from MacNiece, and Auden, author of Letters from Iceland, which I read a bit before going, and the Blue Lagoon, what an experience, just as you say, you sink in and never want to leave. A lovely land and antidote to the ills
our country is suffering now.
Thanks so much for your comment, dear Jill. I can see you floating by in the Blue Lagoon.
“Your lust for life prevails.” Always delighted and inspired by you, dear Ali. The images (written and photographed) are lovely; and WOW the plunge was amazing! Did you really do that?
Sylvia, Sylvia. Indeed, lust in general remains. The answer is yes. I/we really did it all. I suggest it to you and Peter. A blissful respite from this cruel moment.
I’m so glad you finally got to see the Northern Lights. Remember the time you came all the way up here – hundreds of kms north of the Arctic Circle – to see them and it remained overcast for the duration of your visit? You were only here for two or three (four?) days and each evening I went to sleep mumbling, “Please let the sky clear, please let the sky clear, please let the sky clear tomorrow so Alison can see the Northern Lights!” From my lips to no one’s ears. But you’ve seen them now!
Yes I remember. And … am planning on coming back for a second try up there in your heavenly outpost in Norway. Hope I’m invited.
Any time.