Iceland

Imagine an island in the North Atlantic, whose center is Europe’s largest glacier, where roads end at waterfalls cascading down volcanic mountains, where millions of birds nest, where a belief in magic goes hand-in-hand with a nearly 100 percent literacy rate, where the people can trace their family trees back 1000 years to the Vikings who wrote and starred in the ancient sagas-- and you have a glimpse of Iceland.

The first time I visited Iceland, I was almost 30 and accompanied by my husband and two children, then 18 months and 5 and a half years old. We were on an Icelandic Airlines layover, and in those few days, I fell for the country’s geological charms. This time I am returning alone, my children grown, my marriage a roiling sea, hoping that this island’s wild beauty might soothe my confused and desolate heart.

My first stop after arrival is the Blue Lagoon, a man-made pool of mineral-rich milky blue water, located in the dark, lunar-like hills near the international airport at Keflavik. The sensation of soaking up to my neck in warm water as the cool summer breeze ruffles my hair is exquisite. The sensual delight deepens into profound relaxation as one of the swimsuit-clad masseuses kneads my tired shoulder muscles, while I lie on a floating mattress.

The stress of the flight having melted away, I continue driving the rental car into downtown Reykjavik, to the hostel on a quiet street where I have booked a room. A basement room as it turns out, with casement windows and white stucco walls. The colorful timber houses in this part of town remind me of the houses my children used to make from Lego blocks. I vividly remember walking through a similar neighborhood on another misty summer evening with my young family. Then as now, clouds scuttled across the sky and the sound of seagulls pierced the air. Hoping to distract myself from the swell of melancholy, I walk along the pedestrian-only main shopping street, stopping to browse in a bookstore. Upstairs, I find a café with deliciously moist cakes, fruit teas and strong coffee, and magazines to peruse in both English and Icelandic. Most of the books on the second floor are in English, Iceland’s second language, a good many of them imported from England. Although several of the dozens of British cookbooks look tempting, the prices are on the high side. I do, however, buy a small book of gorgeous photographs of the island as a souvenir.

By this time, I’m ravenous. On that first trip, we ate at the Hard Rock Café, which had just opened a Reykjavik branch, where I had a plate of grilled salmon that tasted amazingly fresh, as though it had just been caught. I have eaten quite a few salmon over the years, but that was perhaps the best, the freshest. Tonight, I pass a quaint restaurant with puffin on the menu and go inside for a lackadaisical lobster dinner. (Puffins are too cute to eat if there are other options.) Next trip, I will go straight for the Italian restaurant and order spaghetti Bolognese.

Despite the jetlag, I sleep most of the night. Like most lodgings in Scandinavia, the hostel offers a hearty breakfast buffet of cold cereals, yogurt, boiled eggs and sandwich fixings: breads, cheeses, pickled fish, ham, and sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers, along with strong coffee, black tea, milk and orange juice. I toast a slice of rye bread, spread orange marmalade on one side, top it with mild cheese and cucumber slices and eat it between sips of tea. The sky is bright but cloudy, and I wish that I had brought a warmer sweater. If I decide that I need one, at least I am in the right place to purchase one; sweaters seems to be one of the country’s major products, judging from the plethora available in the shops on the main street.

The first time I came to Iceland, I was the only one in the family who didn’t get an Icelandic sweater. Instead, I was cold, rationalizing my choice not to take care of myself by telling myself that I wouldn’t have any use for it back in Los Angeles. Later back home, I had to cajole the kids to put on their itchy woolen pullovers and caps to pose for that year’s Christmas card photo.

After breakfast, I stretch my legs with another stroll around downtown, then drive northeast out of town towards an area that tour operators have named, “The Golden Circle.” Not that this place is teeming with tourists. In less than an hour of leaving the capital, I am in a landscape with few signs of human habitation. There are no billboards, no electrical towers or telephone poles, no factories, farms or houses, no barbed wire fences, no sheep. Only the mountain rising to my left, the road beneath me and the occasional passing car. The only other sign of life is the odd Icelandic horse, singly or in pairs. Short enough to qualify as ponies but stout enough to carry an armed Viking, these animals have a unique gait, called a tolt. Since my first trip, I have secretly dreamed of taking a pony trek into the island’s glacial interior, but the only move I’ve made in that direction was one summer’s worth of riding lessons, nearly a decade ago now.

In earlier centuries, Icelanders rode their ponies every two years to Thingvellir, a plain that includes the continental divide, for the Althing, the world’s oldest continuous parliament. Not only were laws passed at the Althing but also grievances were aired, cases tried and judgments carried out. As I walk the trail alongside the meadow of Thingvellir National Park, I try to imagine what it must have looked like with crowds of men and women, horses and tents. Off the main walkway, I detour to two small pools where women accused of witchcraft were drowned and pay my respects to these victims.

Not only is this plain a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is also where the tectonic plates beneath of continents of North America and Europe meet—and slide. No wonder there are so many earthquakes here. Walking under the shadow of the ridge of black rock, I remember one night during that earlier trip when we were staying in a tiny cabin a quarter-mile from the nearest farm-house, off a dirt road between the sea and a dormant volcano, and how I was too afraid to light the propane heater after an earthquake visibly shook the bunk beds. That night I understood intuitively how Icelanders could still believe in magic.

Leaving Thingvellir, I drive towards Geysir, the geological wonder after which all others geysers are named. In a field pocked with bubbling hot pots, Geysir sends a burst of hot water into the air at regular intervals. Nearby is Gullfoss, a huge double waterfall. On this cloudy summer day, there are a couple of dozen visitors wandering the path between these two, eating ice cream or a lamb sandwich (slices of lamb on soft flatbread, this is Icelandic fast food) bought at the kiosk. Inside the visitor’s center, another ten or 12 people browse the racks of Icelandic woolens or the shelves of books and tchotchkes.

On my first trip here, there was no visitor center and, on that late August day at the very end of the tourist season, no other tourists. Having been to Niagara Falls with its masses of visitors, shops and tour boats, I was stunned by the contrast. Not only were there no other people, stores, or boat rides, there wasn’t even a guardrail between the dirt path that ended in a rocky shelf and the edge of the falls. It was just the four of us and the roar of the falling water. There was a lone marker, a stone plinth with a engraving of Sigríður Tómasdóttir, a local woman who in the 1920s fought to save the falls from being dammed for hydropower. I took a photo of my little daughter, dressed in pink Icelandic sweater and cap, standing in front of the marker, and one of my son with his father behind him on the edge of the falls. Seeing these places again, I feel the bittersweetness of nostalgia and melancholy at the passing of time wash over me.

On the way back. I stop for a bit at Thingvellir Lake to sip some hot tea from a thermos cup and nibble on my lamb sandwich as I look out on this placid deep blue lake in the harsh hills, and the grass and tiny wildflowers at my feet, soaking in the serenity of nature and her healing power. I know that I will return here again another year, and that I will be yet again changed and the same.