Iceland

One dusky evening in November, I found myself in New York's John F. Kennedy airport, set to take a flight to the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik. I was returning to India after a year of official work in the United States and had staggered my trip to see this Arctic land of geysers and glaciers.

My Iceland Air flight landed at Keflavik airport in Reykjavik at 6.30 in the morning. As I emerged out of the airport into the icy dawn, I had a distinct otherworldly feeling. Ice-covered mountains greeted me in the distance. There was hardly anything or anyone anywhere. I realised why NASA had chosen one of the mountains in Iceland for practising for the moon voyages.

Keflavik airport is 55 kilometres southwest of Reykjavik. The word Reykjavik means the city of smoking hot springs. Natural hot water provides Reykjavik with most of its heating, while geothermal power provides electricity to the residents. Iceland is around half the size of Karnataka, but has only a population of 2.5 lakhs, which is 4 percent of the population of Bangalore. Half the country's population live in Reykjavik, the most northerly capital in the world.

I caught a bus to the city and requested the driver to drop me near the Youth Hostel. Since this was not the tourist season, the hostel was maintaining only two rooms -- one for men and the other for the fairer sex. Each room had four triple-decker beds. My roommates were young men from different countries one was from Canada, one from Poland and two were from South America. The Canadian belonged to a rich family, but had caught the wanderlust. He claimed he was making a living out of travelling the world and accumulating a huge database of people and their skills. The Polish youth was working in one of the nearby islands in the fishing mechanics industry and was now in Reykjavik en-route a trip to his native Poland.

There was a girl from Toronto in the ladies room, who was of Finnish origin. She was travelling to all Scandinavian countries making a documentary film about city life in Scandinavian towns. She said that, while there were a lot of documentaries on natural beauty, there were not many films on urban life in Scandinavia. There was another lady who had come to Iceland to find the viability of an exports business. She wanted to explore the market in Iceland for handicraft that she made at her house in the United States. Another occupant was an Icelandic artist settled in the United States. She was in Iceland to record the sounds and sights of various geysers and render a software model for one of her projects. An astonishing number of young people in the west who have artistic inclinations adventurously venture out to make a living out of the things that they enjoy doing.

The nice thing about Youth Hostels is that one gets to meet a lot of friendly, talkative and eager people from diverse backgrounds. Everything is done in a spirit of sharing. One can even make food in the shared kitchen. The stay is affordable for budget travellers like myself.

The hostel was on the outskirts of the city. I had equipped myself with a map of the city and had also learnt a few words of Icelandic. My Canadian roommate taught me the bus numbers and bus routes. I walked from the hostel towards the nearest bus stop. The majestic mount Esja loomed in the distance. It was winter and the temperature was close to freezing point. In winter, the sun emerges over the horizon only for a few hours. The reverse is true in summer, when the sun is visible even at midnight.

There were few people on the roads understandable, given the size of the population and the fact that it was winter and not the tourist season. The city centre is called Laekjartorg. The road in front of the city square is a walkway that comes alive at night. South of Laekjartorg is a beautiful lake. The city hall is built partly on the lake. Across the city hall on the eastern side of the lake stands the National Art Gallery. The Parliament building is situated a few blocks north. On a bigger street called Sudurgata stand the buildings housing the University of Iceland.

On one street, I spotted a crowded Indian restaurant but could not see a single Indian inside. I requested a seat to the waiter, who was an Icelander. He politely told me that to eat there, one needed prior reservations. But there is always a reliable Plan B for a vegetarian anywhere in the world a Chinese restaurant. After wandering around till nightfall, I walked to the city bus station and caught a bus back to my hostel. At the hostel, everyone was sitting and chatting in the living room. After sometime, the Finnish girl went outside and called out that she could see the Auroras.

Auroras or Northern Lights occur at the earth's magnetic poles. They occur due to the interaction of the earth's magnetic fields with solar winds, a mixture of charged particles blowing away from the sun. The electrical energy thus generated scatters around the earth's upper atmosphere. The colour of the Aurora depends on the strength of the solar wind, the atmospheric gas with which the interaction takes place and the altitude of the interaction.

The Auroras are normally sighted in Scandinavian countries, Alaska and Northern Canada. They are best viewed on dark nights, well away from city lights, that too only during winter when the sun is not present in the night sky. The Auroras started with a diffused glow followed by a large number of arc-like patterns that brightened and moved across the sky. The heavenly spectacle lasted for over an hour.

At night, I went out with my hostel roommates for a long walk, enjoying the icy ambience. I also tried some long exposure camera shots. Early next morning, I took a bus to the spectacular waterfall at Gullfoss, 125 kilometres northeast of Reykjavik. The bus travelled through the Icelandic countryside most of the way. The Atlantic Ocean was visible from many places en-route. The roads had poles erected every few metres. Drivers figure out the visibility in foggy weather by counting the number of poles that they can see. At one point, a mountain containing a dormant volcano was visible in the distance. On the way, many majestic horses could be seen in the countryside. Breeding horses and sheep is a major industry in Iceland. The horses found here are said to be of pure breed, preserved from medieval times. Hay making and fishing also contribute to the economy. Fishing is done mainly in the Vestmann islands, southeast of Reykjavik.

En-route to Gullfoss, which is less than two hundred miles from the Arctic circle, there was a glasshouse containing a wide variety of plant life. Once inside, it felt as if one was in a fertile tropical country. There were different kinds of flowers, fruits and vegetables. It is astounding how man has tamed nature and triumphed even in such an inhospitable terrain.

The gushing waterfall at Gullfoss on the Hvita River was surrounded by ice and snow in all directions. Though it seemed set in a white background, a photograph of the falls taken in summer that I had seen at the hostel looked set in a lush green background. One can get near the falls by treading cautiously through the surrounding ice-covered ridges.

On the way back from Gullfoss, I stopped at a place called Geysir. Geysir is a big field containing a bunch of hot springs. Every few minutes, some of these erupt, spraying hotwater high into the air. It is a wondrous sight, especially since the hot water eruptions take place in the midst of ice and snow.

My next stop from Geysir was Thingvellir. This is 50 kilometres east of Reykjavik and is the site of the Althing, the ancient parliament building of the world's first democracy.

Iceland was discovered around the year 800 AD by Irish explorers. The first settler in Iceland was Ingolfr Arnarson, who arrived in the year 874 AD. The settlers formed a democratic system of government with the Althing as the parliament. This continued for over three hundred years till Iceland came under Norwegian rule. Another hundred years later, Norway, along with Iceland, became united with Denmark. In 1904, Iceland earned home rule under Denmark. In 1940, when Denmark fell to Hitler's Germany, British troops occupied Iceland to prevent a possible German attack. In 1944, Iceland declared full independence at Thingvellir. The mid-Atlantic ridge that splits Iceland runs through Thingvellir. The fault line where the North American plate meets the Eurasian plate is visible as a long ridge running through a mountain.

The earth's surface is broken into seven large and several small moving plates, each around 50 miles thick. The plates move a few inches every year relative to each another. The plates either move towards each other (convergent), horizontally past each other (transform fault), or away from each other (divergent). Convergent continental plates create mountains (like the Himalayas, created by the convergent movement of the Indian and Eurasian plates). An example of a transform fault is the San Andreas Fault in the US where the North American plate slides against the Pacific plate. Los Angeles sits on the Pacific plate, while nearby San Francisco sits on the North American plate. Divergent plates create hot molten rocks, often creating volcanic activity. Iceland is at the boundary of two divergent plates the North American plate and the Eurasian plate. The resulting rift, called the mid-Atlantic rift, dissects the country. As a result, Iceland is one of the most active volcanic countries in the world and a natural laboratory for studying geology. Another divergent plate movement is the one that has separated Saudi Arabia from the rest of the African continent, resulting in the formation of the Red Sea.

At Thingvellir, one can walk though the ridge separating the North American and the Eurasian plates. At the end of the walk, the view was stunning. There was a body of water sparkling below the rugged ridges, with the Althing visible some distance away.

On the way back to Reykjavik, someone pointed out the small house of an Icelander who had won the Nobel prize for literature. Surprisingly in Iceland schools, Icelandic is the third language the first language is Danish and the second language is English. Icelandic language has terms even for words like 'computer' the first part of the equivalent word in Icelandic means 'numbers' and the latter part means 'oracle'! Education is mandatory in Iceland till the age of sixteen. Icelanders follow the custom of identifying themselves as the sons or daughters of their fathers. Peter's son will have his last name Petersson, while his daughter will have her last name, Petersdottir.

Iceland is one of the most expensive countries in Europe. Icelandic currency is called the Kroner (Ikr). At the time of my travel, around 70 Kroner was equivalent to a US dollar. Gasoline was costing around 90 Kroner a litre one and a half times the cost in India, and more than three times the cost in the United States. Diesel was costing 32 Kroner a litre. The bus at Keflavik airport charged 700 Kroner to cover the distance of 55 kilometres to Reykjavik. A plate of fried rice costed 850 Kroner at a Chinese restaurant.

The swimming pools in Reykjavik are naturally heated due to the heat in the earth's crust. I went to an open-air pool and found that 'heated' only means the temperature of the water is bearably cold compared to the negative temperature outside the water.

The next day was spent wandering around different parts of the city. Walking eastward past the domestic airport, one sees a beautiful building called the Pearl, which has become synonymous with Reykjavik. The view of the city from the top of this building is beautiful. The view of the domestic airport, situated by the side of the icy waters of the north Atlantic, is particularly awesome. The domestic carrier connects Reykjavik to Greenland and to other towns in Iceland. I watched the people on the streets till nightfall and returned to my hostel. Since I was leaving the country before day break the next day, I bid goodbye to all my hostel friends. My only hope of making it to the airport on time the following morning was a bus scheduled to stop in front of the hostel at 5 am. The bus arrived on time in the empty icy darkness. I was the only passenger on the bus.

My flight to India took me from a lonely world in the Arctics to an intense world near the Equator.