In 1864, German professor Otto Lidenbrock came into possession of an encrypted medieval manuscript. Lidenbrock devised a plan to lock himself, his nephew, and his maid inside his house, and starve them for two days until one of them cracked the code. The plan worked, and the medieval message turned out to be directions to a secret underground passage inside the Snæfellsjökull volcano.
Lidenbrock travelled to Iceland, descended into the volcano, and continued on to the centre of the Earth, where he encountered petrified trees, giant mushrooms, herds of dinosaurs, and a 12 foot tall prehistoric apeman.
The journey to the centre of the Earth took professor Lindenbrock several weeks, but we didn't have that many sandwiches, so we stayed on the surface and walked across the Snæfellsjökull lava field.
There were no dinosaurs. We did encounter a man looking for puffins, but I don’t think he found any.
At Hellnar there is a small cafe right by the ocean. We sat on the deck drinking tea from china cups and glowering at the German woman who had come outside to blow cigarette smoke at us.
We hated her, but she refused to acknowledge our glowering, so we finished our tea and went to look at the beach.
This cave was formed as successive layers of molten lava were cooled by successive waves from the Atlantic Ocean.
Bárðr Snæfellsáss arrived from the Atlantic Ocean. Bárðr was a Norwegian half man, half troll, and he emigrated here with his wife and daughters. He built a farm, fought a lot with his extended family, then walked up the mountain and vanished into the Snæfellsjökull ice cap.
He came back down the mountain now and again to rescue the locals from trouble makers. But he made no appearance in the 16th century when Hellnar was home to Iceland’s most notorious serial killer, Axlar-Björn, who ran a holiday home, and subsidised his income by murdering the guests with an axe and stealing their clothes, money, and horses.
Back at the apartment I stole one of the beers that the owners had left in the fridge. I don’t know what kind of beer it was. It poured a kind of dark orange colour, and it had quite a rich, malty caramel flavour. It was made by Kaldi, which was Iceland’s first microbrewery. They have a small Bar in Reykjavík. We looked through the window, but we didn’t go in.
We did go in Vínbúð, Iceland’s only liquor store. I got a replacement for the stolen Kaldi, and some bottles of Icelandic IPA and stout, because sometimes it’s wet and cold outside and you just want to stay in and cook pasta and watch 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. And drink beer.
The best of the bottled beers was Garún, an Imperial Stout by Borg Brugghús. Garún is the heroine of a folktale called Djákninn á Myrká - The Deacon of Dark River. She is haunted by the malevolent ghost of her dead boyfriend who tries to drag her into an open grave, but she escapes, and the ghost is eventually exorcised. Her real name is Guðrún, but the ghost keeps calling her Garún because the first part of her name Guð - is the Icelandic word for God, and in Iceland, ghosts can't say the word God.
I also had a smoked imperial stout called Lava by Olvisholt Brugghus, but I don't think I like smoked stout. Apparently it was inspired by Hekla, an active volcano visible from the brewery's front door.
Volcanoes heat 87% of the buildings in Iceland. Heating is cheap, and houses are warm, and the hot water contains large amounts of sulphur, so when you take a shower it smells like a room full of steamy fart.
If you don’t have a shower you can experience the same olfactory sensation by visiting Haukadalur, home of The Great Geysir, a hot spring that blasts boiling water 300 feet into the air.
Geysir has been erupting for 10,000 years, but not this year, so we went to see Strokkur, the geyser next door. Strokkur only spouts water 100 feet into the air, so it’s hard not to feel ripped off. But they have a big visitors centre and a nice restaurant with lots of cakes. nif asked jokingly if there was any vegan cake. The woman behind the counter said “Salad?”
The restaurant is themed around the Viking martial art of Glima, which is a bit like wrestling and a bit like grabbing your opponent by the underpants and giving him a violent wedgie while trying to maintain eye contact.
Geysir is part of the Golden Circle - a popular tourist route around the south of Iceland. It includes the Þingvellir rift valley which we went to earlier in the week, and the Gullfoss waterfall, which we went to next.
About a hundred years ago the British planned to dam Gulfoss and build a hydro-electric power plant there. Sigríður Tómasdóttir, a twelve year old girl determined to preserve the waterfall, walked 75 miles barefoot to Reykjavík to persuade the King to help her. Her story is told in the novel Gullfoss Legends by Billy Bob Buttons. She walked for two weeks through snow storms and deadly clouds of volcanic ash. She faced a scary wolf-man and a ruthless assassin called Scarecrow. Later she threatened to throw herself into the waterfall to save it from the British. Her persistence paid off, and the waterfall is now a state protected site.
There is a stone memorial to Tómasdóttir located above the falls. Her story is legendary, and almost completely untrue.
Gullfoss appears on the cover of the 1983 album Porcupine by gloomy British rock band Echo and the Bunnymen. They had originally planned to shoot photographs and music videos in Scotland, but there wasn’t enough snow in Scotland, so they went to Iceland. Q Magazine described the cover as “The epitome of rock band as heroic archetype – young men on some ill-defined but glorious mission, one easily as timeless as the stars and the sea."
The last stop on the Golden Circle is the Kerið explosion crater. It was formed about 6,500 years ago when the volcano erupted and then collapsed in on itself. Björk once performed a concert here, floating on a wooden platform in the middle of the lake.
Our next day in Reykjavik was known as Disappointing Sunday because all the museums and galleries we went to were mysteriously closed. It turned out to be Whit Sunday, which was when the Holy Ghost came down to amaze Jesus’ disciples seven weeks after Easter.
Fortunately, the bars were still open.
On Friday and Saturday night, Kaffibarinn is a trendy party venue for hip young people. On Sunday afternoon it was just us and a DJ having her photo taken for the newspaper.
Long-standing Icelandophile Damon Albarn of Blur used to be a regular here, and for a while he had a 1% stake in the company. The bar also features in the movie 101 Reykjavik, which I hear is quite good.
Lots of movies are made in Iceland. Filmmakers love the dramatically stark, other-wordy landscapes, and the generous production rebates. The ridiculous invisible car scene in the James Bond movie Die Another Day was filmed on the glacial lake, Jokulsarlon. They also filmed bits of A View to A Kill there. And Tomb Raider, and Batman Begins.
More recent movies shot in Iceland include Prometheus, Jupiter Ascending, Star Trek Into Darkness, Thor: The Dark World, Transformers: Age of Extinction, After Earth, Oblivion, Interstellar, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Russell Crowe was Noah on the black sand beaches of Vik.
Vik is the most Southernly town in Iceland. It lies beneath a glacier that sits on top of a volcano that last erupted in 1918. The next eruption is overdue, and when it happens it could melt enough glacier ice to trigger a flash flood and obliterate the entire town, except for the church.
Legend has it that these stacks of basalt rock in the sea are trolls who were caught in the dawn light and turned to stone.
Science has it that basalt rock is created by slowly cooling lava. The more slowly the lava cools, the more regular the columns of rock it creates.
Not far from Vik is the Skógafoss waterfall.
It is 200 feet to the top (up some steps), and if you keep going you'll eventually reach the Þórsmörk Valley.
The first Viking here was Prasi Porolfsson. He hid his chest of gold coins behind the Skógafoss waterfall. Years later someone found the treasure, but was only able to grasp a ring on the side of the chest before it disappeared again. The ring was put on the door of the local church, and is now a prize possession of the Skógar Folk Museum.
The museum has over 15,000 historic artefacts, most of them related to fishing.
A fisherman would stick a heron's claw in his boot when he went to sea, leaving the other claw at home to ensure his safe return. While he was out fishing, the claw in his boot would signal the presence of fish.
Baby boys were given their first milk through the hollow bone of a whooper swan, which was stuck through a fish bone. This ensured that they would never be sea-sick, and also that they would have beautiful singing voices.
The "Little Ice Age" of the 14th century led to a decline in agriculture in Iceland, and fish replaced wool as the country's main export. The English came over to argue about fishing rights, and they are still arguing.
In 1402 an English ship brought over the Black Death. Half the population of Iceland died. The country recovered, then in 1492 the Black Death hit once more, and the population was halved again.
My last bottle of Icelandic beer was a Black Death Baltic porter by Viking Brewery. It was originally banned in Iceland because of a message on the label encouraging people to "Drink In Peace." The ban was overturned when the state conceded that "Drink In Peace" is a positive message.
And then there were no more beers to drink, so we flew home.
