. Favourite Beer of the Week in Iceland - Part Two

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.

. Favourite Beer of the Week in Iceland - Part One

Except for a couple of Irish monks, Iceland was uninhabited until 874 AD, when it was colonised by disgruntled Norwegians.  

The Norwegians passed it on to the Danes, who ran the country into the ground, and were notorious drunks.

Iceland finally gained independence from Denmark about a hundred years ago.  The Danes were still drunk, "Drinking eight times as much alcohol per person on a yearly basis," according to historian Stefan Palsson.  So the newly independent Icelanders also banned alcohol, and beer was illegal in Iceland until 1989.

These days Iceland makes lots of beer, and since we were visiting I thought I would drink some.  I had a free one on the plane, but it turned out to be this boring lager from the Egill brewery in Reykjavík.

Egill was founded in 1913, and they continued making beer throughout Prohibition by selling it to British and American soldiers.  The brewery is named after Egill Skallagrímsson, the Viking poet and "adventurer."

Skallagrímsson composed his first poem at the age of three.  At the age of seven, another boy cheated at the game they were playing, so Egill got an axe and chopped open the boys head.  He continued killing people and writing poems for the rest of his life. Just before he died he buried his treasure near Mosfellsbær, then murdered the servant who helped him bury it.

Mosfellsbær is where Sigur Rós have their music studio, Sundlaugin, which means "the swimming pool," because that is what the building used to be.  Other Icelandic musicians who have recorded at Sundlaugin include Amiina, Múm, and Ólöf Arnalds, all available on CD at the airport.

Iceland’s Keflavík Airport looks like it was bought at Ikea.  It is clean and well organised, and all the sinks have built-in hand dryers, which on arrival seemed like a beautiful design concept from the future, although I couldn't figure out how to dry my hands without blowing foamy soap all over myself.

The only place you can shop for booze in Iceland is at Vínbúðin, a chain of 46 state-run liquor stores that are open for a couple of hours a day if you're lucky.  The one exception to this rule is the airport, where alcohol is readily available, tax and duty free.  For this reason there are more people in Baggage Claim with crates of beer than with luggage.

I was too tired to think about beer, so we exchanged some dollars for krónas and headed out to our rental car (with exorbitant sand and volcano ash insurance).  We made it about ten steps into the parking lot before pulling out all our fleece and wool things, because Iceland is brisk.

Our Airbnb apartment was in the middle of the Skolavorduholt neighbourhood of Reykjavík, which is where all the groovy bars, and restaurants, and sweater shops are.

There is good coffee at C is for Cookie, who have a genuine Italian man making the espresso, and Mokka Kaffi, who have booths, and beans so secret the staff don't know where they come from.

There are two local, mostly-vegan restaurants - Garðurinn, where everything is delicious, and Glo, where everything is also delicious, except for the chicken.  But they make up for it by having great window seats where you can sit and make fun of the other tourists.

There is also some good vegan carrot cake one block away at Cafe Babaloú.  But don't order a beer there because it's that horrible lager stuff again.

Also, why would you order beer with cake?  What is wrong with you?

At the weekend, Reykjavík is a bit of a party town, so we hit the bars on Monday afternoon.  

We went down the road to Ölstofan, which is a trendy dive bar.  I wanted to try a local IPA, but they had apparently just run out of it on draft, so I got this bottle.

Úlfur Úlfur is a Double IPA from Borg Brugghús, which means "City Brewery," and it was great — piny and hoppy.  Borg Brugghús was launched in 2010 by Egill Brewery who make the boring lager I had on the plane.  Borg make small batches of more interesting beers, and they are beginning to export to other countries.

nif wanted a whiskey, but apparently there is only one Icelandic whiskey, and whenever you ask anyone about it they pull a face, so she had this Japanese one instead.  It was very good.

Then we got tired and hungry and went back to the apartment.

The next day we drove an hour northeast of Reykjavík, to Þingvellir, which means "Parliament Plains," and is where the Icelandic government was established in 930 AD.

Þingvellir lies in a rift valley, which I think is like a fault line, where tectonic plates move around and cause earthquakes.  It is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Iceland, but it wasn't too busy when we went, possibly because it was cold and raining.  

In the olden days, Þingvellir was the centre of Icelandic culture.  Parliament was here, along with large gatherings of ordinary people who came to trade goods, share stories, and drink beer.

These days it's a National Park.  We strolled through the rift valley along the designated tourist boardwalk, which eventually turned into a regular walk.

We observed the evident fracturing of the earth's crust as the path steepened and the walk turned into a bit of a hike.

It stopped raining for a while, so we went off-road through a small pine grove and across the hillside to the middle of the park where we ate our expertly prepared (by me) sandwiches.

And then it totally poured down, so we trudged back to the visitors centre, paid 200 kr each to pee, and drove home to Reykjavík for a drink.

Mikkeller is a Danish microbrewery that collaborates with other breweries around the world to make very small batches of very tasty beer.  They operate bars in several cities, including one in San Francisco that I still haven't visited, although I did once loiter in the doorway to eat a falafel.

Their bar in Iceland is called Mikkeller & Friends.  It is on the third floor of a nice old building that was designed and built by Dr. Goðmundur Hannesson in 1910, and was later the home of Reykjavík's first X-ray clinic. 

There are 20 beers on tap.  We tried a couple of the Imperial Stouts — Man in the Moon and Cocoa Shake. Man in The Moon was the favourite.  

The next morning we attempted to get breakfast at The Laundromat Cafe because we wanted to try their famous Vegan Toast — grilled rye bread piled with hummus, roasted eggplant, greens, pine nuts, topped with beet and caramelized onion chutney.  

But apparently they don't make that until lunchtime, so we had two plates of bread and fruit and some disappointing coffee.  They are dead to us.

We walked through the Hólagallagarður Cemetery in the rain.  Hólagallagarður means "garden on a hill."  You don't see many trees in Iceland, but the 8 acre cemetery is full of birch and rowan.  And there's an endangered species of moss growing on the walls.

Hólagallagarður was opened in 1838, and the first person buried there was Guðrun Oddsdóttir.  This made her the cemetery's "guardian," responsible for watching over those arriving after.

Jón Suggurðson arrived in 1879.  He had been the hero of the Icelandic Independence movement who led the country to break ties with Denmark, and he is on the 500 króner bank note.

Other Icelandic bank notes feature the poet Jónas Hallgrímsson, and the seamstress Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir, who was considered "One of the finest marriageable women of her time."

We never saw a 2000 króner note while we were there, but it portrays Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval, a modernist landscape painter, considered one of the most important artists in Iceland's history.  Part of the Reykjavik Art Museum is named after him - Kjarvalsstadir.

The other part of the museum is called Asmunarsafn, after sculpter Ásmundur Sveinsson.

We went there and looked at the sculpture, and talked to the nice man who ran the place.  He told us how the museum used to be Sveinsson's home and studio, and later he taught us an Icelandic phrase useful when describing blizzards — "Vindrassgrat," which means "Wind's Asshole."

The word "Sauðárkrókur" means "Sheep river hook."  Sauðárkrókur is the biggest town in Northwest Iceland with a population of about 2,500 people.  The first settler in Sauðárkrókur arrived in 1871.  He was a blacksmith called Árni Árnason, and as well as blacksmithing he opened a bar, earning him the nickname Árni Vert, or "Innkeeper Árni."

These days Sauðárkrókur is home to a small brewery called Gæðingur Brugghús.  Gæðingur also have a bar in Reykjavik called Micro Bar, where you can get all of their beers on tap, plus a whole load of other ones in bottles.  It is a serious beer geek bar, and when we went it was entirely full of British beer geeks, all nodding their heads to the Sufjan Stevens music and trying not to talk to each other.

I fit right in, and got myself a flight of five samplers — four Gæðingurs, and one from Ölvisholt, which is a small brewery in Selfoss, which is a not very exciting town 30 miles south of Reykjavik.

Gæðingur's Tumi Humall IPA was my favourite.  Their stout was nice, but a bit thin, and their Pale Ale was okay.  The Hveilti wheat beer was wheaty as expected.  The only one I didn't like was the one from Ölvisholt, which was a Saison called Sif.

Sif was a Norse Goddess.  She married Thor, and then Loki cut off her hair.  Thor threatened to beat the crap out of Loki, so Loki got Sif some magical replacement hair that grew out of gold.  The golden hair also helped the crops grow, and wheat is a crop, and beer is made of wheat, which is presumably why she is on the label for this beer I didn't like.  

I left most of it, because I was full of beer.  Also, the couple from Newcastle at the table next to us were loud and moany, and nif had finished her whiskey ages ago, and we had two episodes of Jonathan Strange to watch back at the house.

to be continued...