Across Northern Europe: Shining a Light On Iceland

by Brook Silva-Braga on

There’s something nice about traveling in Iceland. There are a number of nice things, I’m sure, but one came to mind specifically as soon as I landed. This nice thing is nice if you’re a certain kind of traveler. Namely, the kind who maybe sometimes pretends to be a little poorer than you really are. We’re all that kind of traveler by month two in South Asia. That’s the traveler I was when I chose the 250 baht guesthouse in Bangkok and scoffed at the 500 baht room with aircon. I was pretending to be poor.

But there’s no need to strike a pose in Iceland because, friends, I am poor. On my yearlong trip I didn’t carry a tent and rarely camped but I’m glad I have one now. Even my slab of campsite grass is 520 baht (that’s US$13 if you’re not Thai) and a real roof would have run me about $100. Iceland is expensive, that’s what I’m trying to say. Iceland is small and homogeneous and cold. Those are cliches too. That last list hasn’t proven that true to me so far but the expensive thing is as true as an $80 entree.

Today I went to Gunar Haraldsson, the director of the Institute of Economic Studies at the University of Iceland, and asked him why everything was so expensive. “Because we’re rich,” he informed me.

So that settles that.

You don´t need me to come to Iceland to tell you it’s expensive and you don’t need me here to tell you it’s light all the time, but I guess I just did that too. There are about 20 hours of light each day and it has the effect of making the day very slooooow. It feels like you have time to do so many things, even though everything closes by 6pm and the main things you have to do then are walk around or type in the basement of a coffee shop.

Lonely Planet told me Icelanders are all in bands and believe in fairies.

“That’s Bjork’s fault,” Sevinn Bjornsson told me, blasphemously, today. He’s the editor of Iceland’s English language newspaper, The Grapevine, and he had a bone to pick with the woman who would have put Iceland on the map if it hadn’t already been there all distorted and lonely in the middle of the north Atlantic. He’s sick of tourists asking if Icelanders believe in fairies and assuming they are all in bands. She started that, he said. For the record he has fifteen friends in bands, and one who believes in fairies.

I will now segue from fairies to ferries. They run from the main island to the Westmann Islands and I want to be on one this weekend. On the first weekend in August “all the rules in Iceland change” and “Iceland is not Iceland” according to the girl at the tourist information office. That’s because the whole country goes camping for a long holiday weekend and the most out of control incarnation of the party is out on the Westmann Islands. Ten thousand revelers are expected and most thought to buy a ferry ticket more than two days in advance and won’t — like me — be compelled to make the three hour crossing at 2am.

Except no one goes camping the first weekend in August as it turns out. Not the economics professor, or the editor of the paper, or the girl at the tourist office, or even the girl at reception at my campsite. They all told me the whole thing was just too drunk and out of control these days. “And it usually rains,” Sveinn added.

So to recap: Icelanders don’t believe in fairies or go camping when they’re supposed to. They don’t all belong to bands or look the same. But they charge $8 for a local bus when you don’t have exact change. They charge $11 for a beer. They charge $40 for a ferry in the middle of the night to a campsite where the entire country (or no one at all) may be camping in the rain.

Brook Silva-Braga is traveling northern Europe for the month of August and reuniting with some of the people he met on the yearlong trip which was the basis of his travel documentary, A Map for Saturday. You can follow his adventure in the series, Across Northern Europe.

Dr. Warmlove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Climate Change

by Erik Olsen on

The panic and mayhem that seems to surround global warming sometimes gets so shrill you’d think the world was going to end. And maybe it will. For some people.

But for others, global warming could be a boon. Once icy climes could turn positively cozy, and just imagine what that will do for real estate values. So you see, there is a bright side.

And perhaps no one sees that bright side more than the folks living in Greenland. Yes, you know, Greenland. It’s the place that’s all white. Though perhaps not for long. And the people there are not very green either, in fact, according to this piece in the Washington Post, they seem to be cheering on the arrival of climate change. “It’s good for me,” said Ernst Lund, one of 51 farmers raising sheep on the world’s largest island. “I can keep the sheep out two weeks longer to feed in hills in the autumn. And I can grow more hay. The sheep get fatter,” he said. Now that’s optimism. And its not just the sheep that are enjoying the rising temps. The cod are too. Cod have been in serious decline all over the globe, but particularly in once thriving fisheries like the Northeast US. And, says the story, seals are now easier to reach to kill for grub. The list goes on in this fascinating, sometimes uplifting (in an irony-laden Don DeLillo way) piece.

Hand Laundry Around the World

by Jamie Rhein on

When searching for an image for my post on travel washing machines, I saw several shots of people doing laundry the old fashioned way–by hand. Here is one of them.

This shot, posted on Flickr, was taken by abrinksy in Udaipur, India. There is something about laundry that makes people get an urge to whip out their cameras. Here are other photos that caught my eye…

Taken in Vietnam by Agnguyen2682. I love the images of clothes paired with the plants and the girl in yellow.

This one is in Dominica. The photographer, herzchen points out the woman is even hanging up a teddy bear.

Here’s making another use of a hot tub in Iceland. fuzzypika

In Ghana, West Africa. I wonder what Stig Nygaard stood on to take this picture.

By sainthelenfire in Feng Huang China. This shot is at a canal.

Taken by Dey in Nepal. I’m always struck by how plastic bowls can look so bright in certain environments.

Taken at at Amani Baby Cottage in Uganda by Danny Summerlin. The criss crossed white lines appealed to me.

Hanging laundry in Croatia. I like the way taf captured the angles, the light and the shadows.

Cheap Grub in Iceland. Honest!

by Neil Woodburn on

“Budget” and “Iceland” are rarely spoken in the same sentence.

As much as I love this Nordic country, it unfortunately remains the most expensive place I’ve ever visited. Occasionally, my brother and I opted for hot dogs from a hot dog stand in Reykjavik to cut costs, but otherwise we paid small fortunes for a sit down meal in a restaurant.

Jonathan Finer, writing for the Washington Post, was equally shocked at the restaurant prices but was able to find a couple of budget alternatives. In Iceland’s Costly Capital, Two Cool Bargains, Finer points hungry travelers in the right direction.

At Saegreifinn (above) he was able to walk away with just a $45 bill for two entrees of seafood, soup, and two bottles of local beer. Right next door at Hamborgarabullan (Hamburger Joint) Finer discovered burgers, fries and milkshakes for two people priced at just under $30.

Sure, it still sounds expensive, but “budget” is a relative term. And in Iceland, $30 for hamburgers is a great freakin’ deal indeed!

Tour the House of Iceland’s Lone Nobel Laureate

by Neil Woodburn on

I’ll bet that you can’t name Iceland’s only Nobel Prize winner for literature.

Go ahead. Give it a long think.

Stumped? Does the name Halldór Laxness ring a bell?

I had never heard of Iceland’s most famous scribe until I was preparing for a visit and decided to bone up on the local literature. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that someone from this tiny nation of less than 300,000 had been bestowed with such an honor. And so, I picked up his most famous book, Independent People, and gave it a try. To tell you the truth, I found it very difficult to get through and still have a bookmark where I stopped, some hundred pages from the end.

That’s not to say I hated it. In this particular book, Laxness displays a gift for describing the hard, difficult, and lonely life faced by the country’s sheep farmers at the turn of the century and, more specifically, the strong resolve of protagonist Bjartur of Summerhouses. I feel so very bad, having left him stranded in the snow where I stopped reading. One day I will continue and extricate him from the situation.

Anyway, I digress. The reason I bring up Laxness is because of an outstanding house museum dedicated to his life and works. I unfortunately did not visit it while in Iceland, but after reading a nice write-up in Iceland Review, I most certainly wish I had; there is something so magical about visiting house museums where great authors lived and wrote and this one seems particularly magical. I will be sure to finish reading one of his works, however, before paying it a visit.