"Fables of Frosty Frolics and Follies" Iceland Travelogue by farseek

La Revista del Paisano, Volume 4, Issue 1, 21-March-2002
The Vernal Equinox Edition - La Revista makes a comeback?
Fables of Frosty Frolics and Follies, Part I

Don Trovatore di Borgio, Reporting Editor-in-Chief, Photographer, Teller of Tall Tales etc. etc.
(accompanied by his fictitious towel carrier, Charley Hod)

Weather in Reykjavík, Iceland: 40°F (4°C)
Feels like 37°F with wind chill
Mostly sunny and seasonable.

Weather in Minneapolis, Minnesota: 7°F (-14°C)
Feels like -12°F with wind chill
* Severe Weather Alert from the National Weather Service
...HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TWIN CITIES MN 515 AM CST THU MAR 21 2002
...UNSEASONABLY COLD FOR THIS FIRST FULL DAY OF SPRING...
COLD ARCTIC AIR POURED ACROSS CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN MINNESOTA AS WELL AS WEST CENTRAL WISCONSIN LATE WEDNESDAY AND WEDNESDAY NIGHT ON STRONG NORTHWEST WINDS. TEMPERATURES HAVE DROPPED OFF TO THE ZERO TO 10 DEGREE RANGE EARLY THIS MORNING.
A COLD DAY LIES AHEAD WITH BLUSTERY NORTHWEST WINDS OF 15 TO 30 MPH REDEVELOPING ACROSS CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN MINNESOTA INTO WEST CENTRAL WISCONSIN DURING THE MORNING...AND CONTINUING THROUGH THE AFTERNOON. WIND CHILLS IN THE 10 TO 20 BELOW RANGE WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE EARLY MORNING OVER THE AREA...BUT SHOULD DECREASE A BIT AS TEMPERATURES WARM TO BETWEEN 10 AND 20 DEGREES. THIS AFTERNOON...WIND CHILLS WILL BE MOSTLY BETWEEN 5 ABOVE ZERO AND 10 BELOW ZERO...

Well with that out of the way, let's get down to the nitty gritty of our* latest blitzkrieg. The Don escaped from the Great Northern "March Madness" Blizzard of '02 to a much warmer locale that looks like a tropical paradise in comparison with Minneapolis. Iceland. Realm of volcanic fire and glacial ice, best summed up by Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song":

Ah, ah,
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods
Will drive their ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying:
Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.

Ah, ah,
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
How soft your fields so green,
Can whisper tales of gore,
Of how we calmed the tides of war.
We are your overlords.
On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.

With this in mind, we felt compelled to don a horned Viking helmet, a goatshair kilt, a notched battle axe and a drinking horn of Viking mead as we wended our way through the outlandish igneous countryside. And thus, we proudly present...

***THE FARSUNGA SAGA***
Beinge a Compleat and (Almost Entirely) Inaccuraet Chronicale of Ye Conqueste of 2002

The Don's Mad Icelandic Berserker Rampage, Day 1
===========================
1. Keflavík: A small fishing village characterized by architecture featuring a manifest lack of creativity.

2. Blue Lagoon Hot Springs (1): This place was not yet open on arrival, which is a crying shame, because the Don could sure have used a good teeming mudbath after a long transatlantic flight.

3. Grindavík (1): A small fishing village characterized by architecture featuring a manifest lack of creativity.

4. Krýsuvík: *CANCELLED* The route to this town bore more resemblance to an avalanche than a road.

5. Vatnsleysuströnd: After going back past Grindavík and the Blue Lagoon (still closed), this stretch of beach is populated by farmsteads, fishing villages, lighthouses, churches and an alleged stone circle we were not able to locate after crawling through leagues of lichen-covered volcanic slag, and which we think is a ruse designed to fool gullible tourists.

6. Hafnarfjörður: The tourist literature described this town as a quaint vacation spot where you can see live elves and Vikings. We ate a quick ham and cheese brunch and got out of there.

7. Reykjavík (1): Absolutely nothing here. Checked into the Hotel Loftleiðir (Hotel Borg was fully booked, not surprisingly given the name), had a quick and hearty Scandinavian smorgasbord lunch and headed for the hills.

8. Þingvellir: Ancient site where the original Viking cheiftain conquerors of Iceland used to get together, hold forth, establish laws, and drink great big bloody horns of potent mead. Not much left here except a church (of course) and a bunch of water-filled gorges that are *actual* evidence of the North American and European plates *actually* drifting apart at the Mid-Atlantic rift, which *actually* runs smack dab through the middle of Iceland (see FAST FACTS below).

9. Lake Þingvallavatn: Possibly the biggest lake in Iceland, essentially a gigantic skating rink in winter. Well it could be anyhow, though there are warm spots of geothermal activity. The whole thing is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes.

10. Laugarvatn (1): *CANCELLED* The mountain path between the lake and this town was closed and marked "impassable" but this doesn't stop meatheads in monster SUVs from attempting it. Not falling into this category, we turned the Toyota Corolla around and headed south.

11. Asgard: Or anyhow a place on the map marked "Asgarður." We weren't about to visit any place named after the home of the Norse gods - an heathen lot of unruly savages who sit around all day carousing and quaffing mead. Now wait a minute... that doesn't sound too bad after all...

12. Selfoss (1): A riverside "market" town and gateway to the east. Nothing remarkable. Sunlight was getting scarce at this point so we turned around at this point and headed back west.

13. Hveragerði: Don't know the point of this town really. There appears to be a huge greenhouse and lodge here. Probably a front for some sort of diabolical production, like Blofeld's so-called research lab on a Swiss Alp in the James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." For our money, George Lazenby made every bit as good a Bond as Connery or Brosnan but that's another discussion.

14. Reykjavík (2): Returned to base, visited the "downtown" area which as far as we could tell consisted of an artificial lake populated by swans, ducks and geese. Made us hungry for dinner.

The Don's Mad Icelandic St. Paddy's Rampage, Day 2
===========================
1. Kolafjördur: A small fjord between Reykjavík and the vast Mount Esja - some 10 by 20 kilometers. At this point we discovered we were heading north instead of east due to either bad signposting or navigation.

2. Selfoss (2): Pretty quick going to get back here when you're doing about 140. Kilometers of course, not miles, ha ha! Anyhow the path branches off here toward the rugged north.

3. Borg Church and Café: This is an area of homesteads with the same name. A side note here is that every single country house in Iceland is signposted with the owner's surname. In this case, all the homesteads were named Borg or some version thereof, like Stóra-Borg or Minni-Borg or whatever. Anyhow on one side of the road is the Borg Café/Gas Station and Guesthouse and on the other side is the Borg Church. We are *not* making this up. And no, as we were pressed for time, we did not stop for coffee with the distant relatives.

4. Laugarvatn (2): You can finally get around the block road to this mountain village by going miles to the south, unless you possess a monster SUV, which of course everyone does in Iceland. The Corolla ran out of fuel here, but we persuaded a gas station attendant to open early (i.e. before 11am). Should've filled up at Borg Café/Gas Station after all...

5. Geysir (1): Place was closed first time around. Evidently the geysirs don't fire off til the big tour buses arrive (usually around noon) so we proceeded down the unpaved track to the next site.

6. Gulfoss: Now we get to the very crux of the matter - the true Icelandic scenery, the so-called "Golden Falls" formed by the runoff of Iceland's second biggest glacier Langjökull. Words fail to describe this scenic view, so wait for the pictures. Coming back from some rather precipitous icy footholds on which to best position ourselves for photo opportunities, we slipped on a patch of "white ice" and damn near injured our camera. No harm done though, and it is fully functional, thank Thor.

7. Geysir (2): This is the home of the first, true and original geysir, named, aptly enough, "Geysir." It only fires off two or three times a day now, unless they soap it for tourists, which they must, because we saw it fire about 2 or 3 times and we were only there about 10 minutes because it was colder than hell. Almost colder than Minnesota. The entire area is a veritable minefield of geothermally heated water, so a number of other smaller geysirs fire off all over the place, and a larger one called "Strokkur" which fires off every 5-10 minutes or whenever there are large crowds of tourists present downwind of the sulphuric water vapor blast which smells, as you might imagine, horrible. We reckon they soap this one too, out of boredom perhaps. We used to know some people up in Duluth and the Dakotas who did similar things to public fountains. Between that and cow-tipping in Wisconsin, we suppose there is not much else to do in an arctic farmland waste.

8. Reykholt: This is an old medieval town with - can you believe it - a church! This particular church is actually rather interesting, since it was the site of an ancient bishopric and has stone figures out front and a crypt with a stone sarcophagus containing the *actual remains* of a bishop. After it was looted of course. There is an old underground tunnel running from the crypt to a trapdoor outside somewhere in which we nearly got stuck, because the door leading out slams shut and locks behind you. The trapdoor itself is locked from the inside by a number of rusted bolt and hinge mechanisms of exceeding complexity and antiquity. We succeeded in opening this only after successive attempts and considerable artifice on our part if we do say so ourself. Which is a good thing, because there is absolutely *no one* for miles around, so any cries for help would have fallen upon deaf (or nonexistent) ears. Centuries from now, they would have found our skeletal remains, adorned by a rather corroded video camera. Future archaeologists would deem this some sort of holy symbol or relic of great power we think.

9. Björk: No we didn't visit her. We think this is the generic Icelandic term for "town" or something, since there are a host of them. Though a "town" by Icelandic standards constitutes a farm generally.

10. Kerið: This is a crater lake formed by the collapse of an extinct (we think) volcano, which we missed driving by three times in a row, because you actually have to climb up to the rim of the hill to see down into the lake. Perfect place for a good broomball game.

11. The Haul: This is not so much one location, but a long and fast drive through Selfoss, Hveragerði, Reykjavík, Hafnarfjörður, Vatnsleysuströnd and finally the airport at Keflavík. Only to arrive 15 minutes before our flight to London departed, and to be told come back tomorrow since that was the last flight of the day (at 4:30pm). We chortled in glee and prepared to pillage the countryside further...

12. Garður: A church and lighthouse affair - your usual sort of thing for this coastal region.

13. Sandgerði: See Garður.

14. Hafnir: More bad architecture, including the obligatory Icelandic village church.

15. Reykjanestá: A curious place with a lighthouse on a slag heap - the whole thing looks something like Saruman's tower out of "The Lord of the Rings" movie. We believe that orcs and trolls fashion cruel weapons in hidden subterranean pits here. Although only about 2 miles from the "main road" it's actually about 10 miles away or more - we gave up about halfway there.

16. Grindavík (2): See first entry above. The westbound road here is little better than the eastbound, though most of the snow was melted, making it an offroad puddle-splashing experience (and we didn't even have to get an SUV!)

17. Blue Lagoon Hot Springs (2): After conquering the entire southwest quadrant of Iceland, we felt we most certainly deserved a good lie-in in a hot spring with a mudbath to boot. But no, we were too *late* this time - can you believe it - and the first two times we were too *early*. What happened to the land of the midnight sun and basking in moonlit hot springs and all that? Next time we will be prepared...

Well at this point we take our leave, like Caesar "revealing but not bequeathing Britain to Rome," likewise we have done with Iceland to our own private empire. We did not even get around to talking about Wokingham or indeed anywhere else in England, which will have to wait for a volume of its own. So until then, tally ho and to all you poor bastards in Minnesota - the English air is warm, the sun is shining, the flowers are in bloom, spring is here, but we won't rub it in.

Best wishes,
La Revista's Editorial Staff,
The Bar Wench's Rosy Bottom Pub and Hotel,
Crowthorne,
Berkshire,
England,
etc. etc.

© 2002 or whatever year it is. All rights reversed. Any attempt to take this publication seriously is moronic. Farseek.com - your view on the world. http://www.virtualtourist.com/farseek

FOOTNOTES

* Yes, we, like Dave Barry, refer to ourself in the first person plural as well as the third person. It lends a tour guide sort of authenticity to our otherwise utterly ridiculous discourse.

ICELAND FAST FACTS

This is an actual quote from NASA:
"Iceland is one of two places on the Earth's face where geologists can take a close subaerial look at the morphology of a large part of an active oceanic spreading ridge..."
http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/DAAC_DOCS/geomorphology/GEO_3/GEO_PLATE_V-15.HTML

The entire population of Iceland (270,000) is less than that of the city of Minneapolis with almost half that living in Reykjavík (110,000).