Pictures from the North

Pictures from northern Iceland: Dalvík (a tiny town I only meant to pass through, but was so charmed I stayed several extra days), Grímsey (a beautiful little island directly on the Arctic Circle), Akureyri (a lovely small town that's in fact Iceland's second largest) and Myvatn (an area with all the cool geothermal stuff: hot springs, boiling mud, volcanic craters, old lava fields...)

ÍSLAND: North

In Which Iceland Is Literally a Village

I arrived here in Borgarfjörður eystri, a truly tiny village (population about 100, though the numbers cited vary) tucked away inside a fjord accessible only by a steep, winding road around a mountain, literally the very furthest point you can drive from Reykjavík... and ran into someone I know.

Yes, in this country where there are only five people total that I can count as "friends" by even the most generous definition of the word (two Couchsurfing acquaintances from three years ago plus three festival acquaintances from earlier this month) – I walked into the town's only bar and saw someone I know!

(I suppose it shouldn't really have come as a surprise, since I came here for a wonderful music festival called Bræðslan, which was recommended to me by this friend I made at the Rauðasandur Festival, so it really could have occurred to me that if he likes this festival enough to recommend it, he'd likely be coming too. Still, though.)

So: I came here expecting to spend another string of solitary days mostly at the fringes of things, and instead on my very first evening I ended up being one of the last five people who stayed up talking and playing a silly card game, and closing down the bar/restaurant/concert venue at 5 a.m. (Bars in Iceland are supposed to close at 1 a.m., so as these guys pointed out to me, it helps to know the owners!)

Life is good in Borgarfjörður eystri.

Tiny Town, Iceland

One of the things I'm coming to love about Iceland is how most of it is these tiny, tiny, tiny towns tucked away in a fjord only accessible by a twisty dirt road and at least an hour away from the next proper town... and yet they each seem to have just enough of everything you need.

Each one has its gas station, a small grocery store, at least one restaurant/café where folks hang out, and of course the all-important community center for cultural events, which can be a big, fancy complex in a big town, or in a small town it might be a simple hall that also doubles as the village school.

And with these just-enough resources in hand, Icelanders nonchalantly set about putting together concerts, festivals, exhibitions and all manner of creative things. Because if there's one thing an Icelander seems to be constitutionally incapable of, it's being not creative.

As an example, here's "downtown" on Grímsey island: The sole restaurant (surprisingly good), a tiny supermarket and an even tinier gas station that's basically just a shed with a pump out front. An Icelandic town pared down to the essentials:

Other things I love: Cozy cafés run on a standard model of serve-your-own soup-and-bread plus serve-your-own coffee-or-tea. A very relaxed set-up, and most places are stunningly chill about a traveler coming and lingering over a cup of coffee to use the wi-fi for a while.

Here's my absolute favorite café so far, a place called Gísli Eiríkur Helgi (named after three brothers from an old legend) in the town of Dalvík in northern Iceland. I also watched a couple World Cup games here, in a back room with an amusing mixed crowd of Icelanders and Germans:

(They made me a vegetarian option! Those folks are awesome.)

And of course I love the nature, the nature, the nature. Fjords and mountains, lava fields and hot springs and steam rising out of the ground. I'll try to put some more pictures together soon.

But meanwhile, speaking of paring life down to the essentials...

As for me? Give me a cup of coffee (one of those twin fuels of Iceland! gas for the cars and coffee for the people, both going non-stop at all hours) and a place to plug in the computer (because, yes, I'm doing this weird combined kind of travel where I'm partly hiking in the mountains, but partly sitting in cafés writing and stuff) and, hey, how about a view of the fjord to one side and a band warming up for tonight's concert on the other?

In other words, greetings from Borgarfjörður eystri, in the East Fjords, in the days just before this town of 100 or so residents welcomes thousands of guests for a music festival.

Rauðasandur – the Red Sand Festival

Rauðasandur! A little music festival in a remote bit of the West Fjords of Iceland, that I'd been dreaming about for at least two years. But planning a trip to Iceland just to go to one festival would be crazy.

But if you happen to be in Iceland anyway...

Trying to figure out how to get to the festival (it's so remote that buses don't run there) was a lesson in learning to be as last-minute as an Icelander – not my natural mode, to say the least. I don't think I've ever met a group as categorically last-minute in their life planning as the Icelandic people! (One Icelander I talked to linked this to their catastrophic financial crash of a few years ago – Icelanders are amazing at coming together to help each other after a crisis, she said, but not so good at sparing a thought for how to avert the crisis in the first place.)

Nonetheless, by some miracle of good luck, I managed to land a ride north to the festival from Reykjavík with a laconic guy named Þórður (pronounced Thor-thur) – to me, he seemed the epitome of the old Icelandic fisherman type – quiet and implacable, but kind-hearted in that Icelandic way where they don't even notice that what they're doing is above and beyond – like stopping to help a stranded tourist whose rental car had broken down in the rain in a remote fjord. Also in the same car were Arndís (bizarrely, it's pronounced more like "Ard-nis") and her boyfriend Koosha. The two of them were fantastically open and fun (Arndís may be the least Icelandic Icelander I've met, in that respect!) and they ended up being my constant companions through the weekend. The music at the festival was enjoyable and all, but the real magic was in the friendships forged in just those four days.

The location for Rauðasandur (literally "Red Sand") is a stunning red-sand beach at the foot of a steep cliff exposed directly to the Atlantic and all the wild weather that entails. Of the festival's three nights, we actually spent two in nearby (by which I mean a 40-minute drive away) Patreksfjörður, which is more sheltered, inside a fjord. In fact, I was woken up on Saturday by Arndís shaking me and saying we had to break camp immediately and move back to Patreksfjörður, because a storm was coming in. The wind was so strong, it bent two of the poles of my tent as we were taking it down! I've never woken up, taken down a tent and packed up all my belongings faster.

Rauðasandur: Some kind of magical mix of stunning location (seriously, just the skies over the sea at Rauðasandur I could try forever to describe) + a whimsical sampler of Icelandic music, from electronic to folk to reggae and everything in between + friendships forged in the enjoyable kind of "adversity," the kind that involves rolling with the weather-changing punches and having all the more fun for it. 

I could write pages and pages and pages about the experience that was Rauðasandur, but I'll let the pictures tell the story:

ÍSLAND: Rauðasandur

The Great Hiatus Begins

Hello there, world. It's been a while! I no longer have the slightest idea how to summarize the last half year of my life. Let's try bullet points:

• In December, with three weeks' notice, my main translation client – the one that formed the backbone of my income for the last six years – announces it's axing its English-language offerings and no longer needs freelancers as of January 1. Merry Christmas!

• Cue panic and existential angst.

• The months January–June: Various projects for other clients, periodic attempts to think about "what comes next," more panic and angst, existential questioning of whether I want to keep doing what I'm doing or whether this might be an opportunity to try something new, gradually coalescing plans to take a serious break from working to clear my head before even trying to sort out the future. Alarming realization that I haven't taken a true, complete vacation – the kind where I don't bring my laptop along and work at least part of the time – in...actually, I've lost track of how long. People ask about my specific plans for said work break, to which I tend to say, I don't know! I don't know! Maybe Iceland??

• While also seeing various friends visiting from out of town, finishing up some last paid work, trying to complete a 50-page novel excerpt in time for a submissions deadline, helping a sick friend, having root canal myself, getting my apartment ready to sublet for the summer and assembling all the camping gear I never got around to buying in eight years in Germany, I finally book a flight to Iceland. It's open-ended. No set return date, just two weddings I know I need to be back in Germany for at the end of the summer. It's terrifying, but good.

• Arrival in Reykjavík with naïve dreams of instantly ending up hanging out with all my favorite musicians, because, come on, it's Iceland. It's like a village, but one in which everyone is mind-bogglingly talented.

• Reality, instead, is a very solitary first week spent frantically revising my novel excerpt, barely interacting with other human beings, working all day and all evening and then looking up to find it's almost midnight, even though it looks like 6 p.m., because this is Iceland in summer. (I do see one of my very favorite musicians on the street, just pushing her baby carriage along and chatting with a friend, and I panic and go the other way, because I don't want to be a creepy fan.)

• Novel excerpt DONE. Three (3!) concerts by favorite Icelandic musicians ATTENDED. Ride to extremely remote music festival FOUND. The great adventure BEGINS.

Here are a few pictures of the Reykjavík days; pictures of the Rauðasandur Festival will be coming soon.

ÍSLAND: Reykjavík Days