TRAVEL
East Iceland
Swimming aga inst the st rea m Chef Gudjon Runar Thorgrimsson with wild mushrooms.
There is more to Egilsstadir than meets the eye.
My wife and I agree that it sounds more like the early onset of hypo thermia and so we head into town to dive into some culture instead.
TEXT: Bjorn Halldorsson
At Slaturhusid, Egilsstadir’s cultural centre located in the town’s former Most of the people on the plane slaughterhouse, we find various visual are there for the swimming. The art projects. They were created by an swim across lake Urridavatn is an international group of artists led by annual event held at the end of July Berlin-based Steinunn Gunnlaugs that attracts many former locals to dottir, whose family hails from the Egilsstadir. “Last year there were so area. The bare concrete walls and the many swimmers, they almost ran into many signs of the building’s previous trouble,” says Svandis Sigurjonsdottir, role provide a visceral backdrop to one of the proprietors of Bokakaffid, the displays. a small coffee shop and bookstore just across the bridge over Lagarfljot For a palate cleanser, we drive 10 river. “This year, we’ll see...” she adds, minutes out of town to Vallanes, from where the Modir Jord products – eyeing the rain outside. which are at the forefront of Iceland’s Crammed to the brim with books organic food culture – originate. We and a fresh pot of coffee on the sample fermented treats and lummur brew, Bokakaffid is the ideal place (a type of Icelandic pancake) at their for such conditions. Much prefera- restaurant, The Aspen House. It’s ble to the 10°C water which awaits the first house in Iceland to be built the swimmers, who are all around us solely from locally-grown wood, all expounding the stoic sense of calm from nearby Hallormsstadaskogur that follows the first shock of cold. National Forest, Iceland’s largest. PHOTO: Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson
20
“We try to use as much as we can from the local environment,” head chef Gudjon Runar Thorgrimsson at Icelandair Hotel Herad tells us that evening. During hunting season, Gudjon himself takes to the hills to provide meat for the restaurant’s much coveted reindeer steaks. The East is the only region where reindeer live in the wild and the restaurant is one of few in Iceland to have reindeer on the menu year-round. Gudjon also helps supplying other food – he’s only able to talk to us because the mushroom picking trip he had planned with his dishwashers was cancelled due to weather. On the plane back to Reykjavík we doze off, lulled into sleep by the drone of the engines. All around us the swimmers are basking in each other’s glow, seeming every bit as rejuvenated as they had promised. DID YOU KNOW ... It takes you more than 7 hours longer to drive from Reykjavik to Egilsstadir in East Iceland than fly there. By air the trip takes 60 minutes.
