Roving Iceland’s Golden Circle Travel Hippy
It’s just after midnight, June 21, 2016, and I’m standing on the street outside the Reykjavik pub from which I have just emerged. The sky above is clear and bright. Perhaps not as bright as when I went into the pub three hours ago but, then again, neither am I. In the last 24 hours, I rafted (and swam) a glacial river, photographed a massive waterfall from dozens of angles, explored a terrain pitted with geysers and geothermal vents and walked between the European and North American tectonic plates, touching each continent. I had been off-roading through the lava fields. Best, I had been expertly schooled in Icelandic culture. As midnight approached, I stopped to enjoy the summer solstice with several bottles of the nicely hoppy local micro-brew, Úlfur India Pale Ale. I’m glad I did. I needed the break and – well, back off, I’m on vacation. Later today, I will go whale watching in the harbor. Sleep is optional in Reykjavik. Twenty-four hours of daylight are a pleasant resource in a land so oriented to being outdoors. The summers in Iceland are short, and the inhabitants make good use of every moment. Reykjavik has the unassuming look of a small town somewhere in Colorado more than it does a national capital. Yet, the essence of its Viking heritage is unavoidable and, unlike many of 12 || TERRA TRAVELERS
Europe’s larger cities, Reykjavik exudes a sense of place that leaves no doubt about its Scandinavian identity. The people who live here are as much a part of the land as the land is of them, there’s no separating the two. “We all know each other,” my 25 year-old guide Robert Halldorsson, said to me as we left town earlier that morning on our drive. “We go to school together, socialize, we’re probably related! There are only 320,000 of us in the entire country after a thousand years, and two-thirds of them live in Reykjavik.” Like most here, Robert knows his Icelandic history and culture, and knows it well. Indeed, few cultures on the planet today are as homogenous as the native Icelanders. There has been very little immigration for more than 1,000 years when the first Vikings arrived, and nearly 80% of the population can trace their family histories back to the original settlers. No easy task considering there are no family names. Robert’s father had the first name of “Halldor” and Robert’s son will have the last name of “Robertsson”. Better than 85% of the males on the island share a genetic make-up with modern day Norwegians. Interestingly, however, more than 60% of the females share genetics with modern women from Ireland and Scotland. “The Vikings left Norway alone and picked up their women along the way,” says Robert.
“They only took the pretty ones, as you can see.” He’s serious. “They left the ugly ones behind and the ones who got seasick, they threw off on the Faroe Islands along the way.” He grins at me broadly. “It’s true, you know.” Icelandic humor.  Robert is handling the four-wheel drive Toyota with oversized tires on these narrow roads with the ease of someone who has been doing this a long time and knows exactly where they are going. We round a turn in the road and the hillside across the valley is pockmarked with a dozen or more steaming thermal vents. The ground is alive, breathing, exhaling steam as the glacial water table hits the near surface magma. A t-shirt in a window-front in Reykjavik says simply “Ash happens”.
