Now, About Leifur Eriksen Weekend...

I’ve been having some trouble uploading photos to Blogger, so I’m not sure how many parts I’ll have to break this in to, or whether the photos will display properly. Let me know if you can’t see what’s captioned.


So yeah, I went to Iceland for our three-day Leifur Eriksen Weekend, aka Columbus Day Weekend (the Vikings were first! The Vikings were first! Okay, maybe Irish monks were actually first, but we have proof at least that the Vikings got to the New World half a millennium before Columbus!).


I was watching airfares in my obsessive way and, after weeks of prices near a thousand bucks, one day, I found the flights I wanted for less than $500. Way less.


I took it as a sign that Baby Jesus, or perhaps Baby Odin, wanted me to go to Iceland. It took me exactly 53 seconds to book my ticket.


I knew just where I wanted to go: Vestmannaeyjar, a handful of rocky islands off Iceland’s south coast. I’ve been hungering to go there for years, but never was able to fit it in to earlier visits.


I flew from JFK on Friday, after Mandilicious gave me a ride straight from class to the train station (from Grand Central I took a bus right to JFK... it couldn’t have been easier). I arrived at Leifur Eriksen International Airport (hell yeah!) in Keflavik at about 0600 Saturday, took the bus into Reykjavik, grabbed some supplies from the grocery store and caught another bus to Thorlakshofn. From there I boarded the ferry to Heimaey, the only inhabited island of the Vestmannaeyjar chain.


If you were around in the sixties and early seventies, or if you are into the Discovery Channel, you may recall footage of a couple volcanoes going nuts off the Icelandic coast. In 1963, Icelandic fishermen noticed the sea was bubbling and steaming so, in true Viking spirit, they got closer, and were the first to see what would become the island of Surtsey in the throes of its volcanic birth. Surtsey is part of the Vestmannaeyjar chain.


In 1973, you may recall footage of another Icelandic volcano belching fire and ash into the sky and burying half a village. That would be Eldfell, one of two volcanoes on the island of Heimaey.


Heimaey has a couple other claims to fame... It was first inhabited by Irish slaves ("Vestmann") who ran away from their Icelandic masters. They were promptly recaptured and killed, but the islands still bear their name.


Back in the 17th century, Heimaey was also raided by pirates (you knew there would be a pirate connection, didn’t you?). Historical accounts differ on the ethnicity of the pirates... most put them as "Turkish," but they were most likely Moroccan or Tunisian. In any case, they kidnapped more than half of the island’s population and tried to kill the rest who were hiding in caves used to dry fish.


What’s not to love?


Did I mention the hiking opportunities? Two words: active volcano. Three more words: sea cliff precipice.


Oh yeah.


The nearly three-hour ferry crossing on Saturday morning was surprisingly calm, despite all the warnings I’d read in Lonely Planet and on various websites. After docking in Heimaey, I checked in at the guesthouse I’d booked online. Funny enough, I’d tried to book it in my baby Icelandic. I received a reply from the German woman who runs the place, in perfect English.


Speaking of Icelandic... I had a lot of fun trying out the three things I can say with confidence on the locals. The people at Icelandair smiled as if they’ve heard everything (I’m sure they have), but other Icelanders simply gawked. Jaws dropped. Eyes bugged. People stared at me like I’d grown an extra limb... coming out of my forehead.


The first couple times, I thought my accent must be so bad that I’d accidentally offended them. So I said, in English, "oh, I’m sorry... my Icelandic must be bad." And every time, the person I was talking to shook his head slowly, still staring at that extra limb coming out of my forehead, and said (in English) "No. I... understand... you."


They were simply shocked that a foreigner would speak, or try to speak, their language.
My favorite reaction was one guy taking tickets as I boarded the ferry... I said "Hi, how are you?" in Icelandic. He dropped his tickets and stuttered, in English, "But... you’re Italian!"


Tee hee!!


(As an aside, I’m always amused by people guessing my nationality when I travel in non-English-speaking countries. South of the Alps, even in Africa and South America, people always think I’m German. North of the Alps, people always think I’m Italian. Except in Finland, where everyone thought I was Finnish. Go figure. I’m just grateful that apparently no one ever thinks I’m an Ugly American.)


Okay, okay... so, besides having fun with my ridiculously limited Iceland, I hiked. That was pretty much all I did the day and a half I was on Heimaey, before boarding the ferry Monday morning back to Thorlakshofn to catch the bus back to Reykjavik to catch another bus back to the airport to catch my plane to JFK to catch the bus to Grand Central Station to catch the train back to Cookin’ School Environs to get a cab back to campus where I’d left my car and then drive the ten miles back to my apartment.


The one detour I made was in Reykjavik. I had exactly enough time between buses to haul ass past the Tjornin, their impossibly cute city pond, and visit Reykjavik 871 +/-2.


The last two times I was in Reykjavik, I remember having to go around this big construction site. I thought they were widening the road or repairing a water main or something, but it turns out that, while renovating a 19th century building, they found the remains of the oldest known settlement in the city. The 10th century farmstead and 9th century wall may be the remains of the nation’s very first settlers.


They preserved the site and built a subterranean museum called Reykjavik 871 +/-2. In addition to sounding cool in that effortlessly Scandinavian way, the name refers to the dating of the oldest part of the remains, within a four-year range. The museum itself, while small, was brilliantly done and had so much information and cool interactive displays that I nearly missed my bus to the airport to the plane to the bus to the train to the cab to... oh, you get it.


If you visit Reykjavik anytime soon, don’t miss it. And don’t miss the special interactive map on Icelandic DNA... two in every 1,000 Icelanders have DNA that links them to a specific population that exists only on the Kamchatka peninsula of Russia and the Bering Strait! Freaky!


So, that was my weekend. Ridiculously extravagant carbon footprint-wise? Yeah, but I don’t care. I spend enough of my time conserving electricity and recycling. Sadly, the polar bears are going to be extinct whether or not I jaunt halfway across the Atlantic for a weekend Icelandic hike.


Plus Baby Jesus/Baby Odin really did want me to go. As proof, there’s the weather. In addition to the crazycalm ferry crossings to and from Vestmannaeyjar, the weather while I was there was brilliant sunshine after days of muck and rain.


As Conan the Barbarian once said: Enough talk! Here are the first batch of photos, displayed in whichever way I can convince Blogger to do so:

I am irresistibly drawn to Vestmannaeyjar, the Westfiords of Iceland and the Faroe Islands because of scenes like this: improbably shaped chunks of rock and sea cliffs that look like shark fins in profile. I don’t know why, I just really dig it. This is one of the uninhabited islands that make up the Vestmannaeyjar chain (Eidey, I believe), photographed from the ferry.

This is a shot of the display case of the only bakery on Heimaey. Wow. I don’t know what the hell it is, either. Part of me thought "I could make a killing here just doing simple baguettes and cakes that didn’t look like they’d been run over by a truck." Another part of me thought "the locals probably like this kind of stuff and would reject a foreigner, especially an Italian, with her fancy straight-sided cakes and frou-frou French breads."

And of course, a third part of me reminded the other two parts about my whole issue regarding living in seismically active places. Ix-nay on the Vestmann bakery start-up.

After checking out the town on Saturday afternoon when I arrived, I got an early start Sunday and headed for Herjolfsdalur, the site of the first Icelandic settler of Vestmannaeyjar, as opposed to the first Irish settlers, who didn’t live long enough to build a home. The longhouse is a reconstruction based on the foundations of the actual archeological excavation site, a few meters off to the side. I took the photo mostly for the shot Eggjar in the background.

"Eggjar" is Icelandic, I believe, for "feel the burn." I’ve climbed up ladders that were less steep. It was one relentless haul upward, with the peril of strong winds, a narrow ridge and a sea cliff as the reward.

Yay peril!

Above is a view of Blatindur, the highest point on Heimaey, taken after my climb up the side of Eggjar and Haha (really, that’s its name). All three peaks are sides of the same extinct volcano.

The trail from Eggjar to Haha (I swear that’s what they call it, probably as in "Haha, we got another stupid tourist to climb that cliff!") Yes, the trail, as shown in the photo, goes along the cliff edge to the ladder over a fence. The fence is there to protect sheep from going over the cliff and smashing on the rocks below. The tourists, eh, they don’t care about. (That’s another thing I love about Iceland... no warning signs or fenced-off areas or any of the other overprotective biddiness you find in the States. It’s like they figure "okay, dumbass... you wanna climb that cliff in strong winds? Go ahead. Just don’t come crying to us when you break every bone in your body and are eaten by sharks." My kinda place.)