The Hekla Saga

WE WERE OFF TO ICELAND. Of course we were off to Iceland. The first country with a female president, the country whose bands play introverted music in dress suits and Inca caps, and the country, not least, whose economy is ground zero for the global financial crisis. We want to see geysers spouting off. We want whale steak and volcanoes, the nightlife in Reykjavík, the muddy roads, monster trucks and jovial people. A good friend fired us up on the idea. He said: “Iceland is on the edge – geographically, geologically and mentally.” Now we just had to get over there.

WE LAND AT KEFLAVIK, the former U.S. Air Force base that now receives thousands of Japanese visitors carrying heavy single-lens-reflex cameras. We arrive 1,135 years after Ingólfur Arnarson, the man who fled a bloody feud in Norway and ended up the founder of Reykjavík. We are out on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Smoke is still rising. Water shoots out of the ground. The smell of sulphur wafts through the air. Iceland is a land that’s still in the melting pot. Literally. What’s there to do but rent a Toyota Land Cruiser? “That will be 105,000 kroner,” says the lady at the rental car counter. “105,000 kroner?” “Icelandic kroner, yes,” she says. “In your currency, that’s practically free. Ha, ha.” She mumbles something about not driving our rental car through rivers. If we should drive through a river anyway, she says, and if the rental car should be taken by the current and we should find ourselves sailing over a frothing waterfall, and if we should all be killed as a result, then the collision insurance will no longer be valid. She just wanted us to know.

“YES, WELCOME TO ICELAND,” says our local guide, Róbert Halldórsson. “Look around – a whole lot of nothing!” Róbert is one of Iceland’s very few ice climbers. He’s also a member of the mountain rescue service and has a higher-than-average interest in Canadian ski destinations. But what does he choose to tell us about himself right off the bat? It’s that payments on his mother’s car loan doubled in just a few days in the autumn of 2008. “The economy of this country is fucked,” Róbert says. “We used to live off banking and taking out loans in sterling and yen. Our banks had debt six times larger than our gross national product. Now Iceland’s nickname is Halfpriceland.” “But now the EU will come to the rescue, don’t you think?” “No, we don’t want to join the EU. Not me, anyway. Then we’d just have a lot of other countries over here stealing our fish. Fish is our livelihood. Fish, tourists and maybe a little aluminium.” Elisabet Elfa Armarsdottir will also be with us as a guide. She speaks fluent Danish and wants to be a clothes designer. “We can tell that food has become more expensive,” she says. “And I’ve noticed none of my friends work in the banks anymore. Now that I think about it, absolutely nobody is working in the banks anymore. Those who were bank directors before the financial crisis don’t dare show their faces in Reykjavík. There are afraid they’ll get beat up. And they should be.” If you ever get close to a human And human behaviour Be ready be ready to get confused. - Björk

OUR PLAN is to conquer the Hekla volcano. To reach the top, see the view. “A not so good idea,” Róbert says. “Why?” “Hekla usually erupts every 10th year. Now it’s been nine-and-a-half years.” “What happens if an eruption occurs while we’re on the mountain?” asks Kari, the photographer. “Then we will die, one way or the other,” says Róbert. “Maybe we’ll be suffocated by poison gases. Or maybe we’ll burn up in a sea of lava.” “Come on, let’s go,” says Elisabet. Kari and I don’t say a thing.

WE LEAVE CIVILIZATION and drive toward Hekla. The landscape is more “Lord of the Rings” than the movie of the same name. Iceland’s terrain is not of this planet. It is alien. It is taken from Mars, or Venus, or someplace still farther away. Iceland is like a comet shooting through space, with 320,000 amiable astronauts holding on tight. And why is Iceland actually called Iceland? It might as well have been named Volcanoland or Desertland or Cloud Cuckoo Land. We’re sitting in the Land Cruiser discussing Icelandic music. Róbert thinks Sigur Ros tries too hard to be strange. Elisabet says Björk is her neighbour in Reykjavík. “You’re Björk’s neighbour?” Kari the photographer asks in amazement. “Yes,” says Elisabet. “In Iceland we’re all neighbours, really.”

NINE HUNDRED YEARS AGO people thought Hekla was the main entrance to Hell. Not only that, they also thought Hekla was the home of Judas. And that witches partied on Hekla every Easter. It was something to think about as we ascended the coal-black landscape toward the top. The last volcanic eruption occurred at 6:18 p.m., 26 February 2000. It was sudden, brutal and lethal. The one before that happened 17 January 1991. And before that, 9 April 1981. I walk along mulling the dates. Smoke rises from the ground. Fog curls in around us and we are cocooned in mystery. We disappear into our own saga. At the summit of Hekla, Róbert bends over and digs into the black gravel. “It’s so hot it almost burns,” he says with a grin. “Maybe we should head down again soon?” I say. I think about my family, my house loan, the books I have to return to the library. It would be inconvenient to be burned alive by lava just now.

WE SET UP CAMP for the night at Landmannalaugar in No Man’s Land. Róbert makes spaghetti alla carbonara on an MSR PocketRocket and begins to talk about the ghosts that haunt the tourist cabins around here. One night, according to a cabin attendant, all the chairs suddenly jumped onto the dining table, though he was the only person in the cabin. His response was to shut the door to the kitchen and lock himself in a bedroom. And there he stayed. Hikers who stopped by the cabin later in the summer reported that the attendant had in fact gone insane. It’s so nice to hear stories like that before crawling into one’s sleeping bag in a desolate place, on a practically uninhabited island, far out in the Atlantic. Beside us in the campground stands a gigantic, rebuilt military lorry. Some adventurers from Central Europe are grilling hot dogs alongside the monster truck tires and talking about Africa. Róbert and Elisabet step away for a night dip in a hot spring. I drift off to sleep and dream that I’m falling into Hekla’a crater, the main portal to Hell. We are the earth intruders We are the earth intruders Muddy with twigs and branches. - Björk

SEVERAL DAYS LATER we’re sitting at the restaurant 3 Frakkar in Reykjavík. Naturally we are eating reyktur lundi með sinnepssósu (smoked puffin with mustard sauce), léttsteiktar svartfuglsbringur með villibráðasósu (wild seabird with meat gravy) and hvalkjöts piparsteik (whale pepper steak). Róbert says that Range Rover in Iceland is now pronounced Game Over. “By the way, do you know who has given us unconditional economic support during the financial crisis?” he asks. “Norway?” I say. After all I’m a Norwegian. “No.” “Canada?” says Kari, the Canadian. “No.” “Who, then?” “Poland.”