FINDING TRUE NORTH
Iceland’s
surreal landscape is infested with myth and folklore, and the dazzling display
of Northern Lights makes it worth a visit
There
are no trees, just grass and wild bushes. The joke is that if you’re lost in an
Icelandic forest, all you have to do is stand up.
SO THERE we were, on a
night as cold as death, as black as pitch, sitting on the back seat of a Super
Jeep. The GPS said we were no more than three-score miles from the next big
city, but we could well have been a million light years from earth, floating in
space. The four-by-four monster, with gigantic tyres, was our Apollo 13,
desperately trying to make a moon landing. Reykjavik, we thought, we have a
problem!
Our journey was neither
an adventure, nor an excursion. It was a treasure hunt – a frantic search for a
tick mark on our bucket lists. There was something bright and green in the sky,
hidden behind the clouds, unseen because of light pollution. We needed to catch
a glimpse of it.
The Aurora Borealis, or
the Northern Lights, are a routine occurrence for a large section of the Nordic
masses. They also occasionally reveal themselves to inhabitants in the northern
reaches of Canada. For them, it’s perhaps hard to see what the fuss is about.
For us, finding them, frolicking in their neon glow, was a once-in-alifetime
opportunity. The Lights were what had called us to Iceland this winter – in
tri-climate jackets, double thermals, balaclavas, long johns and snow boots. We
had gone to this European outpost just for them. Two weeks later, we were to
return with so much more.
TREASURE
HUNT
On the third morning, it
snowed. It wasn’t a heavy downpour but the flakes were large and Disney-like.
The kind you lie down and make snow angels in.
By then, we had already
explored the four-and-a-half roads that make up downtown Reykjavik (pronounced
reyk-ye-vik), the capital city that houses one-third of Iceland’s 330,000
residents. There was Laugavegur, the main shopping street, lined with pubs and
cafes, including the Lebowski Bar that enshrines “the Dude”, the Chuck Norris
Grill that is an ode to sleazy 1980s Hollywood, and Kaldi (cold in Icelandic),
where locals converge during happy hour to banter with tourists over the best
beer on the island.
There was Hverfisgata,
where government buildings are interspersed with pizza joints and boutique
stores. There was Skólavördustígur, which lights up like a Christmas tree every
night and is the proud home of the Handknitting Association of Iceland. Here
you can buy an intricate Lopapeysa, or water-resistant sweater knitted from local
sheep wool. And there was Barónsstígur, sparse and grey but critical to us
because it housed our Airbnb apartment. (Yes, in Iceland the pronunciation is
sometimes more intimidating than the weather).
These graffiti-infested
roads criss-crossed at odd angles – meeting diverging, meeting again – all
eventually leading to the magnificent Hallgrimskirkja (hatl-grims-keer-yk-ya),
a stony Lutheran church that resembles Obelix’s menhir and rules the Reykjavik
skyline.
A week in this city feels
like a month. Two weeks feel like you’ve lived there forever, but not in a bad
way. The food is exorbitant, the days are short, but the people are warm –
which is important when it’s freezing outside.
CALL OF
THE WILD
On the fifth day, we were
dashing down the snow on a 10-dog open sleigh. Siberian huskies are as large,
as fluffy, as naughty, as they are friendly. They enjoy rub-downs, swimming,
impromptu bouts of howling. More than anything, they enjoy running.
So, down by the southern
coast in Holmasel, on a ranch surrounded by bright whiteness, the huskies took
us on a flying lap. Most of them were rescue dogs − abandoned by people who had
bought husky pups but didn’t know how to care for them – or the offspring of
rescue dogs bred on the farm by our hosts, Siggi and Klara. Among the dogs was
the star of the ranch, Brewsky – a hypochondriac who fears he might break into
a sneezing fit any minute, but never does.
The huskies live close to
Iceland’s most celebrated natural features that
come together to form the
Golden Circle. A drive through this region takes you to breathtaking views of
sparse white plains, disturbed by sudden snow-capped mountain rising between
mossy lava fields with no warning. There are no trees anywhere, just grass and
wild bushes. The joke is that if you’re lost in an Icelandic forest, all you
have to do is stand up.
FROM
REAL TO REEL
For all their glory, the
Golden Circle’s Gullfoss waterfall, the Strokkur geyser (which explodes with
scalding water shooting 100 feet in the air every 10 minutes) and the
Thingvellir National Park (where you can see the North American and Eurasian
tectonic plates slowly splitting apart from each other), cannot hold a candle
to the sights hidden in Western Iceland.
There, in the shadow of
the Snaefellsjökull volcano, whose crater serves as the entry to the planet’s
core in Jules Verne’s The Journey
to the Centre of the
Earth, Iceland reveals its most magical side.
It’s a land infested with
myth and folklore. “Hidden people” live in enchanted rocks and cause great harm
to those who disturb them but repay kindness with kindness. Trolls, big and
stupid, are impossible to fight but easy to outwit. And the infamous Yule Lads,
thirteen prankster brothers, emerge from the shadows to announce that Christmas
is near.
In the country’s Western
peninsula, under the majestic Kirkjufell mountain, next to the Kirkjufellsfoss
waterfalls, a few miles from the black-stone beach of Djupalónsandur, myth
comes closer than ever to reality. It is no wonder that Game of
Thrones is shot in Iceland’s
surreal landscape.
Which brings us back to
the Super Jeep, and to our quest for the neon flash in the sky. To see the
Lights, hurtling particles of plasma must escape from the sunspot regions of
the sun’s surface. They need to race across the solar system towards the earth,
get attracted by the magnetic field of the north pole, slip through holes in
the magnetic field, and mingle with molecules of oxygen, nitrogen and other
elements to create a dazzling, swirling display.
A series of extraordinary
events, visible only on a clear night, only if you’re at the right place, at
the right time. On the seventh night, we saw the Lights.
HTBR9APR17
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