Romantic ideas versus reality

13 June 2017

Amongst other romantic notions I had about Iceland was the one about treading in the footsteps of the great heroes from the sagas - in particular those from Njals Saga. All those hours I spent with maps and guidebooks working out an itinerary! In this last week, having experienced the wilds of the far north west, I would come south to the site of the first  parliament: Thingfellir.

At this point, the plan was that I would spend a couple of days doing urban things in Reykjavik and meeting one or more of my one time musician friends from Steintriggur.Then I would go on a pilgrimage to the country to the west of the city where the events of the saga took place. Finally I would make my way across the interior by the only route open to 2 wheel drive vehicles, visit the bird mecca of Myvatn and make my way back to the ferry in the east.

Thingvellir was wonderful,(See previous post) but the tourist honeypot of the Great Geysir was only 10 kilometres further east, so I decided to go there early in the morning before the crowds arrived. I'm glad I did.

 It erupts about every 6 minutes, so you need to wait, camera paused to catch the first bulge and the roar as boiling water shoots into the air.

Just before I left Geysir, and just as the first of the buses was arriving, I asked one of the girls at a till/information point if I would be able to drive route 36 across the highlands with a 2x4. She risked a smile:

"It's closed and no."

So that was that; total rethink required. to do that you need one of these:

There were two evocative names on the map: Bergthorsvoll, the site of Njal's farm where he and Bergthora were burnt, and Hliderendi where Gunnar lived. The second was on the road which led to all sorts of wonderful places eulogised in the guide books, but only available to 4x4s. The first, however,  was near the coast and I pictured rolling grassland and scrub with the sea as a backdrop. I'd seen lots of places like that in the north after all. What I'd overlooked was that the reason this area was prised by the early settlers was that it was a huge fertile plain with river access. They were subsistence farmers, and this is farm land plain and simple: flat dull fields interspersed with rows of white plastic bales, ugly houses surrounded by typical mechanical debris, power lines and horrible dusty gravel roads.  Bergthorsvoll is now a 70s style guest house, and I was so tired of driving by then that I even asked how much it was - £65 for a single room, which is OK for Iceland, but though they were nice people, communication was terrible - my hearing shot to pieces by the long dusty drive.  I still dithered, but then I thought: what would I eat, and what would I do? There was nowhere to walk, and I probably wouldn't be able to talk to them.

The campsite I had seen on the map a bit further along the coast was closed so I had no option but to go back to the town I had left with some relief a few hours earlier.

I've had a reasonable meal with two good glasses of Freeman's Bay, the site was only 750 for pensioners (£6), and tomorrow I go to the city. Even though more than half of the population live there, it's still smaller than Bristol. I don't know what to expect.