Silent Letters, Double Consonants and Murderous Midges

We should have known.  Myvatn.  The word rolls easily enough off the tongue until you reach the “n”.  Words that end with “tn” really should be discouraged, like goalkeepers named “Szczesny” and places called “Hluhluwe”.  Nobody wants to be covered in saliva when talking about these things.  The tourist brochures describe Myvatn as a “gem of the North”, “an otherworldly alien landscape”, “a birdwatcher’s dream” or “a geothermal heaven”.  But really, we should have known better.  Myvatn means “lake of the midges”.

Our foray into North Iceland started in a rather sedate fashion.  Shifting from the deserted Westfjords, we expected a sudden increase in tourist traffic, but the uptick in people was barely discernible.  Our first target was Hvitserkur, another double-consonanted mouthful with nothing to it but a basalt stack just off the shore.  I’d read that it was fairly photogenic and buoyed by the recent, peripheral benefits I’d received from my misplaced image as a photographer, I was keen to give it a bash.  I’d always wondered before why non-geologists found seastacks interesting.  I concluded that the attraction towards drab but rigid upward-pointing objects could only be Freudian in nature.  Of course, after a few hours of trying to capture the perfect image, I decided that such a prosaic interpretation certainly did not apply to my earnest, tripod-bearing self.

Hvitserkur – not just for the psychologically disturbed

We quickly shifted gear and made our way to Hofsos, a small fishing village which has seen better times, but now is famous in Iceland for its designer swimming pool.  It struck me as a bit of a white elephant – a large uninhabited pool with a spectacular rim-flow view of the fjord.  This was supported by huge, comfortable change rooms with a deliciously warm “hotpot” (Iceland’s more hygienic version of a jacuzzi) alongside.  Chatting to the guy at the desk, he told me that the place was so crowded in summer that you had to muscle your way in to find space.  As unseemly and difficult as this was to imagine as I splashed about in the pool’s emptiness, it tied up with the image we’d built up of Iceland as a swimming pool crazy country.

Icelanders love swimming.  It seems that if a village has a population of more than ten, it has a public swimming pool.  Although nominally a Christian country, I get the impression that the swimming pool is their true church.  It’s like a shul or a mosque or a shebeen, places where people gather to tell stories, laugh and catch up on the village happenings.  Whilst the fresh supply of hot earth-generated water is clearly one of the reasons for this odd obsession, it still befuddles me slightly that a country with such a harsh climate would latch onto this particular pastime.  Befuddlement aside, we quickly realized that the best place for a hot shower was at the public swimming pools. Before my mother disowns me (I know she’s reading this) and hangs her head in shame at this decidedly opportunistic bergie-like behaviour, I have to clarify that this is common practice.  For a nominal fee, you get access to the showers and given that we were often there when the locals were at work, we had luxurious facilities and unlimited hot water all to ourselves.

Spruced up and smelling just a little bit of sulphuric geothermal water, we headed off to Akureyri, Iceland’s second city.  The location is picturesque, framed by snow-capped mountains and a jaw-dropping fjord. A small population of about 18000 makes up a fairly cosmopolitan city and we had no difficulty tracking down the local ice-cream hotspot.  After having our first “serious” dinner of the trip (excluding, of course, my wife’s skillful manipulation of the gas cooker to heat up the canned tomato soup – she is a self-professed foodie, after all), we happened upon a “rock” concert in celebration of the city’s birthday.  As we joined shoulder-to-shoulder with the celebrating locals, rolling our necks rhythmically out of time with the slightly discordant music, I couldn’t help but wonder at what passes for cool in Iceland. San-Marié reckons Iceland made hipster cool, even before hipster knew what it was and the large band on stage reflected this.  Most of them were kitted out in jerseys that looked like they’d been knitted by Granny and their beards, whilst lacking Led Zeppelin-length, more than made up for it with body, substance and colour.   As cool as these guys looked, San-Marié seemed unconvinced when I suggested modeling my new look on the rugged trombone player. The music, although lyrically challenging was catchy and we stayed longer than expected.  Fortunately for us, this meant we arrived at our campsite at about midnight, just in time to catch another short Northern Lights show.

After the now obligatory visits to the spectacular local waterfalls, we headed to Myvatn.  As we entered the surrounding area, the few people that we noticed outside were walking whilst simultaneously flapping their arms in a continuous, windmill action in front of their faces.  They resembled robotic faceslappers, alternating blows from left to right as if waking up an overdose victim.  San-Marié called it the “Myvatn Wave”.  Oh how we laughed.

Godafoss – yet another local waterfall

We left the comfort of the camper for a short walk of the surrounding area.  Within seconds of leaving the vehicle, my head was surrounded by midges.  Not the odd one, not a a few hundred, but thousands or hundreds of thousands.  I shuffled away from the car but the dastardly gnats just followed me.  I felt like a cartoon character who’s unsettled a bee-hive and no matter where he scuttles, the bees just follow, swarming around his head as his legs rotate wildly.  My wife was facing similar issues and after a few minutes of our walk, we felt the need to try capture this on camera.  During the process, San-Marié started coughing and gagging.  Ever the sensitive yet witty soul, I quipped about the value of eating your protein but in between what I suspect were well-placed profanities, she mumbled something about creatures in her lungs, grabbed the keys and dashed back to the van. Never one to let the odd insect get in the way of a good time, I stoically insisted on completing the walk alone. During my head-down, face-covering walk, I did wonder why the Lonely Planet, although mentioning the beasts, had failed to describe the sheer overwhelming nature of these ear-filling, nostril-dwelling, lung-invading creatures.  It was one of my less pleasant walks.

Those aren’t smudges on the lens

Just before the dash to safety

Despite my wife’s zealous demand for a quick evacuation of the area, we were still able to sample some of the famed volcanic spots.  We walked through lava ridden fields, past oddly shaped rocks with their belching smoke and bubbling mud pools near cracked coloured earth.  During this process, I discovered that San-Marié had become a strong advocate for the use of burka.

A new convert

Before long however, we escaped the area and headed towards the safe, welcoming arms of East Iceland.  If you want to see a full midge free gallery of our trip in North Iceland, please click here.