(First) Two days in Iceland

Since there hasn't been much that's been genuinely compelling in the theater or on TV these days, I figured I'd use this space which hasn't been touched in two months to give a rundown about our recent vacation to Iceland and the UK. I've already posted rough versions of these entries on the message board at the end of the Internet, so these will just have some mild updates but also a lot of pictures, which I've never felt like bothering to learn on that site's HTML format.

Iceland is an interesting combination of the hyper-modern and the extremely aged. Since tourism became the leading industry circa 2010, many aspects of the aged are mostly for curiosity-seekers, rather than a declaration of culture. For example, in a small cafe right next to the Hallgrímskirkja (the gigantic Lutheran church that you can see from the majority of the capital city of Reykjavik), I tried fermented shark. It's a weird, very umami-forward flavor that I wouldn't seek out but was at least interesting to try. I was advised by our server to chew and swallow within about 10 seconds to avoid the overwhelming ammonia flavor that gives most the reason to avoid it. In the four bites, I took, I encountered that only once but it's still more of a stunt than encouragement to try out something Icelandic from the 13th century. As one tour guide told us on a two-hour walk around Reykjavik, the place where I had the shark (Cafe Loki) claims to serve "traditional Icelandic food" but he'd never seen an actual Icelander eating in there. That doesn't mean the food isn't genuine because, again, the stark mix of the modern and the old. But it was just one example of the internal cultural divide. One American we met there who's a resident by marriage (he's a former native of NYC) kind of corroborated a few of my observations when he mentioned what he perceives as a cultural self-esteem issue, in that Icelanders see themselves as the red-headed stepchild of Scandinavia; carrying a chip on their collective shoulder because they want to be more like Sweden, but they're not. On that note, the evidence of Swedish and Danish culture is quite dominant in things like architecture.

The main thing I thought about was the young people. With the emergence of the Internet, it's easier than ever to see how vibrant things could be and compare them to how they're not in one's own hometown. Reykjavik is the biggest city, by far, on the island but they still kind of roll up the sidewalks at 10 PM and don't open a lot of things until 12 hours later. That's not exactly the recipe for a vibrant night life for the younger crowd. That American told me that a lot of them do leave, as you might expect, but a lot of them come back because the small population creates familial bonds that are stronger than many other places. As another tour guide mentioned to us, they don't have much serious crime because everyone knows one another. If someone committed a serious offense, even when they were done serving their sentence, they might still be socially ostracized because so many people would have been intimately familiar with the victim.

We ran into a lot of non-Icelanders out of the obvious places (tours, etc.) because, again, tourism is the primary industry and a lot of people stick around. One of our bus drivers was a Japanese man, still speaking English with a prominent Japanese accent but also perfectly fluent in Icelandic. A server at the Cafe Loki spoke to us in English and then had to call out another customer who came in speaking Icelandic, telling him that she couldn't understand him.

We saw a lot of Reykjavik, as it really isn't that big. That one walking tour was led by a guy who spent an hour telling us about the history and societal origins and changes (he pointed out where the original edge of the harbor was, before a few million tons of stone were added to create the land for more buildings) and another hour being the local chamber of commerce, pointing out where you could get the best pasta or the cheapest drinks and so on. We spent a fun couple hours in The Lebowski Bar, the most notable feature of which was a menu with at least two dozen different variations of a White Russian (Kahlua and some kind of cream were the basis, but then they went in all different directions.) We got in at the last minute when someone else left, right before they started the weekly music trivia contest, at which we completely bombed, since neither of us are as familiar with pop music from the last five or so years as was needed.

We saw at least a half-dozen family-owned, "been here for years" Italian restaurants, which is understandable as an alternative to the generally bland traditional food. The food at the Loki was good and we had some fish and chips later and it was OK, but both were kinda lacking in ways that a lot of modern palates might expect; most notably salt. This is completely aside from the fact that in both Iceland and England, two places noted for their fish and, thus, their fish and chips,. all forms of the latter have become bog-standard American fries. When I order fish and chips, I want potatoes, not something that just came out of a McDonald's fryer and doesn't taste as good. Oddly enough, the best place we found on our initial two days in Iceland was part of all the latest rage in town: food courts. As opposed to the American perception of them (collections of franchise food), these are apparently all independent operators or local chains. The one we stopped into was across the street from our hotel and it was solid. They stuck to the usual primary ingredients, like lamb and Arctic char, but enhanced them with much more elaborate preparation and presentation. There are at least four food courts that we found in the city. We also had an excellent lamb goulash in Wik, which is on the south coast. Hot dogs are also apparently a popular thing, at the moment.

Aside from Italian, Icelanders are also apparently fond of licorice. On that walking tour, we ended in a local candy shop that specialized in elaborate licorice concoctions, including one that starts with an extremely salty layer (like, burning your tongue salty) and then went to licorice and then a much more mildly salted licorice. It was cool because it was totally weird. Apparently, various tariffs and restrictions prohibited the entry of many other sweets from around the world for a long time, so candymakers in Iceland had to become creative with the one thing they could produce: licorice. There was another version that was licorice mixed with black pepper, which was also quite good. Both ice cream places that we stopped into also had various licorice flavors (chocolate licorice, etc.) so it is a cultural marker of sorts.

We stopped into the Sky Lagoon, which is right near town. It's a heated lagoon (hot tub temperature) with a swim-up bar, There's also a side path where you can walk from cold plunge to dry sauna to cold rinse to skin scrub to wet sauna. Invigorating, at least. Then we took a trip down to the south coast to see a number of waterfalls (walked behind one of them; bring rain pants), one of the quickly-retreating glaciers, and one of the black sand beaches, so all of that was pretty cool (and most of the pictures of same are above.) It's an interesting place and I'm glad to say that we'll be back to see more of it before heading home.