Fannish stuff first, since I had time to look at the hotel's computer this morning: butterfly wrote a couple of great, thought-provoking posts which I wish I had the time to answer more fully. The one who tries the Jossverse characters for the Terry Prattchet definitions of Right, Good and Nice and the difference between them is particularily intriguing.

Moreover, there is a new community devoted to Connor. During my brief glimpse, I already saw one excellent posts pondering the consequences of the removal of Connor, and the mindwipe, here.

Now, on to my travelogue which is fastly drawing to a close.

It rained on my last day in Iceland (still does), heavily, but thankfully without any wind. Which meant I could indeed leave Akureyri as scheduled. A word about Akureyri, which I did walk through a bit this morning: reminds me a lot of Copenhagen, which isn’t that odd, I suppose, considering Iceland was under Danish rule for centuries. White and pastel houses, very nineteenth century, with the occasional veranda. Ideal for Ingmar Bergman films.The most beautiful sight I had of it was the sunset upon my arrival there yesterday by car, because we came from the mountains and could drive down to the Fjord in the dusky, gold-flecked twilight.

When I returned to Rekjavik, I was greeted by Ulrik, who took me to see an exhibition of Iceland’s most beloved treasure – the original of Snorre’s Edda on calf skin, and some of the other sagas, plus the book of the lawmakers, and the book of the land taking. Now I’ve seen thousand-years-old books before, and all the work and love which must have gone into creating them never cease to amaze me. However, I never saw some who really did look like they were made out of leather, dark leather at that – a hazelnut brown in the case of the Edda, with the letters looking like they were etched or stitched into the leather. Amazing. And kept in a darkened room, with light only switching on once you stand directly in front of it, to minimize the exposure. We wouldn’t know anything about the Norse mythology if not for this collection of myths which exists only in four copies - the original collection, that is, as put down by Snorre, aka the Icelandic Homer. Ulrik told me quite a lot about him; as opposed to Homer or even Shakespeare, this national icon apparently had a well-documented life. Near the end of it, he got into trouble with the Norwegian king by first accepting and then declining an offer, and was murdered in his bath.

Two of the leather books were really very tiny, not larger than my little finger, like books for dolls, full of prayers devoted to St. Margaret. The sign said they were supposed to help women with childbirth when bound to their thighs.

Driving through the old part of Rejkjavik, I was struck by the strong primary colours – red, blue, some yellow even, though of course also lots of white – in comparison to Akureyri, and also by the fact there were so many houses with walls of corregated steel. Last time I saw houses featuring corregated steel, it was in South Africa and those were the shacks for the poor. Here, however, corregated steel is expensive and a sign you’re well-to-do.

The highlight of the day was the visit of the Blue Lagoon. Though the name is slightly misleading – it should be called the white lagoon, if you ask me. It started as a by-product of the biothermic powerplant which uses the hot water this country provides so amply. Well, the water they use in this particular power station, coming from thousands of metres beneath ground and being located close to the sea, is full of minerals – minerals meaning almost 50% salt in this case. Some genius had the bright idea to channel it into a giant swimming pool amidst lava rocks as well. Which means you can relax in hot steaming water full of salt (which is good for one’s back) no matter how cold it is outside for as long as you want. They even provide bathing suits and a moisturizing cream afterwards. It’s fantastic. Not quite as lacking of gravity as the Dead Sea, but one does feel wonderfully relaxed and loose. Also not quite real, in the middle of all the salty vapour, the dark rocks and the windy sky.

Two last observations on Iceland:

- being able to refill soup and demand more bread as often as one wants without paying any extras is neat and more than enough to stuff one’s inner Oliver Twist
- such a lot of rainbows in this country, whenever the sun appears, that is; no wonder they imagined Bifrost, the bridge between earth and Asgard where the Gods lived, as a rainbow.

First of all, let’s get the fannish stuff out of the way. I traded my Quark icon for this Quark & Dax creation which hobsonphile created for me. As mentioned in earlier DS9 entries, I do so like the friendship between them. Speaking of DS9 , thanks to the DVD in my apartment and season 5 brought along, I feel another review coming up.

Now I do wish I could surf longer and more, but I’m dreading the phone bill anyway (can’t let my hosts pay that one). However, I did find hmpf ’s thoughts on John Crichton and physical language here which I found highly interesting.

The main part of my day, of course, was spent exploring Iceland. The bus picked me up at 8:30, and I joined Ulric and his tour. Which consisted of American, English and French tourists who didn’t feud a bit. We had some misfortune with the weather – i.e. it rained at regular intervals – but hey. It’s not like anyone comes here for the sun anyway.

You’ll have to imagine the landscape as something which originated from volcanic mud and lava which was then frozen into all kind of odd shapes, not higher than one’s knee, and then covered with green moss and (due to it being November) mostly brownish grass. In the distance the mountains. And every now and then fumes and vapors carry over the not-quite-plains, originating from hot spots. (I’ll come to that.) Every now and then sheep, who look like rocks painted in a dirty yellow, and horses, which Ulric advised us not to call ponies. After all, he added, Charlemagne rode on horses like that one (as can be seen in Aachen). They come on the island together with the Vikings in the 9th century, and around 1000 AD nobody was allowed to import any others, so that the virtues of the Islandic horse would be kept. This, btw, is still official law.

There are only a few trees, though they try to grow new ones. There used to be 25% of the island covered in birches, but that was before the humans arrived, complete with need for wood and with livestock enjoying fresh leaves. And the need for iron. So nearly no trees, but the largest desert north of the Sahara together with great glaciers in the inner island.

Our first stop was an old former crater filled with a small lake. (It being only a small crater. It would have looked beautiful in the sun, one presumes, but I had no intention of just standing there and freezing, so I walked around it. (You don’t need to be impressed; one could do it in 15 minutes.) This was fun but also meant I was really lucky to be wearing my boots because the mud - in this case mostly red lava-turned-mud, not black one – was really clinging to them. Normal shoes would have sunk in completely.

Next, we went to Skálholt. Which is the seat of the bishops since 1056, but alas, the old church was burned down, so there only is a new one. En route, Ulric was proud to point out that Iceland turned Christian without a single person killed in the process (because the assembly voted on it, Island being ruled by an oligarchic kind of parliament then, not by a king), and did the Reformation bit in the 16th century, i.e. turning Lutheran-Protestant, with only one Catholic bishop, Jón Arason, and his two sons beheaded. (The sons, btw, were completely legal. The Icelandic branch of the (Catholic) church apparently never got around to introducing the celibate.) I’ve got to admit that compared with the 60% of the population wiped out which is true for the European countries involved in the 30-years-war, that’s impressive. Jón was executed in Skálholt, btw, though he was bishop in the other part of the island, and the small inscription in his memory says he died for his faith and his country.

Also en route, he pointed out various examples of little, tiny mostly red and blue houses on lava rocks. In the neighbourhood of a house which was spared during the last earthquake. These were put there for the elves, he said, the belief in elves being intense enough here to put the Irish to shame.

Then came Gullfoss. Now I’ve seen waterfalls in Ireland, the US, Tyrol, even China which were all beautiful in varying degrees. But none literally took my breath away as much as Gullfoss, which is a waterfall in two levels, then into a deep river. Since it had been very cold a few days ago, there were icy stalaktites everywhere, and the thundering water which really looked as if a giant had taken it in his hand. Yes, thought I, this is the country where the old Norse gods walked, and the giants, and the dwarves. Tolkien would have loved it.

(Though he wouldn’t exactly have loved what I came across in the place where we stopped for lunch. Wedding rings, “inscribed in Elvish”, with the text
One ring to show our love
One ring to bind us
One ring to seal our love
And forever to entwine us.
I kid you not. I was about to ask whether this was in Sindarin or Quenya but stopped myself in time.)

Lunch also gave us one of the places Iceland is most famous for – the Geysir after which all other geysirs are named. Not that there are many. Only a geysir which shoots water fountains, we were told, is a true geysir, and besides Old Faithful (thoughts of Willow immediately came to mind) and What’s-its-name in Yellowstone Park, one in Hawaii and one in New Zealand, the only true geysirs were these here in Iceland. Geysir and Strokkur, and their little siblings, the wanna be geysirs, who are hot water springs but don’t shoot yet. You wander between hot mist (which smells of sulphur) and see other people like ghosts drifting too and thro, and naturally end up next to Strokkur, because it shoots about every 3-5 minutes or so. It’s that alien-planet-feeling, if you’re a sci-fi fan, or the idea that there should be wolves and ravens somewhere if you’re into myths. Then up shoots the fountain, and I mean really up. Incredibly high.

Incidentally, this hot water, we were told, isn’t nearly as dangerous as disgruntled photographers once you wander into their picture.

Among other things, Iceland is where the Eurasian plate and the North American plate meet. Or rather, they don’t meet. They drift apart, about a centimeter every other year or so. The North American plate announces its presence most forbiddingly, in a huge, huge natural wall out of roughly quadratic gigantic black blocks. So many mountains have myths about their origins involving a dragon; this one doesn’t, but if anything ever looked like the scaly back of a dragon who carried the earth on its shoulders, it’s this wall. You stand before it awed and humbled. Which might have been one of the reasons why the Viking chieftains chose this place to have their – I was about to write Entmoot – their Ting. When they voted on Christianity, they also wanted to use the local lake for baptism, but it was much too cold. The sad post script: the local river was even colder. And later-day Iceland which got annexed by Denmark via Norway got the same rules the the rest of Europe. Under the Vikings, no one was ever executed for murder. (If you killed someone, you either paid the fine, the weregild, or got banished for three years – as it happened to Erik the Red whose son Leifur made that trip the America, for example – or if you didn’t go, became an outlaw.) Under the rule of the Danish crown, women got executed for having illegitimate babies, in that same icecold river.

Ulric recited some Icelandic poetry for us – both in the original and in the English and French translation – and generally was a great guide. Which is why I felt seriously annoyed at his behalf when noone gave him a tip later. If you want to be very kind you can blame the weather, because by the time we were at the North American wall it poured, and we were all wet and certainly aching to get back to hour hotels and into dry clothes. But I still think they could have tipped him.

Now I must be off to earn some money myself and justify my time here.