Snæfellsnes in October

Hér býr húldufólkið (Here there be elves)

The university system in Iceland may not allow for a lot of holidays, but it does have the virtue of giving its students a full week-long reading period (vinnuvika) in October, which we enjoyed this past week. Naturally, we took advantage of this study period to abandon our books and take a little jaunt up the coast to Snæfellsnes, the storied peninsula north of Reykjavík. It is the turf on which many sagas take place, the land that inspired Halldór Laxness to write Kristnihald undir Jökli, and the location in which Jules Verne set the opening of Journey to the Center of the Earth. You can imagine what this place must do to people.

The whole, long peninsula is a study in contradictions: sheep-dotted farmland that ends abruptly on one side at the feet of sudden, slate-gray volcanic mountains (here picture Mordor), and on the other side at the sea frothing madly on the rocks. The coastline is punctuated with towns, but most of them consist of a single neighborhood…and of course a few Bónus stores—the ever-present yellow-and-pink grocery chain with branches all over the island. Even Icelanders have to eat!

At the very tip of the peninsula is Snæfellsjökull, the glacier I mentioned a few posts ago as being visible from Reykjavík on a clear day. Well, most days are not clear, and the day my friends and I drove out was no exception. It didn’t rain on us much, and we even got some of that precious sunlight we go for days without seeing, but the glacier was entirely capped in thick clouds. We could only see its rocky foot, which looks for all the world like just another mountain. The story is that if you see the top of the glacier, it’s taking its hat off for you, saluting you. Around strangers it is shy, and apparently we lacked the necessary charm to induce it to uncap for us.

But we did see the black-pebble beach called Malarrif (when I say pebble, I really mean rocks the size of human hands, worn perfectly smooth by the sea).

And we saw the two bizarre columns of basalt called the Londrangar. A story is told (mostly to tourists) that the tower-shaped one is an elf library and the wider one is an elf church. The folks in Ólafsvík assured us that the story is modern and not traditional, but can’t you see where it comes from?

We stopped at Hellnar (year-round population 9, says my guidebook), where the waves barrel in and out of a wonderful cave-arch of lava called Baðstofa (Bath-house). During nesting season it’s full of seabirds, but the day we were there it was only the five of us flightless anomalies clambering over the rocks. There is something to be said for playing the tourist outside of tourist season, even if it means being blown over by the wind.

The mountain Stapafell (another elf-home if stories be true) presides over Hellnar looking very much like a real-life version of some child’s mud-volcano.

The next town over is Arnastapi (population a whopping 15, says Google), where randomly-placed lava towers interrupt the smooth workings of the little harbor. And I do mean little; there was room for maybe two tiny boats to be moored by the dock!

One final little glimpse of Iceland this week, this one from Reykjavík again: it’s the Imagine Peace Tower, built by Yoko Ono in honor of John Lennon. Run by the renewable energy, the tower in the bay is lit up between the anniversary of Lennon’s birth and that of his death (October 9 to December 8), and the beam of light—which is all the tower consists of—can be seen all over the city. Whatever you may think about Yoko’s effect on the Beatles, you have to give her credit for a nice idea.

Even if, with a low cloud ceiling, the spotlight looks like Reykjavík is summoning Batman.