Reykjavik, Here I Am

Flying to Iceland is fast and easy; it takes less than six hours. Planes arriving from North America are the first to touch down each morning. My passport was stamped shortly after 6am Wednesday.

Reykjavik is often billed as the city with the best nightlife, but the city seems very quiet right now. In fact, I spent much of the day walking the city center’s street and it struck me as one of the quietest places I have ever been. Even the traffic was quiet, save the purr of the diesel engines at traffic lights.  The high tourist season is over and it must be a slow week. The Reykjavik Film Festival kicks off next week and October sees the much-touted Icelandic Airwaves Music Festival, organized annually by Björk, Iceland’s most famous performer. Bands and fans come from all over the world.  This is a real cultural capital.  There is public art everywhere, lots of fabulous sculpture.

Echoes of a Viking Ship - On the Waterfront

Today I finally got to see some medieval Icelandic manuscripts, which were inaccessible on my first visit to Iceland. Now, a small collection of them, is housed in The Culture House, just a few blocks from my hotel. I stayed in the excellent exhibit longer than most visitors probably do, reading every word that was available in English. I marveled at volumes dating as far back as the 13th century, manuscripts (some illuminated) on vellum of both the prose and poetic Edda, from which most of our knowledge of Norse mythology comes; manuscripts of the Icelandic Sagas, the stories that tell the history of Iceland in the 10th and 11th centuries; religious volumes including Lives of the Saints and Lives of the Apostles; and legal codes.  Unfortunately, I cannot read Old Norse, but the books are fascinating nonetheless.  The letters are miniscule, the occasional illuminations rather small.  Some are only partially extant.  But considering their age they are in remarkable condition.  These are the sources for much of what we know from Wagnerian opera, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and comic book heroes such as Thor. The story of how these priceless works were rediscovered and in many cases returned to Iceland from other nations was also explained.  One set of pages was rescued from an old farmhouse; holes had been punctured in it so that it could be used to sift flour!  I learned how vellum was made from animal skin and what a truly dreadful and arduous job it must have been to be a scribe.  But had it not been for them, so much of the oral tradition and our early history would have been lost.

Leif Ericson - According to the Vinland Sagas he was the first European in North America, 500 years before Columbus

This afternoon I walked along the waterfront to the brand new Harpa concert hall and conference center, which houses the Icelandic Symphony and Opera. The glass and steel facade, designed by Olafur Eliasson, stunningly reflects the water and sky outside. LEDs will illuminate many of the small windows during Iceland’s long, dark winters. The colors of the building changed as the day went on. I was fortunate to attend a short, afternoon concert of twentieth-century Icelandic songs by a tenor and a mezzo-soprano. Aware that most of the audience were tourists, they introduced each song in English and told a little about the composers and lyricists. These are the songs known by all Icelanders – lullabies, love songs, an Icelandic Ave Maria, and Romantic tales of horse riders fearful of elf queens and ghosts.

Harpa

The city definitely seems more subdued than 9 years ago, perhaps showing signs of the country’s economic collapse in 2008. It is very, very expensive here and I am not sure how people get by: gasoline costs close to $8 a gallon and I purchased a banana that cost more than $1 this evening. Of course, those and so many other products must be imported, but even the local meat and seafood on menus is more expensive than we are used to. On the other hand, the country produces 99% of its energy from local, renewable resources – geothermal and hydroelectric. There is virtually no pollution. All produce and livestock are raised organically. Icelandic men have the longest life expectancy on the planet and women the second longest. So they are doing something right.  Perhaps it is not in the clean air but in the hotdogs …

The Best Hotdogs in Town, Old Harbour: A Reykjavik Landmark

Icelander Enjoying Europe's Best Hotdog (same kind enjoyed by President Clinton and many others)