Coming home from a tour of Iceland comes closest to the
feeling of having been to another world and back. Indeed American astronauts trained for their
first landing on the moon near the center of Iceland, so my analogy is not far
fetched.
In geological terms, Iceland is a truly young landmass, very
much a nature’s work in progress. New land is still being created by lava flows
and new islands emerge from under water volcanic eruptions, the newest being
Surtsey, about 50 years old, off the southern coast of Iceland. (Surtsey is off
limits to casual tourists to keep it pristine for earth scientists to study new
land creation.)
Iceland is frequently called the land of fire and ice. Fire
comes from the constant volcanic and geothermal activities beneath the surface
and ice from the weight of massive glaciers above. The consequent landscape
reflect those qualities, fields of jagged lava rocks, glacier waterfalls that
cut through mountains, jagged if formed after the ice age and flat table
silhouetted if the mountains were sheared by the retreating ice. The landscape
was light green from the moss that grew on the lava and darker green from the grass
farmers planted for the livestock. Iceland has no indigenous tall trees or large
land animals. In order to protect their
domesticated livestock, local inhabitants were quick to kill rare sighting of polar
bears that landed from drifting icebergs. Before the advent of man, any
unfortunate bear that landed on the relatively barren Iceland most likely starved
to death.
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| That's sand eels hanging in its mouth |
Before humans discovered Iceland, it was already migratory
birds’ favorite honeymoon spot. Millions and millions came to Iceland in the
summer months to mate and breed. Approximately 80% of world’s puffins have
their nests on Iceland. That comes to more than 20 visiting puffins for every
Icelander. Sadly because of climate
change and resulting shift in the food chain, increasingly fewer puffin chicks
survive the breeding season and grow strong enough to join their parents for
the migration to the open ocean where they spend the rest of their time. Puffin’s
average life expectancy is about 40 years, so there is still time for the
species to adapt and reverse the path to extinction. (Our tour of Iceland began
in late August, which was a tad late for viewing puffins in their natural
habitat, but I was fortunate to photographed one on the water.)
The official settlement of Iceland was attributed to a couple
of Vikings around 870 AD. Some Irish priests may have been in Iceland a hundred
years earlier but weren’t around by the time the Vikings arrived. Life on the
rugged island was far from easy and most did not come willingly but usually
under duress, such as having worn out their welcome in their homeland in Norway
by committing some egregious indiscretion such as killing somebody important.
The original settlers came without a written language and
had to pass down their traditions and rules of conduct through oral recitations
and the integrity of the oral history greatly depended on the memory of those
passing them on.
By the 12th century AD, the alphabet was
introduced from the British Isles but adapted to represent the Icelandic version
of the Norwegian language. The invention of paper had already arrived in the
West from China but had not yet found its way to Iceland and writing was
restricted to inscribing on the skin of farm animals, understandably a much
more costly medium. Snorri Sturluson was one such wealthy
landowner/farmer/major chieftain who transcribed much of the oral history into
written sagas. He was not only a major contributor to Icelandic history and
culture but also that of Norway since much of the roots of the sagas originated
from Norway.
According to Icelandic sagas, Leif Erickson was the first to
sail to America and even settled there for a part of his life in late 10th
and early 11th century AD. His sister-in-law, Gudridur, who was in
his party, even gave birth to a boy in 1004 on an island thought to be today’s
Manhattan. Her first husband who was Leif’s brother had died and
Gudridur was married to someone else when Snoori, not related to Sturluson,
became the first white baby boy to arrive in the “new” world. Unlike Iceland,
the new world was already inhabited and the Vikings apparently did not find a
way to coexist with the American natives and eventually abandoned their
settlement and went back to Iceland.
Gudridur was a remarkable woman and well travelled having
gone back to Iceland from Greenland then America, and then to Europe and even
to Rome to meet the Pope before returning to Iceland and to retire in a
convent. Gudridur most likely talked about her days in the new land to the west
because according to Icelanders, an Italian was known to have visited Iceland
in 1470 and stayed for a couple years to learn all he can about the new lands.
This was why 20 years later, the same Italian, Columbus was able to set forth
brimming with confidence that he would find land. No doubt, the Vikings would
have found his wide margin of navigational error appalling.
In preparing to settle in Iceland, Vikings had to bring everything
they needed to survive such as horses, sheep and cattle and even lumber for the
construction of their dwellings. After the trickle of migrating Vikings halted,
the populations remaining on the island were left to develop in relative
isolation. As the main beast of burden, the horses evolved into a hardy breed
that can survive the winters in the open. The Icelandic sheep’s wool is
particularly soft and the lamb meat particularly tasty. Retrospective study through
genetic testing showed (according to the National Museum) that about 80% of the
men are descended from the Vikings but 62% of the women trace their origin from
mothers from the British Isles, especially from Ireland. No doubt the Vikings
supplemented their breeding stock of women en route from Norway to Iceland.
The living conditions on Iceland were harsh, barely allowing
the settlers to scrape by, relying on farming and fishing, and did not leave much
time for cultural pursuits. The population never exploded nor developed the
wealth needed to grow into a great civilization. They also had the good fortune
of living on a barren land unmarked by gold ore that would have been the magnet
for avaricious European adventurers. Even today, the total population of
Iceland is around 320,000, more than 2/3 living in the greater Reykjavik engaged in usual urban occupations and not with farming and fishing. With a landmass of 42,000 square
miles, it is slightly larger than the state of Tennessee but at a population
density of 3 per square km, Iceland with roughly one thousandth of the U.S.
population is only denser than Montana, Wyoming and Alaska among the U.S.
states.
While inhabitation of Iceland occurred in relatively recent human history and from a rather humble beginning, the country in recent years
has flourished and has become a modern nation with enviable metrics of success. Not
least is its relatively low unemployment and possession of world leading
technology in the utilization of geothermal energy for electricity generation
and hot water for heating. About 95% of the population are regular users of the Internet, a significantly higher acceptance than the rest of Europe. Free access
to the Internet was everywhere, including not just the hotels but nearly every café
and restaurant provide access for the asking without any complicated log in
process. Visitors to the Blue Lagoon would be impressed with the use of the
smart chip to monitor entry and exit, personal use of lockers as well as keeping track of purchases of food
and beverage while bathing in the lagoon.
Since 2010, tourism in Iceland has been increasing at double-digit rate. For the current year, Iceland expects to welcome more than
one million visitors for the first time.
Our tour operator, Overseas Adventure Travel specializes in small
group travel limited to not more than 16 per group. OAT 11-day group tours arrived nearly one per day during the summer months and they contracted 25
professional trip leaders in order to take care of them all. On our OAT tour,
we saw waterfalls of varying sizes, glaciers in the distant and up close, a
landscape of strange lava rock formations dotted by occasional little churches and
farm houses, birds and whales offshore and Icelandic horses and sheep on land.
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| Three representative photos to show the diversity of Icelandic landscape |
The Icelanders we met were uniformly warm and friendly,
educated and easy to talk to in English. Our affable trip director, Oddur, kept
teaching us about all aspects of Iceland with grace and ease. Vignir, our driver, is writing a book based on the oral history of selected Icelanders. Instead of
eating in their restaurant in Heimaey, the owners hosted dinner at their home
and entertained us with the story of the 1973 eruption that buried part of
Heimaey on Westmen Islands but increased the landmass by 20%. They also sang
for us and Oddur was invited to join in for a number Kingston Trio made famous.
The husband of the couple that home hosted our dinner in Akureyri was a trained
journalist, now chief editor of a weekly paper, and an author of several books. His wife is resuming her education pursuing a PhD in museology. Oddur at various
stops on the tour would play the church organ or piano for us. I am left with
the impression that many Icelanders face years of long dark winter days by
developing other skills and interests making them interesting people to
interact with.
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| Statue of Leif Erickson, a gift of the US government (so the story about him must be true) |
