Iceland. Iceland! I can’t stop talking about Iceland.

I owe everyone who knows me in person, everyone who follows me on Facebook, and everyone who reads the blog, an apology.

I realise that I can’t stop talking about Iceland. I hear myself bring it up nearly every day. I see myself post about it far too regularly on Facebook. For a country whose population makes up less than 0.005% of the world’s people, I spend a pretty out of proportion amount of time talking about.

And I’m going to talk about it yet again to try and make sense of it.

Iceland’s all about big landscapes

A travel-loving friend (who we last saw on Inis Meain) came to visit recently and it didn’t take long before our chatting turned to each of the trips we’d both experienced since we last saw each other. When we got to my Iceland trip, I heard myself flip a switch and start talking with some insane enthusiasm and telling my friend that she just had to go to Iceland too.

My husband eventually interrupted me and said, “But really, Iceland’s just got lots of beautiful landscapes. Without the landscape it wouldn’t be very special.”

I saw red. It is undeniably true that Iceland has the most spectacular landscapes I’ve ever seen. And this landscape changes constantly as you drive around the country. In fact, those very landscapes still make me physically shiver at their beauty when I look at photographs from our trip.

There’s something about Iceland (and Australia)

But Iceland is way more than superlative-invoking landscapes. It’s unique and in so many ways opposite to my home country, Australia, and then in some ways it’s so much the same as Australia.

The differences are obvious, perhaps: Australia is generally hot, Iceland is generally cold. (I can confirm this: mid-summer in Iceland is far, far colder than mid-winter here in Perth.) Beyond climate, the cuisine is different, the language is far-removed, and our histories don’t bear much resemblance either.

What’s the same? Big, wide, crazy-open space, and enormous skies (when the clouds aren’t there). Countries with all this space (no surprise to me that the population density of each country is almost identical, at around 3 people per square kilometre) make me feel highly reflective as soon as I leave the city, and the feelings I had in rural Iceland are just like those I get when I’m in outback Australia: the world is at my feet and everything is possible.

What else is the same is that people realise they’re a little bit different. Down here in Australia, despite being so heavily influenced by both Britain and America, we still have the feeling that we’re kind of different to the rest of the world. We’re so far away from most of it, for a start, plus we have a few unique things going on – weird animals not found elsewhere, unique problems of distance across the country and emptiness and the feeling that all the goings on in the rest of the world are somewhat unrelated to us. I feel like Icelanders can relate to some of these issues, plus they’re also quite unique as a race, live in a fairly homogenous society and are (like Aussies) generally pretty proud of their nationality.

Perhaps these similarities are some of the reasons I feel really drawn to Iceland?

Right place, right timing

You know how when you travel, you get the chance to do a lot more thinking than usual – you don’t have to work (so much)/clean the house/remember to pick up the dry-cleaning and all that other stuff that everyday life at home entails. Well, I think I did a massive dose of thinking on our Iceland road trip, because it’s been a real cross-roads-y year for me: with my son starting full-time school, and my travel blog starting to be a more businessy proposition, and my social media business going well, and I needed to figure out a lot about the direction of my life in the next few year.

Iceland provided me with just the right kind of stimulation to think more deeply about all this stuff, and I think that helps me feel even more connected to it. Perhaps I could have had all these ideas and made all these decisions in Portugal or the Philippines or Kenya too, but I happened to be in Iceland, so I’ll always feel that extra bit of love for it. I bet you have a place that feels like that, too. (Japan is another one of mine. And Croatia. And … you get the idea.)

So I probably won’t stop talking about Iceland

Back to that apology. If I’m really honest, I’m only a little bit sorry that I drone on and on about Iceland. If you’ve read this far, you’ll see I have plenty of reasons to. I’m going to get back there one day soon and you’ll hear about it. Of course, you might be better off going yourself first, and you’ll probably understand what I mean even better. Ah, Iceland. Get there.

You might also like:

7 things I didn’t expect in Iceland (and 3 I did) Airbnb in Iceland, or accommodation to help you fall in love with Iceland even more deeply Our southern Iceland itinerary: Tips for a week in Iceland Why I’m not finished with Iceland yet