I challenge you to find anyone who’s travelled to Iceland and feels half-hearted about it.
It’s a little over a year since I returned from my first (very longed for) trip to Iceland and it’s still a place that completely haunts my thoughts. Iceland got under my skin in a way that very few other destinations ever have – Japan, perhaps, is the only other country I feel such a strong longing to return to – and I’ve sat down today to try to figure out some of the reasons.
1. Iceland has amazing light
I can only speak from the perspective of visiting Iceland in the middle of summer, but as weird as 24 hours of daylight was, there’s something very special about it and I’d love to return at the same time of year.
Seared into my brain is a moment about one or two o’clock in the morning when I was sleeping in a grass-roofed cabin in Hvolsvöllur in the south-west of Iceland. It had been an overcast day, but then I woke up and the sun was blasting in through the might-as-well-not-exist blinds on the cabin windows. I sat up with a bit of a start, and reached to check the time on my phone, assuming it was time to get up. But it was the middle of the night and I had hours of sleep ahead of me.
I didn’t go straight back to sleep, but quietly lifted the blind to stare around at the Iceland of the middle of the night. It was quite surreal. The same amazing light struck me in Kirkjufell, when I was staying somewhere so beautiful I couldn’t even bring myself to go to bed until after midnight.
2. Iceland has delicious hot dogs
I know that this sounds pretty mundane after talking about the light but seriously, those Icelandic hot dogs were amazingly tasty. Perhaps it’s because my son and I had been talking about them long before we even set foot in Iceland; perhaps it’s because we had such a lovely experience when we first ate them, after stumbling across the most famous Icelandic hot dog stand in Reykjavik quite by accident; perhaps it’s because the combination of sauces and onions is just really incredible!
I’ve recreated Icelandic hot dogs a few times since we got home, and although it’s not quite the same, it’s a nice way to cast our minds back to those particularly tasty Icelandic moments.
3. Iceland is vast
It might be a relatively small country (75 times smaller than Australia, in fact) but Iceland’s landscape means there are constant moments where you can stand and stare for miles and miles and feel this immense vastness. Perhaps because I grew up in Australia and always loved getting outside the city, then this experience of vastness is something I often crave and always enjoy. It’s inspiring to feel how small we are compared to the landscape around us.
4. Iceland has real culture
One of my favourite statistics about Iceland is that one in ten Icelanders is a published author. Who wouldn’t want to visit a place where books are so revered? I remember stumbling across my first “story bench” on a stroll along the water in Reykjavik, a park bench with a code to scan so you can sit with your mobile phone and listen to a story being read to you. I wish my park benches here in Perth had such an ability!
Beyond books, I’ve long been fascinated with other parts of Iceland’s cultural heritage. I thought I was super-cool for listening to Björk’s band The Sugar Cubes as a young teenager, and I owned most of Björk’s CDs during her big singing years. There have been a few Icelandic films come through Perth over the years, too, and they have always been high on my must-go-see list. Everything Iceland produces feels different to me to any other nation.
5. In Iceland, you’re all in it together
This aspect of Iceland reminds me of what it’s like to be driving in the Australian outback, where it might be hours between seeing another vehicle and you wave like mad in greeting when you do. Although during a summer visit to Iceland you’ll never be that Iceland, it still has that feeling of togetherness, of people banding together.
Everyone has come together in this pretty extreme place, and we are all in it together. No darkness? No worries, let’s enjoy the light. (I imagine the reverse is true in winter and everyone gets through the darkness together). Crazy weather? No worries. I remember stopping at a petrol station (of sorts) in the middle of nowhere, a place where no employees waited but you could buy fuel with a credit card. The instructions were a bit tricky, but people helped each other out. That’s what you do in Iceland.
Returning to Iceland
From Australia, it’s a big deal to get back to Iceland – it’s not exactly around the corner – but I have promised myself I’m not finished with Iceland yet. There are many more parts of it I need to see, along with many I want to return to, and even though I loved experiencing the extended daylight of summer, I do want to try it at other times of the year too, especially to be able to see the Northern Lights.
I don’t know when it will be, but some day I’ll be able to fly into Keflavik again, look up some Iceland car rentals to get me around, map out a route that this time takes me all the way around Iceland with plenty of time to stop and enjoy the view, and really sink my teeth back into this amazing country.
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