I’ve
always liked Vikings. When I was a kid my friend had this toy castle like
a metal briefcase. When it was folded open it revealed scenes from a feudal
life painted inside; animals and fire rings, water wells and peasants carrying
buckets. There was a plastic drawbridge that fit into the opening by the
hinge and the set came with a bunch of small plastic knights and Vikings.
The Vikings looked tough. They were molded in green plastic and had long
swords and round shields and wore helmets with horns sticking out of them.
When
we learned in school about the first European discovery of North America, Erik
the Red and Leif Ericsson got brief mention as having sailed out of the North
Atlantic in open long boats to disembark at some far off point in modern day
Canada they called Vinland. This was centuries before Columbus brought
disease and clothes to the natives in the Caribbean. The little that was
known about these Viking adventurers – and their cool names - added to their
mystique.
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| The blue church near our cottage in Uthlid |
Recently,
as Thanksgiving approached, my wife and I contemplated something to do besides
make the long drive to New Jersey in stop-and-go traffic just to eat dry turkey
and watch 8-hours of American football. During the course of these
dinner-table conversations, my 11-year old daughter mentioned Iceland.
This reignited a spark in me, and as my wife and I did our research, we
realized there were a lot of cool things that a family of four, including our
9-year old son, could do in a six-day visit to Iceland. Juxtaposed
against the drudgery that awaited us in New Jersey, the choice became
apparent. We flew to Iceland.
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| Family shot at Gullfoss waterfall |
We
touched down at Keflavik airport, about 40 kilometers outside Reykjavik, on
Friday morning. My wife had the brilliant stroke to use accumulated
credit card points to knock about $1,000 off the cost of the cheapest airline
tickets we could find. A few years ago she was able to get us all to
Hawaii for free using airline miles we had racked up on our various cards.
There is definitely an art to the use of credit card rewards programs and this
was just my wife’s latest masterpiece.
If
you don’t have a credit card with a rewards program, Icelandair offers
discounted fares from several major cities in the U.S. to Reykjavik starting
after the new year. Beginning in the summer of 2015, Wow Airlines is
offering inaugural fares from BWI to Reykjavik that are probably less than your
monthly grocery bill.
Our
introduction to the weather came shortly after we landed. It was what you might expect of a place
called Iceland – midnight dark, despite it being 7:30 in the morning; cold,
windy, rain. Combined with the fact that
we had no map, only rudimentary directions to our destination, and encountered
fog as thick as molasses, you might say we were like those first Vikings that
went off in search of new land – hopeful we would not die. But roads are few in Iceland, and well-marked
at that.
Reykjavik
is the northernmost European capital and home to two-thirds of the nearly 322,000
hearty souls that call Iceland home. One of the things we hoped to see during
our visit was the Northern Lights. While several bus tours will take you
outside the umbrella of light pollution generated by the city for a few hours,
there needs to be both dark and clear skies in order to view this
naturally occurring phenomenon. We were fairly certain it would be dark –
the sun rises at 10:00 a.m. and sets at 4:00 p.m. this time of year – but we were
less certain that skies would be clear during the window of time we would be on
a tour. Instead, we decided our best chance of seeing the Lights would be
if we “lived” outside the city during part of our stay.
Airbnb
offers many choices in the hinterlands of Iceland, but we settled on a
2-bedroom cottage with kitchen where we could cook some meals and hot tub where
we could soak and watch the skies. Our
family has adopted the travel philosophy of not trying to do too many things in
one day. This makes for more agreeable
children and happier parents. Because
the cottage was centrally located to the Golden Circle, Iceland’s triumvirate
of must see tourist attractions – Geysir, Gullfloss, and Pingvellir - it was
easy for us to do day trips. We also had
a fine time floating around the 100 degree waters of the Secret Lagoon in
Fludir - site of the oldest swimming pool in Iceland, dating from 1871.
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| Attacked by noodles in the Secret Lagoon |
We
had read about the laxity of Icelandic safety standards and they lived up to
their reputation. At Geysir, the home of
the original water spout after which all others are named, a 90 meter jet of boiling
water shoots into the sky and rains down on the spectators who are separated
from the bubbling pool by an ankle high rope more suitable for hanging
laundry than stopping trespassers.
At
Gullfoss, Iceland’s most visited waterfall, you can get so close to the water
that you may as well be wearing your bathing suit. And at Pingvellir, a UNESCO World Heritage
site and the location of every important historical event in the making of the
Republic, I unwittingly managed to drive our rental car up the pedestrian path,
past the drowning pool and the hallowed Law Rock where the first parliaments
met, and into the rift valley created by the separation of the North American
and Eurasian tectonic plates.
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| Nobody paid any attention to this sign warning of dangerous conditions at the waterfall |
Despite
these near brushes with death, on Monday our party drove to Reykjavik, where we
rented a 3-bedroom apartment. We were only
a short walk from the main pedestrian street – Laugavegur – which is pronounced
just like it is spelled, and spent a lot of time prowling the souvenir
shops. Though, our tendency to always
want to look in the next shop for cheaper prices, which we have passed on to
our kids, means we end up doing more looking than buying. We took home a few rocks that we picked up in
the country and the jaw from a lamb we had for dinner as mementos.
We
climbed the tower in the Hallgrimskirkja, the church that looks like a space
shuttle, for 360 degree views of the city.
We also had a fun time at the Settlement Exhibition museum where we got
to dress as Vikings and learn the story of the settlement of Reykjavik through
the excavation of a long house dating from 930 A.D. This museum, like many of the attractions we
visited, has free admission for children under age 12. It was also noteworthy because it told the
settlement story through very cool interactive displays and had a section devoted
to period games for the kids to play and props for them to handle.
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| Selfie, with wife at Pingvellir |
On
Wednesday we climbed aboard the shuttle bus, on which the kids rode free, to
make our flight home. In the end, we
didn’t get to see the Northern Lights.
And we left other winter activities such as glacier tours and more hot
springs, on the table. this trip will definitely go down in the pantheon of
family lore. And it gives us an excuse
to go back. Iceland also offers a slew
of summer activities. And who wouldn’t
want to experience 24-hours of sun?
