Iceland, the unknown – day 0
Posted: July 6th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: trips and notes | Tags: Iceland, volcano | No Comments »Prologue.
Years ago, at the dawn of the “Transition Period”, books became inaccessible; they were either not published at all or only the authors “deemed banned” before November 10th got published, or one could only find antiques at outrageous prices; for the adolescent who were truly into the magic of reading there was only one option left – Metropolitan City Library.
I had already rummaged the shelves and gotten my hands on most of the titles meant for my consideration; I stumbled upon The Atom Station by chance; a small, plain book which had been published before I was born; it looked like a ‘one nighter’ – one of those that you take to bed and you read until you turn the last page at daybreak; this is how I read it… the first time; I returned it and I took it again in a month or two; the Magical, unfamiliar world of Iceland and its strange people had captivated my mind forever.
Iceland – day 0, 23/06/2011
The trip to Reykjavik was long – three flights with tedious waiting in-between; we landed a bit past midnight and our tiny airplane “parked” some 20 meters from the airport building.
The sun has not set still in a typical Northern fashion.
a short orientation break; we find the person who was supposed to wait for us from the rent-a-car company and in less than an hour we are already riding east on the roads of Iceland; we are tired from the trip but adrenalin rushes up our veins so we believe sleep is not a necessity.
a tiny bay; we almost reach the waterfront by car; the sand is black and coarse
Iceland has set up a greeting committee for us
we are travelling through a field of coulee and shortly after getting on the highway once again, we pass by this white sign
and there IS a bridge
and it really does connect the tectonic plates of two continents – North America and Eurasia
Iceland is situated at the Atlantic Fault and this is the primary reason for its existence; the fault between the plaits holds the melted magma that almost reaches the surface, causing earthquakes and volcanic activity; the continental plates are slowly sliding apart at 2 cm per year – the fault literarily slices the island through the middle from north to south.
in immediate proximity to the bridge (I can swear that the fault can be followed there in a straight line), there is white smoke and, as we come closer, we notice the smell of sulfur.
the building with the tiny chimney is an electric power plant 🙂
the sun is about to rise from approximately the same place it has set; the world around us begins to fill with colors
fatigue takes its toll and we decide that we have to get some sleep; we wake up the owner of a “guest house” in the nearest settlement and we sleep like logs for a few hours.
ps:
I own the book to this day… I never returned it after I took it the third time around (it is a sin, I know but… they have to forgive at the library since I was the only one who had signed it off in the last couple of years). The author is Halldór Laxness, a Nobel price winner, very much loved and respected by the Icelanders. The novel Independent People is also translated in Bulgarian.
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