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Christmas on ice in Iceland
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Christmastime in Iceland. Sounds as inviting as “Springtime for Hitler” from the film "The Producers".
But how apt to spend Christmastime near the North Pole on this North Atlantic isle.
Iceland offers, in addition to ice, hot springs, volcanoes, glaciers, waterfalls, geysers, and other natural wonders like the Northern Lights.
A rather unnatural wonder these days is an actual value, and 'tis the season to shop for bargains. Icelandair has a two-night, round-trip getaway for around $500 -- about the price of a round-trip ticket to the capital, Reykjavik. Iceland is one of the few countries where the exchange rate for the dollar favors us! Plus, the Value Added Tax (VAT) of 15% is refunded at the airport, as long as you spend over $33 or so. The factory outlet Alafoss sells classic Icelandic woolen goods at prices well below those at the airport and other shops. Those are just a few of the bargains, two months after Iceland's financial meltdown.
The day after I posted this, "The Washington Post" travel section's lead story said Iceland's "Financial Bust Is a Boon For Bargain Hunters", and added that many tourists are taking weekend shopping trips.
However, fair warning: Northern Lights and perpetual twilight are about all the light available this time of year. No o little star of Bethlehem. I pondered toting those high intensity light panels to combat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) – winter depression due to lack of sunshine.
Iceland’s Arctic Circle island of Grimsey is one of the best spots for viewing the Northern Lights as well as Iceland’s national bird, puffins, with penguin-like bodies and parrot-like orange, black, and yellow beaks.
They’re my favorite birds except for my own white dove, Nureyev, whom I rescued from an animal “shelter.” He's my very own symbol of peace on earth.
But back to puffins. Despite Iceland’s strict conservation and preservation policies, Icelanders eat their national bird as a traditional delicacy. It tastes like fishy liver.
Icelanders even eat reindeer. Oh well, Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus are not part of Iceland’s Christmas tradition. Elves certainly are – but no Santa’s little helpers, these are more like hellish little trolls.
Called “Yule Lads”, they’re the 13 children of Iceland’s most horrible monster, Gryla, whose favorite dish was a stew of naughty children. First mentioned in 13th century Icelandic Sagas, Gryla and her lads weren’t linked to Christmas until the 17th century. They were so frightening that Iceland’s parliament – the world’s first, dating back to 930 A.D. – issued a decree in 1746 prohibiting the use of Gryla and her brood to terrify children.
But these days, the worst things the Yule Lads do is leave a rotten potato in a shoe of any naughty child. Still, with names like Peeper, Sniffer, Door Slammer, they could do worse pranks, as Iceland’s Christmas Cat did. The legendary kitty used to eat any child who was not given a gift – isn’t being left out punishment enough?
A favorite Icelandic gift is a book -- more books are published and sold per capita in Iceland than anywhere else in the world. Their literary heritage is the Sagas, which scholars rank with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Speaking of odysseys, it’s well documented that Viking Leif Ericsson discovered North America 500 years before Columbus did.
Christmas shopping or just window shopping is an elegant delight along the storybook, old part of the capital filled with tiny buildings and vividly-painted corrugated iron homes.
Local fashion designers create enticingly chic clothes, except for the ugly duckling white swan tutu that Iceland’s rocker Bjork wore for the 2001 Oscars.
And for that very, very special someone, including yourself, take a gander at the so-called Icelandic Phallological Museum which sells bow ties, phones, barbecue skewers, even pasta shaped like, well, as their web address says, www.phallus.is.
Along far more traditional lines, Icelanders do have Christmas trees -- imported due to lack of trees. Iceland’s lava-ridden landscape is so barren and rugged that NASA used it as a training ground for the first astronauts who walked on the moon.
Instead of a lunar module, I rode a horse across lava fields. Icelandic horses are small – but do not make my mistake of calling them ponies. Icelandic hospitality got a bit frosty when I called my steed a pony at the stables. The horses are renowned for a fifth gait, the “tolt.” Although it’s widely regarded as a smooth gait, the tolt felt more like the “jolt.” No, I'm not such a dolt as to say that too.
And instead of an LEM or Santa’s sleigh, I snowmobiled on a glacier, called (“Snow Mountain Glacier”) Snaefellsjokull.
Sounds sorta like "sneeze". The glacier, atop a volcano in western Iceland, was the gateway to the subterranean world in Jules Verne’s classic book “Journey to the Center of the Earth”. A 1959 film of the same name was remade in 2008. Journeying to either is akin to going to the center of cinematic hell.
The Snaefellsjokull glacier is purportedly one of the world’s seven most powerful energy fields, akin to Egyptian and Mayan pyramids. New-agers from as far away as South Africa and Australia flock to the glacier. It “brings emotional issues to the surface,” explained Gudrun Bergmann, co-owner of the nearby guest house Brekkubaer.
I did feel a bit sad, but that may've been due to the lack of light. Or maybe my dysphoria was due to dyspepsia, due to their delicacies.
Icelandic Christmas feasts have their less-than-appetizing specialties, including lamb roasted over sheep dung. Actually, it has a rather tasty smoky flavor like chestnuts roasted on an open fire. Instead of fresh Icelandic salmon, their delicacy is rotten fish, often shark, buried for at least three months. I have sampled fish cheeks and eyes in Spain’s Basque country, lamb testicles in northern Morocco, armadillo on Grenada in the Caribbean’s Windward Islands, emu and kangaroo in Australia -- but no rotten shark, no siree.
Writer W.H. Auden, in one of the most hilarious travel books ever, “Letters from Iceland”, said one kind of dried fish tasted “like toenails” and another tasted like “the skin off the soles of ones feet.” Auden was an authority on many things, including Icelandic Sagas, but feet cuisine? The traditional chaser is Brennivin. Dubbed “black death”, Brennivin is a searing schnapps rather than egg nog or mere mulled wine.
Viking Christmas feasts are cooked up at Fjorukrain Restaurant, including black death, dried fish, dung-roasted lamb, and served up by horn-helmeted singing Valkyries. Don't expect arias or leitmotifs from Wagner’s “Ring” cycle -- based, by the way, on an Icelandic saga "The Ring of the Nibelungs". Wagner's famed leitmotif "Ride of the Valkyries" is best known as the theme song of the Nazis and “Apocalypse Now”, Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film about the Vietnam War. (No, not "Star Wars").
The restaurant’s performer-waiters will even stage a “kidnapping” for true touristy flavor.
A favorite activity on Christmas and every day is marinating in ubiquitous hot springs like The Blue Lagoon. Steam rises while snow falls around you in the lava-ringed geothermal pools whose mineral-rich waters are about 100- to 110-degrees F.
One couple got engaged in the water. Three generations of a Japanese family were having in-water shoulder and scalp massages. Peace on earth and goodwill to all was thriving.
“Who travels widely needs his wits about him,
The stupid should stay at home:”
from ”The Words of the High” a Viking poem circa 800 A.D.
The stupid should stay at home:”
from ”The Words of the High” a Viking poem circa 800 A.D.
Translated by W.H. Auden who also translated Sagas
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Puffins in flight photo courtesy of Iceland Tourist Board
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