Iceland Part 1 – ‘Tis the Season
Since my family all live in different cities, and therefore have to all travel to see each other anyways, I suggested ‘why not go somewhere cool this year?’ To which my sister (who was apparently joking) suggested Iceland. After some quick research I was sold; so after convincing the rest of the family to get on board with a cold and dark vacation, our Christmas trip to Iceland was born! In attendance was Andrew and I of course, as well as my parents, my sister Beverly, and her boyfriend Richard.
With the unfamiliar roads, unpredictable weather, and unrelenting darkness (about 19 hours of night), I decided early on that we would not be renting a car. Instead we would do a bunch of guided tours. After riding in the bus on a particularly dark and windy night, I believe we definitely made the right decision there. While researching tours, I stumbled across Iceland Rovers which had a full travel planning service along with individual tours. They had really good reviews, so I decided to give the whole travel agent thing a go. After this trip I have mixed feelings about using a travel agent in general, but I will say that all the tours/activities they put us on were amazing. I know they were able to cram a lot more in than I would have been able to had I been booking all the tours on my own (especially with the holidays). Because of that we probably spent a little more on activities than we would have otherwise.
Day 1 – Monday, December 23
Reykjavik
Our flights landed around 6:00 am, so after the speedy passport control and baggage collection we probably made it to our apartment in Reykjavik around 7:00 – 7:30. We dropped our luggage off in their storage room, and started wandering the dark main streets in an attempt to find a coffee shop. Apparently nothing downtown really opens until 8 am, so we had to kill a little bit of time, but we did enjoy looking for the yule lad holograms scattered throughout the city (reference Iceland Christmas section below). When 8:00 came around Café Babalu was where we landed, and after getting some much needed caffeine (we were going on about 2hrs of plane sleep after all) Andrew and I decided to split a skyr cheesecake for our first meal in Iceland (don’t judge!) Skyr is essentially Greek yogurt, and very much a staple of Iceland. It and their bread are probably their only tasty “traditional” food. Most of their traditional foods consist of various ways to preserve dairy/meat/fish – like putting it in a ‘skyr bucket’. It seemed like the Icelanders would gather around once a year to eat their traditional fermented foods to remind themselves how good they have it now a days with greenhouses.
Hallgrimskirkja (the big main church) was our first touristy spot to stop at. It was really interesting in that it had the same traditional vaulted look you would find in standard big churches, but it was constructed with concrete instead of wood, and void of color and decorations on the interior. The outside is constructed of hexagon shape columns to reflect some of the Icelandic landscape. We opted to hold off going up the tower, because even though it was almost 10 am by the time we left the church, it was still dark outside and we wanted to wait until we would have a view.
We moseyed our way down to the docks, browsing the occasional shop now that they were mostly open, and just generally getting our bearings. I had read about the Whales of Iceland museum ahead of time and thought it sounded neat, so we made our way towards it. The museum is essentially full of life size models of whales, with an audio guide explaining the different types of whales found around Iceland and in the Northern Hemisphere. We all found it very informative. As we watched a film about sound pollution and how much it affects whales the lack of sleep was starting to catch up with us, so sadly we had to get moving again.
The sun had finally finished making its way over the horizon while we were in the museum, so we headed back to Hallgrimskirkja (about a 30 min walk). We had stopped for lunch at a cute little Thai bistro on the way, where we all got way too much food – so yay leftovers for dinner! And people say only American portions are too big. By the time we had made it back to the church tower, around 1:30, it was closed for the day. All of us had somehow neglected to read the several signs posted around the church with the holiday schedule saying the tower would close at noon that day.
Exhausted, we decided to test our luck and see if we could check-in to our lodging early (Downtown Reykjavik Apartments). We chose the apartments based on the ability for us to cook meals, and that each couple would each get a bedroom and a real bed. Luckily for us the room was ready, so we all took some much needed naps. Some of us limited our sleep more than others in an attempt to fight the impending jet lag. Andrew, my mom, and myself made our way to the nearest grocery store (Bonus) where we spent way too much time gawking at the various food stuffs and trying to figure out which jars had jam and which jars had jelly. We did manage to find everything we needed for breakfasts, and the following two nights’ dinners.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty chill, but we did have one more activity planned for that night, a Northern Lights Excursion by boat– the first of many attempts to see the illusive natural phenomena. While we didn’t see the Aurora Borelli’s we did see several clouds, and if you had your camera settings just right/wrong they did look green – that totally counts right? The boat tour (through Elding) did give us vouchers to try again. Disappointed, we made our way back to the apartments, crashing in our beds around midnight thinking “damn, we’ve only been here one day!”
Day 2 - Tuesday, December 24
Borgarfjörður
Iceland Rovers had arranged us a half day private tour for the 24th. Our guide’s name was Tinna, and she took us north of the city to the Borgarfjordur region, which is unsurprisingly a fjord. Because we weren’t sure what shops would be open later in the day further from the city, we decided to stop for sandwiches at Mosfellsbakarí, Tinna’s favorite bakery. Icelanders actually celebrate Christmas more heavily on the Christmas Eve, so the 24th is more of a holiday than the 25th. While driving we got to go through one of Iceland’s many tunnels, although being lighter inside the tunnel than it was outside may have stolen some of the allure. This was one of the longer tunnels running underneath a fjord instead of through a mountain. Our first attraction for the day was Deildartunguhver thermal springs. It was still a little dark when we got there, but it was really cool to see all the steam coming out of the water. There was so much steam rising that from a distance you would think there was some sort of factory there.
Next we made our way towards Reykholt, the former home of Snorri Sturluson, a famous medieval writer, historian, politician and chieftain. It is apparently thanks to him that we know so much about what the pagans believed with respect to the Norse gods like Thor, Loki, and Odin. We were able to see the entrance to some of the tunnels created for him to get between buildings, and his personal hot spring/ “wishing pool”, Snorralaug.
Barnafossar was our next stop. This is a really pretty blue waterfall that flows out of a lava field. With the black volcanic rock covered in pristine white snow, the blue water really popped, and it was just absolutely gorgeous.
We ate our sandwiches on the bus as we made our way to our last stop, Grabrokargigar. This park consisted of 3 volcanic craters. We took the short, less than a mile “hike” up and around the rim of Stora Grabrok (big crater). Part of the stairs were covered in at least 3ft of snow making the climb a little difficult, but luckily that only lasted a small portion. While the volcanic crater was nowhere near active, it was still really cool to see the ash filled crater in the mountain with a clearly defined rim. The view from the top was also amazing; it was just a smattering of pastels and whites for miles (but not in a blinding way).
After Tinna dropped us back off at our apartments we had some time to kill in the afternoon. Seeing as we were located right by a park (Klambratun), and this was Richard’s first time to be in real snow (he’s from Florida), all the kids opted to go build a snowman. Unfortunately the snow was old and dry, so it refused to pack into a snow ball let alone a snow man. Being the resourceful people that we are, we started “mining” the snow for large brick like pieces, and instead of a snow man, built a snow fort. While a little short, I still think it turned out pretty cool. Around 5ish it was starting to get too dark to continue, so we took our pictures and headed back inside where Andrew made us a delicious mushroom risotto for dinner. Since we were in Iceland, we decided to embrace their culture of celebrating Christmas on the 24th, and opted to open all our presents that night. We spent the rest of the evening playing cards and just enjoying each other’s company.
Day 3 - Wednesday, December 25
Museum and Horse Riding
We spent Christmas morning at the Perlan museum. This is Iceland’s natural history museum. It had some neat exhibits on volcanoes/earthquakes. It also had this super cheesy augmented reality puffin and sea-bird cliff wall, which I was totally in to. We also got to see virtual northern lights in their planetarium, and experience an “ice cave” where they had built a tunnel system from glacial snow and preserved some features from real glacial ice caves. In the ice cave was a super depressing plaque dedicated to the first Icelandic glacier that had lost its glacier status due to global warming (Okjökull). The museum is built in the old geothermal water storage facility up on a hill, so they also had a 360 degree observation deck which had some nice views of and around the city – although it did start snowing on us a little while we were outside.
The scheduled afternoon activity for the kids was horseback riding through lava fields on Icelandic horses. We had a slight hiccup in getting there in that the itinerary I was sent by the travel agent had said pickup at 1:30, but the voucher I received days before our trip had said 1:00 – which was the actual pickup time. Not realizing that the time had been updated, we had all gone out to wait for our pickup at 1:30. Around that time I received an email saying the bus had left without us and I immediately started freaking out. Luckily Andrew was able to keep his cool, he got ahold of Ishestar (the horse tour operators) and they waited for us as we caught a taxi out to their stables. (This is one of the negatives I found with using Iceland Rovers to book everything, if I had booked the horse riding tour myself, than Ishestar would have had my contact info and could have reached out to us when we hadn’t showed up at 1, but instead they only had contact information for my agent, and therefore had no way of knowing we could have been there had we known they were waiting for us. And I’m sure the situation was only made worse since this was on Christmas Day.)
The Icelandic horses are so cute and little, you should note that Icelanders get mad if you call them ponies. My horse’s name was Lynda and she was a gorgeous tan color, while Andrew’s was Gowski, a black horse with a handsome brown mane. Apparently because Icelandic horses were so heavily breeded for survival, they were never breeded for color and consequently the Icelandic horses come in hundreds of varieties unlike other horse breeds.
The horse riding group was really large with probably about 60 people (and they still had plenty more horses wandering around). We were split up into 3 groups: expert, beginner-fast, and beginner-slow. I wish they had had an intermediate group, but Andrew, Beverly and I made due with the beginner fast group while Richard decided to stay in the slower group. Icelandic horses are unique in that they have additional natural gaits beyond what you find with regular horses. Along with trotting, we also got to ride them at a tölt, which is essentially a smooth fast walk. Riding was a lot of fun. We were out for about 2 hours, and the cold definitely started to get to us towards the end, but I’m glad we hadn’t missed out on this opportunity.
We made it back to our apartment with just enough time to change and make the 30 min walk across town to the Catholic church for Christmas Mass (the 18:00 mass was in English). Andrew was pretty into the ska-folk choir with their 12 string guitar, tambourine and maracas.
to be continued...
Icelandic Christmas Traditions
Gryla and the Yule Lads
Trolls make a big part of Icelandic Folklore, so of course they would make their way into the Christmas celebrations. Gryla is the name of a she-troll who bore several mischievous children, 13 of which have become known as ‘the Yule Lads’. Starting on December 12th the yule lads come one by one into town until they are all there at Christmas. There’s Sheep Cote Clod (he bothers sheep), Gully gawk (he hides in gullies and steals milk), stubby (he’s really short and eats the crust left in pans), spoon licker, pot scraper, bowl licker, door slammer, skyr gobbler, sausage swiper, window peeper, doorway sniffer (uses his large nose to sniff out and steal bread), meat hook (uses his hook to steal meat), and candle stealer. The yule lads are not lacking in the Christmas spirit though. Along with causing mischief, each night children leave their shoes out on the window sill; the good children receive small gifts from the yule lads, while the naughty children receive a potato. If a child receives too many potatoes than Gryla will take the child away in her sack and eat them in her stew. Tinna told us she once got a potato in her shoe, but tried to trick Gryla by throwing it out and putting one of her own toys in instead. Her parents were very surprised the next morning to see that she had received a toy in her shoe.
If that isn’t festive enough for you, they also have a Christmas Cat, Jólakötturinn. The Christmas Cat will eat anyone who doesn’t receive clean clothing on Christmas. Really makes you appreciate those gifts of socks and underwear. Luckily, everyone in my family received an article of clothing so we were safe this year. Our tour guide, Tinna, mentioned the cat also eats those who don’t shower on Christmas.
There are ‘holograms’ of the Yule Lads, Gryla, and the cat all over downtown Reykjavik. We had fun finding them hidden throughout the city, and reading the cheesy punny joke posted next to each of them. Like what is the skyr gobbler’s favorite clothing? … A skirt.
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