(Hyperborean Hopscotch 2017: Day Two)
Woke up with frozen toes, but warmed up as I tore down my tent. With all my belongings back in the car – Tormund – I headed south along Mývatn, the way I’d come. One of the places I’d wanted to explore since the the early phases of planning this trip was Dimmuborgir, a lava field full of creepy, tall, volcanic rock spires and buttes. The Icelandic name translates to Dark Castles, and the area lives up to that name. I only ended up hiking around for 45 minutes or so, though one could easily spend several hours on the extensive trails around that part of the lake's realm.
Unfortunately for me, I had another very long driving day planned and needed to hit the road back west, passed Akureyri, passed the turn off for Hvítserkur, around another fjord called Hrútafjörður, and north into the easternmost portion of Iceland’s Westfjords region. This is a very remote, mountainous, gorgeous, and sparsely populated part of the country, and when I hit gravel roads much bumpier and rattlier (that is not a word) than the day before, I refused to turn back. Tormund, the questionable road warrior, endured a lot of torture up these roads. If he’d blown a tire or broken down, I’m not sure how I would have handled it. I was in the middle of nowhere.
I also was overwhelmed more than once on that drive by a sense of the sublime. Not like the rock band, but rather the concept in aesthetic philosophy of being in the presence of something so grand that it transcends comprehension and gives a paradoxical emotional response of inspiration, awe, fear and trembling. The scale of it all made my little life seem silly and unimportant - in a really positive, calming way. Those wild mountains and fjords reaching into the sea had me repeatedly uttering the dumb phrase “THIS IS SCARY” as I navigated the winding roads, shaking from both the condition of the path and my place in the world (the condition of my path, you might say).
Alain de Botton worded it much better in his book The Art of Travel:
“Sublime landscapes do not therefore introduce us to our inadequacy; rather, to touch on the crux of their appeal, they allow us to conceive of a familiar inadequacy in a new and more helpful way. Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically introduces viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves. This is the lesson written into the stones of the desert and the ice fields of the poles. So grandly is it written there that we may come away from such places not crushed but inspired by what lies beyond us, privileged to be subject to such majestic necessities."
After a couple hours of that nonsense, I finally arrived at the village Hólmavík (population 375). I parked Tormund at a random building along the harbor there and walked into the first building I saw to ask for directions. I found a little Icelandic gift shop, a cozy restaurant, and a young woman with a kind smile. When I asked her how to get to Hólmavík’s Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, her response was incredible: “Uhhhh, maybe it’s here?” She pointed to the back of the restaurant, where there was a second gift shop and a hallway leading to another part of the building. On the wall was a sign for the museum I was looking for, and everything in that gift shop belonged to it. I’d wandered into exactly where I wanted to be.
The museum itself was two medium-sized rooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. It contained lots of artifacts from the country’s history of early Viking settlers and sorcerers. This included “staves” – symbols carved onto objects or pieced together in order to summon spirits, cause natural events, or cast spells. There was one for bringing storms, one for resurrecting the dead, one for invisibility, and one for getting a girlfriend, among others. There was also a strand of skin inked with designs, crafted to heal the sick. Most bizarrely, there was a pair of “Necropants” – actual skin of the entire lower half of an adult male, genitals included. As the story goes, this skin must be taken from a person who in life agrees that the sorcerer may dig up his body after he is buried and carefully remove the hide. The witch must then wear the skin and steal a coin from a “poor widow” on either Christmas, Easter, or Whitsun and keep the coin in the scrotum of the necropants. This hilariously disturbing feat will bring the witch great wealth.
After the necropants, seeing a bowl used to make sacrifices to the old Viking gods seemed a little lackluster.
My urge to witness a corpse’s skinned genitals satisfied, it was time for lunch. I grabbed a fishy, unspeakably delicious bowl of seafood soup with bread from the small restaurant connected to the museum, checked my maps and plans for the next part of the journey, then left Hólmavík and its dark magic behind.
A road southwest through mountains brought me to the southern reaches of the west side of the Westfjords. From there I went north and hugged the coast on route 60, around fjords and onto more distressing, pot-holed gravel roads. The towns were so far apart along this winding route that at one point I was actually afraid of running out of fuel before finding a gas station. Before it came to that, I lucked out and pulled up to Flókalundur’s little hotel and the single gas pump out front.
After a bit more mountain-fjord driving I steered Tormund onto the road out to Látrabjarg, the longest bird cliffs in Europe. The road was by far the worst I drove poor Tormund on, and with every percussive kilometer I feared having to do it all again on the way back. That one road felt like it took a lifetime, but by the clock it only added up to an hour or so.
At the 8.7 miles long and 1,443 feet high cliffs, the very first bird I spotted was a puffin, the #1 animal I was there to see. Soon I noticed other people looking at other puffins, and sure enough, everyone managed to see several of these “sea parrots” with their big bright orange beaks, webbed orange feet, and black-and-white bodies similar to penguins and some other sea birds. Puffins are a kind of auk, and the particular species at the cliffs – the Atlantic puffin – is by far the cutest (a scientific fact). They make weird little moan-grunt noises and hop-waddle around their underground, cliff-top dwellings, before taking flight to hunt fish in the sea. I saw some the last time I visited Iceland, but not nearly as close as this.
Before walking along the edge of the cliffs, I spied a single seal way down in the water, but on one of its dives I lost it in my binoculars and couldn’t find it again. I then roamed around the cliff until I was happily tired - a great end to a great day.
Back down at the base of the cliffs, I pitched my tent near the westernmost point of Iceland, with an ocean view (the Denmark or Greenland Strait to be exact) and the sound of waves washing up on shore.
Woke up with frozen toes, but warmed up as I tore down my tent. With all my belongings back in the car – Tormund – I headed south along Mývatn, the way I’d come. One of the places I’d wanted to explore since the the early phases of planning this trip was Dimmuborgir, a lava field full of creepy, tall, volcanic rock spires and buttes. The Icelandic name translates to Dark Castles, and the area lives up to that name. I only ended up hiking around for 45 minutes or so, though one could easily spend several hours on the extensive trails around that part of the lake's realm.
 |
| Dark Castles. |
 |
| Everybody knows this is nowhere. |
Alain de Botton worded it much better in his book The Art of Travel:
“Sublime landscapes do not therefore introduce us to our inadequacy; rather, to touch on the crux of their appeal, they allow us to conceive of a familiar inadequacy in a new and more helpful way. Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically introduces viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves. This is the lesson written into the stones of the desert and the ice fields of the poles. So grandly is it written there that we may come away from such places not crushed but inspired by what lies beyond us, privileged to be subject to such majestic necessities."
After a couple hours of that nonsense, I finally arrived at the village Hólmavík (population 375). I parked Tormund at a random building along the harbor there and walked into the first building I saw to ask for directions. I found a little Icelandic gift shop, a cozy restaurant, and a young woman with a kind smile. When I asked her how to get to Hólmavík’s Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, her response was incredible: “Uhhhh, maybe it’s here?” She pointed to the back of the restaurant, where there was a second gift shop and a hallway leading to another part of the building. On the wall was a sign for the museum I was looking for, and everything in that gift shop belonged to it. I’d wandered into exactly where I wanted to be.
 |
| In Hólmavík. |
The museum itself was two medium-sized rooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. It contained lots of artifacts from the country’s history of early Viking settlers and sorcerers. This included “staves” – symbols carved onto objects or pieced together in order to summon spirits, cause natural events, or cast spells. There was one for bringing storms, one for resurrecting the dead, one for invisibility, and one for getting a girlfriend, among others. There was also a strand of skin inked with designs, crafted to heal the sick. Most bizarrely, there was a pair of “Necropants” – actual skin of the entire lower half of an adult male, genitals included. As the story goes, this skin must be taken from a person who in life agrees that the sorcerer may dig up his body after he is buried and carefully remove the hide. The witch must then wear the skin and steal a coin from a “poor widow” on either Christmas, Easter, or Whitsun and keep the coin in the scrotum of the necropants. This hilariously disturbing feat will bring the witch great wealth.
After the necropants, seeing a bowl used to make sacrifices to the old Viking gods seemed a little lackluster.
 |
| Spell books and staves. |
 |
| Necropants. |
My urge to witness a corpse’s skinned genitals satisfied, it was time for lunch. I grabbed a fishy, unspeakably delicious bowl of seafood soup with bread from the small restaurant connected to the museum, checked my maps and plans for the next part of the journey, then left Hólmavík and its dark magic behind.
A road southwest through mountains brought me to the southern reaches of the west side of the Westfjords. From there I went north and hugged the coast on route 60, around fjords and onto more distressing, pot-holed gravel roads. The towns were so far apart along this winding route that at one point I was actually afraid of running out of fuel before finding a gas station. Before it came to that, I lucked out and pulled up to Flókalundur’s little hotel and the single gas pump out front.
After a bit more mountain-fjord driving I steered Tormund onto the road out to Látrabjarg, the longest bird cliffs in Europe. The road was by far the worst I drove poor Tormund on, and with every percussive kilometer I feared having to do it all again on the way back. That one road felt like it took a lifetime, but by the clock it only added up to an hour or so.
At the 8.7 miles long and 1,443 feet high cliffs, the very first bird I spotted was a puffin, the #1 animal I was there to see. Soon I noticed other people looking at other puffins, and sure enough, everyone managed to see several of these “sea parrots” with their big bright orange beaks, webbed orange feet, and black-and-white bodies similar to penguins and some other sea birds. Puffins are a kind of auk, and the particular species at the cliffs – the Atlantic puffin – is by far the cutest (a scientific fact). They make weird little moan-grunt noises and hop-waddle around their underground, cliff-top dwellings, before taking flight to hunt fish in the sea. I saw some the last time I visited Iceland, but not nearly as close as this.
 |
| The cliffs. |
 |
| Sea parrot. |
Hopping around.
Before walking along the edge of the cliffs, I spied a single seal way down in the water, but on one of its dives I lost it in my binoculars and couldn’t find it again. I then roamed around the cliff until I was happily tired - a great end to a great day.
Back down at the base of the cliffs, I pitched my tent near the westernmost point of Iceland, with an ocean view (the Denmark or Greenland Strait to be exact) and the sound of waves washing up on shore.
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