Gleðilegan laugardag, allir!

Once again, it is time for me to keep up the farce of being a book blogger while secretly itching to write about traveling instead. Today, I finally get to tell you all about my recent trip to my #1 bucket list destination in the entire world!!

The beginnings of my obsession with Iceland can be traced back to when I was a kid. Somebody had told me about the country’s volcanoes and icebergs and Vikings, and which five-year-old wouldn’t be impressed by that? As I got older, I eventually realized that the Vikings weren’t exactly a contemporary thing, but I guess my fascination with them never properly waned because a major reason for me thinking Iceland is beyond cool is still that its language has retained a few Old Norse runes… And, of course, I’m obsessed with Iceland’s landscape. And with the fact that it’s situated on a tectonic plate boundary and has volcanoes. And with its Northern Lights. And with Jólabókaflóð, an Icelandic Christmas Eve tradition that involves the whole family giving each other books and spending the entire night reading. And with icebergs.

Basically, I haven’t evolved at all since I was five years old – unless you count me getting even more nerdy 🤓 – so I knew I eventually needed to make Iceland happen! And now that I have, I obviously bursting to talk about it. I’ll throw in a few book recommendations as an alibi measure so I can stay on brand, but, let’s face it, we’re probably all here for Iceland and the pictures. So let’s get into them!

---

---

Thanks to decades of Iceland-related-research, I obviously had a very good idea of what I most wanted to see: Everything! Unfortunately, as I started making more concrete plans to reward my post-examinated-fully-certified-teacher-self with my dream vacation, I quickly figured out that my two weeks of Christmas break did not, in fact, have enough days to do everything. Especially since I also wanted to spend Christmas with my family and had to prepare at least a bit of stuff for school. Besides, Iceland was so freaking expensive – I’m serious! The 3€-pasta from my university days cost around 50€ there! 😳 – that my housemate (whom I convinced to come with me) said he’d veto the trip if I went too overboard with our budget.

So, reluctantly, we compromised on six days, which would give us just enough time to explore the country’s beautiful South Coast. We’d spend a day in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, tour the Golden Circle with its many famous waterfalls and geysers, see glaciers, beaches, and ice caves along the coast, head back to Reykjavík for New Year’s Eve, and then spend January 1st summitting a volcano.

What I was absolutely terrified of, however, was driving in Iceland. I’d seen videos of the weather conditions in winter, and there was no freaking way I’d be taking a rental car out in that just because I happened to be that one friend out of the two of us with a driver’s license. Besides, I didn’t want to spend the majority of my vacation in a panic that I might need to cancel prebooked activities due to snowstorms, volcanic eruptions, or any other kinds of weird environmental conditions, so I used my entire arsenal of persuasive skills to convince my travel buddy that, despite it being more expensive, we at least needed a tour that would organize all of the South Coast activities for us. We ended up opting for Arctic Adventures because it had good reviews and small group sizes, and, in retrospect, I would not do anything differently. I got to relax throughout the entire trip, met so many cool people, learnt a ton about Iceland, and was not in any of the four totaled rental cars I saw along the roadside. Definite success!

But anyway, if you’re interested in the road trip aspect of my adventure, you might also enjoy Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson. This YA contemporary novel is about two teenagers transporting a car across the United States and has plenty of maps and geography trivia for travel lovers!

---

---

After an exhausting two days of travel – our flight to Keflavík International Airport only took about four hours, but getting to Frankfurt International Airport only using (cheap) regional trains the day before was… an experience 😅 - we eventually made it to Iceland’s capital! We checked into our hostel and then aimlessly wandered around a bit to explore, with me immediately getting overexcited about everything. At some point, my friend, who was much more tired than I was, returned to our hostel, leaving me with a whole afternoon to discover Reykjavík at my own pace.

Which was wonderful! I went to the harbor and watched the waves pound the shore, I walked through the streets and tried to see how many Icelandic signs I could understand with the help of my Swedish and German skills, I visited Hallgrímskirkja – Iceland’s most iconic church -, and strolled through the city center to admire all the Christmas decorations, which lit up a town otherwise shrouded in polar darkness. Since Iceland has some of the coolest Christmas folklore out there – Like, did you know that there’s this gigantic evil cat, Jólakötturinn, that lurks around the countryside and eats people who haven’t received any new clothes in time for Christmas Eve? - it was so fun seeing it represented all around town!

Speaking of cats, though: Has anyone here read Erin Hunter’s Warriors? Because I was absolutely obsessed with it throughout my late childhood and teenage years! Following a former pet who joins a clan of wild cats living in a forest, the series features its fair share of evil kitties, too, and leads to many an epic adventure out in nature.

---

---

Well rested, we were picked up for the first stretch of our South Coast tour the following morning and left Reykjavík behind. Glued to my window, I watched as the silhouettes of mountains slowly started to protrude from the horizon, with the sun hovering somewhere close to rising around about ten o’clock. By the time we reached Þingvellir National Park, I was somewhat acquainted with the other occupants of our minivan, and wholly enchanted by Iceland’s landscape.

Derived from an Old Norse word meaning ‘assembly fields’, Þingvellir was once the meeting point for Europe’s oldest parliament, the Alþing, which was held there annually from 930 until 1798, when it was moved to Reykjavík. The valley is still rich in history and, as it lies directly on the boundary of the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, it also has a bunch of really cool geographical features. Hiking along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, seeing my first Icelandic volcanic rock formations up close, and staring at the lake Þingvallavatn sparkling in the distance was definitely a highlight!

As was Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor. Like Þingvellir, the novel is gorgeous and rich in political history, following the youngest half-goblin son of the previous emperor as he is unexpectedly thrust into the role of becoming his father’s successor.

---

After leaving Þingvellir, our group traveled onwards to one of the places I had most been looking forward to seeing on my trip – Haukadalur, a geothermal valley that, among others, houses world-famous geysers Geysir and Strokkur. Although Geysir has been dormant for almost 100 years, Strokkur erupts about every four to ten minutes, and I must’ve stood there for almost an hour. Watching the water slowly rise to form a huge bubble and then explode into a fountain of steam was the coolest thing ever, and I didn’t even care that everything around me smelled heavily of sulfur. I’d have stood there even longer if we weren’t so short on daylight!

Between its rotten-egg smell, red dirt, and alien landscape, Haukadalur does bear a certain resemblance to Mars, so it obviously goes well with Andy Weir’s The Martian, a novel about an astronaut trapped on the red planet. I feel like Mark Watney would definitely have approved of my meticulous observation of Strokkur’s eruptions. You’ve got to observe things many times! In the name of science!

---

Another thing I loved about Iceland is how there’re horses and sheep simply everywhere. They just look so small and round and snuggly and cute and happy standing around in the countryside, and I couldn’t get enough of petting them. Especially after I’d actually asked a farmer for permission and didn’t have to do it in sneaky potential illegality anymore! 😅

But yeah, horse books. Somehow, that third-grade phase where every girl suddenly started reading nothing else bypassed me – but not my best friend, which means I always had access to an endless stream of horse (and unicorn) content through her. And I remember actually quite liking A Holiday Memory by Lauren Brooks? Maybe I need to revisit it someday!

---

Gullfoss was the last place we visited on our Golden Circle tour before sunset that day – and my pictures just don’t do it justice. Unless you’ve stood at the edge of its precipice, seen its meter-long icicles being pummeled by unrelenting natural forces, and heard the roar of masses of water plummeting into an abyss right next to you, you can’t really process just how GIGANTIC this waterfall is. Out of all the waterfalls I ended up seeing in Iceland, this one was by far my favorite one.

Which means it’s only fair that I pair it with one of my favorite books that feature a waterfall – Ronia, The Robber’s Daughter by Astrid Lindgren. My parents had to read this Swedish children’s classic about a girl who runs away from her father’s robber lair castle to live in the woods with her best friend to me countless times, and even as an adult, I still really recommend it!

---

---

After a fairly sleepless night during which my groupmates and I mastered the final hurdle towards becoming friends as we traipsed around deep snow in the Icelandic countryside to try to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights, we set off early the next morning for what would become my favorite activity during our entire trip: Hiking Sólheimajökull, an outlet of Iceland’s fourth-largest glacier, Mýrdalsjökull. While it was still dark and the moon stood high in the sky, we geared up with crampons, helmets, harnesses, ropes, and ice axes, and rounded the corner of a mountain to one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen in my life. Icebergs upon icebergs floated towards me in a sparkling lagoon, giving way to an enormous ice field filled with caves, crevasses, volcanic ash, and solid blue ice.

For several hours, we made our way up the glacier, and were rewarded by a spectacular sunrise that transformed everything around us into a field of sparkling white crystals. Just about then, the weather turned – our guide jokingly told us that it’s a saying in Iceland that if you don’t like the weather, you should just wait fifteen minutes – and we battled our way back down the mountain while being pelted in the face with snow and ice. It was quite possibly the best day of my life.

If you don’t think I’m insane for saying that, chances are you’re just as obsessed with mountaineering and ice climbing as I am – which means you might also like Peak by Roland Smith! This middle-grade novel follows a boy on an expedition to Mount Everest, and won’t disappoint if you’re looking for an icy adventure.

---

By the time we reached Reynisfjara, Iceland’s world-famous black sand beach just outside the small fishing village Vík í Mýrdal, our glacial gale had turned into a full-blown storm. The wind was piercingly horrific, I could barely hear what my groupmates were saying, and, much to my delight, nobody wanted to be on the beach! Well, nobody except me and two of my groupmates. While everyone else went to seek shelter in a nearby restaurant, we had the entire beach to just the three of us and got to explore its bizarre basalt stacks, caves, and brutal shoreline all on our own. Although I was constantly terrified I might get frostbite or one of us could be sucked away by Reynisfjara’s notoriously dangerous sneaker waves – our guide had made sure to tell us plenty of horror stories in advance, to ensure we would never turn our back on the water – it was an epic experience, and I definitely wouldn’t have missed it!

But yeah – if you’d like more of a peek into just how dangerously alluring Nordic nature can be, Norwegian author Tarjei Vesaas’s The Ice Palace is a must-read! A wintry tale about a girl whose new-found friend mysteriously disappears, the book is profoundly lyrical and dark, and unlike anything else I’ve read!

---

Once we were back in our minivan, the weather almost immediately cleared up again, which was why we decided to add an impromptu stop at the Eldhraun lava fields just before sunset. Left over from a devastating series of volcanic eruptions lasting from June 1783 to February 1784, when the volcano Laki wiped out 50% of Iceland’s livestock population, killed over 20% of Icelanders, and sent so much ash into the air that temperatures plummeted all across Europe, the fields stretch on for miles and miles, creating weird bumps beneath a blanket of snow. I learned that it is this landscape that is responsible for Iceland being one of the few countries in the world without bats – the porous volcanic rocks swallow sounds so completely that echolocation is next to impossible – and caught a glimpse of Iceland’s typical green moss peeking out from the snow.

Speaking of volcanoes, though, what sort of language nerd would I be if I didn’t mention the great-great-great-grandfather of volcanic research out there? One of my favorite things we ever translated in Latin class, two of the letters Pliny the Younger wrote to his friend Tacitus chronicle the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. If you want volcano trivia, these are for you!

---

---

After another eventful night of Northern Light hunting – we still didn’t see any, but at least had a beautifully clear starry sky devoid of trees that gave us an excellent look at different constellations and planets – we continued driving east the next morning. Since it was still too dark to make out all that much, I napped a bit in the car, but when we arrived at our destination, I was immediately 100% awake. Illuminated by moonlight, hundreds of icebergs were floating past us into the Atlantic from Jökulsárlón, the vast lagoon beneath the glacier Breiðamerkurjökull. Between them, sea birds and seals were playing in the water, and I’m not even kidding when I say that my fellow travelers eventually had to drag me away. The seals were SOOOO cute!!! 🥰 Like, do you see that one’s head in my totally non-blurry seal picture?? How could you not fall in love with that???

But yeah – if the Arctic and cute animals are your thing, you should definitely read Kristin Cashore’s Seasparrow. That book is basically 98% ice descriptions, and I did not mind in the slightest! Just like the previous installments of the Graceling Realm series, it immediately draws you in with its gorgeous storytelling and complex characters!

---

Just across the Ring Road from Jökulsárlón lies another one of the country’s spectacular sights. Icebergs that have floated into the ocean from the glacier lagoon are brought back ashore after having been polished by the waves, causing Breiðamerkursandur to be more commonly known as Diamond Beach. And I’ve gotta admit, the ice does sort of look like sparkling gemstones!

Should you be craving the real thing, however, you could check out The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie. One of her early mysteries, it features plenty of diamonds! As well as diamond smuggling…

---

After enjoying a sunrise at Jökulsárlón and Breiðamerkursandur, we made our way back west for New Year’s Eve, merely stopping at a few fishing villages and gas stations along the way so that we would make it to some of the waterfalls we’d hitherto only passed in snowlit darkness before the sun set again. Seriously, planning when you’ve only got about five hours of sunlight has to be particularly meticulous, and I was so grateful our guide did most of it for us!

Skógafoss probably ranks after Gullfoss as my second favorite waterfall of the trip. You can hike up to the mountain ledge it comes from in about 15 minutes, which enables you to see the waterfall from both above and below. And, particularly with Skógafoss in its partially frozen state, both views are absolutely gorgeous! Plus, the water coming from the waterfall is drinkable, so of course, I was immediately slithering across the ice in wormlike fashion so that I could take a sip without falling in. Let’s just say that I definitely needed my waterproof clothing that day, and that Skógafoss has some of the most delicious water I have ever tasted. After I figured this out, our whole group was suddenly worming their way over the frozen stream to fill up their water bottles, so I’d say my initial expedition was a huge success!

But anyway, what better book to match Skógafoss with than Kirsten Boie’s The Princess Plot? Sure, the pairing might not be that evident from looking at the English title, but the original German title Skogland, which is also the name of the fictional Scandinavian country the main character is whisked away to in order to act as a double for the royal heir, should show the brilliance of my reasoning 😁 We’ve got to look at language similarities here and pair forests with forests!

---

Ranking third amongst my waterfall favorites comes Seljalandsfoss. Also humongously impressive, I can imagine that it is even more of a highlight in the summer months, when it transports way more water and you can also walk behind it. I mean, theoretically, I guess you could walk behind it in winter, too, but you’d almost certainly end up taking a freezing swim and dying of hypothermia. Like, when I say the paths surrounding it were icy, that is NOT an exaggeration! I basically didn’t even have to lift my feet to see the waterfall up close because they just slid over there of their own accord…

Similarly, the protagonist of Heather Fawcett’s eponymous novel Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries also finds herself in Arctic places she can’t explicitly remember having chosen to go to. However, as an expert in dryadology and the heinous tactics of the Hidden Folk, she’s used to this by now, and has a few tricks of her own up her sleeve.

---

About an hour later, we arrived back in Reykjavík to an onslaught of fireworks. Like, I’d thought Germany went overboard when it came to welcoming the New Year, but at least we start at midnight and keep it contained to about an hour – in Iceland, I already had to fear for my life a full day early because everybody was setting them off in all directions! Still, I suppose they were for a good cause. Normally illegal, fireworks are only sold for New Year’s Eve in Iceland, where the proceeds fund the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue.

Much cooler than the fireworks, though, were the New Year’s Eve bonfires! Around 9 p.m., all Icelanders leave their homes to meet up around huge burning stacks of wood and sing songs about trolls and elves and talking cows and whatnot. As you can imagine, this was totally my scene 😂 Why don’t we have any of our own troll songs for the New Year, huh? That would be so much better than being forced to watch Dinner for One by that one traditionalist friend who is somehow at every New Year’s Eve party! And the Icelandic New Year’s Eve program, which my new tour friends and I watched in thorough confusion in a hotel lobby while a slightly drunk Icelandic grandpa took it upon himself to be our translator, generally seems way cooler than ours. There was so much political satire!

However, for even more Nordic humor set around the New Year, you should read Fredrik Backman’s Anxious People! Following different people who are taken hostage at an apartment viewing by a bank robber, as well as the two policemen trying to solve the case, the novel is simultaneously, funny, heartwarming, sad, and provocative, and definitely worth a read!

---

---

Can anything beat welcoming 2024 by hiking a volcano? I definitely didn’t think so, which is why Fagradalsfjall went on my list of absolute must-see places for this trip! And it was so worth it!

After a short stop at the beautifully picturesque lake Kleifarvatn, our bus dropped us off at the foot of the mountain, and we strapped crampons to our feet to begin our ascent. Since I had apparently booked a tour with loads of middle-aged Americans who had never hiked before in their lives and my also not very mountain-experienced housemate who bonded with a guy from Oregon over how steep they thought Fagradalsfjall was, I somehow ended up way ahead of anyone else as the only person able to keep up with our tour guide. (There was a second guide at the rear end to make sure nobody got hurt or lost.) After riveting conversation about the Alps and volcanoes, this eventually ended up with him teaching me an Icelandic tongue twister (Rómverskur riddari réðist inn í Rómarborg, rændi og ruplaði rabbarbara og rófum.) and telling me stories of how he and his family had fried bananas and marshmallows at Fagradalsfjall when it erupted in 2021.

The March 2021 Fagradalsfjall eruption, as photographed by my guide Guðni while he was frying marshmallows there. (He said I could use the picture, don’t worry!)

The area surrounding the crater of Fagradalsfjall was also truly impressive. Although the volcano was no longer erupting, the lava field surrounding it was still warm and steamy, and the perfect place to take shelter from the harsh Icelandic winds.

Plus, you could see the new lava field from the December 18th Reykjanes eruption smoldering in the distance (the black smoke on the horizon behind me in that second picture above is actually poisonous gasses streaming from the fissure), which was really impressive but also kind of horrifying when you think of the fact that that volcano has since rendered an entire town unlivable that was still advertising its snacks when I visited only a month ago….

But anyway, which books could I possibly pair with cool runic languages, a volcano, and destruction other than J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Mount Doom is iconic among volcanoes, so it’s obviously getting its mention here!

---

With a successful volcano hike under our belts and smelling thoroughly of sulfur after a quick detour to the Seltún-Krýsuvík geothermal area that featured several bubbling hot springs, the smart thing would probably have been to go to bed and prepare for our early morning flight, particularly considering that we had barely slept during the past few days. Northern Light hunting and properly celebrating the New Year had really taken its toll! However, even after days of trying and passably strong solar activity, we still hadn’t seen anything remotely aurora-like, which meant we would obviously be trying to get the most out of that last night by going on a real Northern Lights chase.

However, as luck would have it, the sky immediately became overcast the minute it got dark, and although our guide did his best to find cloud free areas, we had no luck whatsoever. After we had decimated his entire hot chocolate stash and stood next to the road for hours, shivering, we reluctantly called it a night and headed back to Reykjavík – only for the sky to immediately clear up again once our guide had dropped us off, contrary to what every single weather forecast had predicted. However, with no way of getting out of the city, which was so full of light and firework pollution that we had no chance of seeing anything, we had to admit that the Northern Lights probably weren’t going to happen. I steadfastly held up hope until we were on our plane, which left early enough that the sun hadn’t risen yet, but the only aurora I got to see was on the phone of the girl sitting next to me. Apparently, she and her boyfriend had seen the Northern Lights that very night, and we’d just happened to be at the wrong place, five kilometers away… 😭

But yeah – if you want to feel less bad about your own plans falling through and a bit of relatable content about someone struggling with their twenties, I recommend Elif Batuman’s The Idiot! Loosely based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel of the same name, it follows a Turkish-American university student as she tries to find her place in the world and realizes she doesn’t really have a clue what she wants her future to look like.

---

And that, in a nutshell, was my trip to Iceland! However, in case you’re ever looking to try something like this yourself - Something I would highly recommend because this was probably my favorite vacation of all time! 🥰 – here are a few final tips that might be worth knowing about:

• Including everything – plane tickets, food, hotels, and tours, I paid slightly less than 2,000€ (about 300,000 Icelandic Króna) for this trip.
• You don’t need cash anywhere in this country. Credit cards are accepted everywhere!
• Food in Iceland is RIDICULOUSLY expensive. I recommend stuffing yourself as much as possible with hotel breakfasts and taking enough food with you that you need to buy one warm meal a day at most. Seriously, cereal bars were a lifesaver on this trip!
• You are not expected to tip in Iceland and many waiters will be offended if you try.
• The easiest way to get from Keflavík International Airport to Reykjavík is with Flybus. You can book your tickets in advance and it’s literally super easy.
• Waterproof clothing and thermal underwear are a must if you decide to come to Iceland during the winter!

I think that just about covers everything, but should you have any more questions, feel free to ask! And do let me know: Do we agree on what constitutes a dream vacation? Have you ever been to Iceland? What are some of your own bucket list destinations? I would love to know!