rogers trip to iceland........

a couple of months ago i went to iceland ......iceland is a country that has intrigued me for a long time, a part of europe but somehow isolated and unique. i also love bjork's music and her mystique added to the mystery of iceland. finally i met a few people from iceland and they invited me to go with them on a week trip so i thought why not .....its about a three hour flight from london almost directly north, iceland is just below the arctic circle and even though its called iceland is surprisingly warm (well relatively, its may30th and 20 degrees centigrade in london and still around 5 in reykjavik ) as its bathed by the warm waters of the gulf stream. the country straddles the fault line that runs up the north atlantic and is actually still forming as a piece of land. there are several active volcanoes one of which erupts every couple of years, the land is very young and soil hasn't formed over most of the land leaving vast lava fields which are amazing, the land has a great energy and pride. iceland is famous for its geothermal water, where the water table contacts the still molten sub strata it's heated to an incredible temperature and at certain places bursts into life through holes in the ground as geysers, we drove out to see them one day, it was freezing cold and very foggy but well worth the trip. the biggest of the geysers which is named geyser and is the father of all geyser's doesn't blow anymore but the smaller one, strokkur goes off every five minutes. so here we have this strange mysterious island but what about the icelandic people....well for a start there aren't very many of them 270,000, yes that's right two hundred and seventy thousand!! and about half of them live in reykjavik the capital. reykjavik has to be the smallest capital city in the world, it's almost inconceivable how small it is but i really liked it, it's probably the friendliest place i've ever been. everybody seems to know everybody else and there's a good chance they are remotely related. they don't have family names they take their fathers first name and either add son or daughter to it so if your dad's name is david his daughters name is davidsdottir and his sons name is davidson which doesn't seem fair to the mother somehow but icelandic people are very proud of this ancient tradition and its the law, its probably just as well because everybody would end up with the same surname, an entire country of smiths ! i think they've go it right

(sorry robert)......

so the first night we go to an amazing restaurant called the pearl which is built on top of five geothermal water holding tanks which they use to heat and power the city, the restaurant revolves giving panoramic views of the city and making you slowly and steadily more sick the only antidote is to have a few drinks (what a shame ). we are here to watch a model competition and icelandic girls are all very beautiful. next stop is the coffee bar downtown, its a very small bar which everybody wants to go to so its always incredibly crowded and of course everybody knows everybody else, i even know the barmaid who i'd met in london the week before, you start to realize you do know a lot of people here. next thing you realize is that drink is very expensive and when you offer to buy somebody a drink they look at you as if you are mad and then say YES ........ please (although as proud vikings who never asked for things but just took, there is no icelandic word for please). the language is still the same as it was a thousand years ago and is fiercely protected from foreign interference. ok after the coffeebar we all go back to thor's house for a party, somebody arrives with a case of beer which until ten years ago was illegal! a hangover from their prohibition times ..... so everybody gets very drunk and smokes about a million cigarettes. and you meet play writes , actors, musicians, film producers, painters, sculptors and ex miss worlds .......... and of course the next day you bump into them all walking down the main street !

the next day is friday which is a sacred day or rather night for all the young people in reykjavik, they all go mad, start drinking at home to save money and then around midnight hit the bars and go completely mental. if you thought the coffeebar was crowded last night tonight its insane, icelanders don't know how to queue or lineup they just all push at the same time, luckily somebody knows i'm form the cure and let me and my friends in, in being a strange word for a place where there's not even room to stand up. ok i so i arrange another mortgage and buy a few drinks , after being squashed beyond recognition we decide to go for a walk and watch everyone go mad stumbling up and down the main street ,it is amazing. we then went to another bar which was full of cure fans who know more about the group than i do !! but it was a lot of fun and i made a lot of new friends. for all the warm gulf stream stuff it still gets pretty cold up there and at four in the morning waiting for a cab in a very unruly queue isn't much fun. earlier in the evening we'd been to see one of reykjavik's many bands this one only plays twice a year and is called o jonsson og grjoni they were excellent, and i met some people i knew from london, small world ! next day i decide to do some sightseeing in reykjavik and visit some of the buildings downtown, the new town hall is very controversial and a lot of people were very against its modern construction but it is built with a very sympathetic use of natural stone and floats on the edge of a lake, i liked it. there were two other people there !! i felt like i knew them ........

everybody in iceland speaks perfect english even workmen, to my surprise. most english workmen can hardly speak english. i was talking to my friends mum about some construction work that was being done on her office and she commented that it had to be finished by friday, there were two workmen having a tea break listening and they replied in perfect english accents that it was no problem and they'd probably be finished by thursday !! saturday night we were invited to a huge fashion show in a hangar at reykjavik airport and of course i bumped into all my new friends that id met so far , very cozy ....... the show was by an american designer of underwear called joe boxer and in about a half an hour they managed to trivialize and bring down to a level of disneyland everything that makes iceland unique and proud, most of my icelandic friends were disgusted and insulted so we went to the coffeebar again to talk it over. ok i thought it was crowded before but this is silly. sunday we're back to the pearl for a fashion show by an icelandic designer , today the pearl was surrounded by very surreal fog, definitely a land of changing weather.

a quiet night tonight as we take part in another reykjavik tradition drinking coffee in a small smoky bar, grateful for a bit of a rest, walking back to the car we see some friends in a bar so we join them for a drink, amongst the group is bjork's mum, who looked a very nice lady. so all in all a pretty busy weekend and i'm exhausted, this is harder than touring ............. i hope that someday we'll get to play in iceland and the rest of the bad can enjoy everything i had , i can't wait to go back and visit all my new friends ...... you might want to check out the icelandic magazine decode that has a web page .......... listen to bjork if you haven't already and also gus gus which is a very interesting new icelandic band made up of a collective of musicians writers actors djs and filmmakers their album is called polydistortion and its on 4ad records, the single is called polyesterday .......... i recommend staying well clear of the rotten shark and the evil local drink brennivin, it will make you go insane, guaranteed, just ask robert and einar from the sugarcubes !!!!!!!

thanks for all the photographs to elisabet davidsdottir......

........roger

if you are interested in picking up a few icelandic expressions (you never know you might bump into bjork !)
you can visit this site.......
http://www.saga.is/Netcafe/Iceland/Icelandic/index.html

another excellent icelandic site is decode magazine, originally openend as an internet magazine only.......
http://this.is/decode