The plane touches down, the galvanized rubber wheels scream resistance as they skim the runway, marking the concrete as fully locked brakes reduce a headlong launch to a controlled slide across the runway, the ride ending in a smooth taxi to the terminal. .
The Blue Lagoon is one of the few things I know about Iceland. That and Eidur Gudjonnsson, a striker currently plying his trade with Spanish giants Barcelona, who is in every magazine on board. He’s also all over the airport, a modern building that has smooth, clean lines and a sense of fluidity and efficiency – he just feels Scandinavian.
Outside, the Icelandic sky hangs familiarly low, an endless mass of clouds misting the tarmac with moisture as I cross, seemingly unmolested, but more than likely just not feeling the rain, it’s falling so softly. We Scots have a word for days like these: drish: a word born of necessity, the only one in our vocabulary that conveys a sense of East – a day we see so often. In many ways it is perfect, a word that sums up not only the weather, but also the sensations it induces in the observer. To use it is to surrender to all that it implies: apathy, a blunting of the senses that tugs at the heartstrings; a feeling that one has been here before, that nothing changes, that this can never end. Dreich: rhymes with pain and ends with ‘eech’; guttural, almost Yiddish but distinctly Scottish.
As I board the coach, I wonder how many words Icelanders have for this. In the same way that the Eskimos have so many variations of ‘snow’, I wonder if the natives here can linguistically distinguish between this and, say, a different cold gray day; one in which the sky looks less like a sheet of slate and bears, perhaps, occasional metallic-looking streaks of white, or an odd patch of blue, a distant reminder of warmer climes, distant lands.
He is an international coach; a strange mixture of foreign languages and English with various accents, all asking the same questions, more or less. No one really knows where we’re headed: ‘a kind of spa’, the sum total of our collective knowledge. No one knows how long it will take to get there or if we will make it in time for the next leg of our flight. I’m fighting the urge to tell the driver to pull over as we exit the terminal. ‘I’ll wait back there,’ I want to tell him. An American accent behind me, confident, calms my unspoken fears, or at least makes me feel ridiculous for thinking about them; she is sure, she tells her son, that nobody would fix something like that and allow people to miss flights. That would be silly. Obviously I’m more pessimistic than she is, but suddenly it’s too late: we’re on a wide, curving stretch of tarmac leading away from the airport, away from certainty, and into Iceland.
Even this close to the airport, I can see that the landscape of Iceland is weird. Obviously, it doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before. I feel like I’ve seen very little, so personal experience isn’t the best yardstick, but it goes further. It’s unlike anything I’ve imagined, except perhaps for the images conjured up while reading about Frodo and Sam’s journey to Mount Doom. It’s all strange rock formations, protruding masses of solid-looking volcanic spew, standing out sharply against the gray uniformity of the sky. Before us the road stretches out, almost deserted, the asphalt apparently raised; it feels eerily like it’s floating above the rocks, a temporary resident in this strange environment. It is not fenced or gated, and there are no comforting, soft-looking fields bordering it. Everything seems unforgiving, harsh, apocalyptic, an impression only accentuated by geysers of steam rising at various points in the distance. Apparently, the American voice informs his son, they are the result of volcanic activity. geothermal action.
Sigur Ros’s music plays from memory inside my head as I watch the scene; a connection I hadn’t realized I’d made, yet another thing I know about Iceland. Previously, I had always associated his lonely melancholy with a different kind of visual desolation: that of the North Sea, of standing on top of a cliff at night, looking out at the distant lights of an offshore oil rig, feeling small. and insignificant as a wave. after the wave hit the Scottish coast below me. He spoke to me, that music, with his invented language – Hope-ish, someone told me his name was. He touched something inside me that recognized loneliness and desolation, evoked a longing for the indefinable. From what I can see through the window here, I know where it comes from: another insignificant little country in the great Atlantic where people dream of bigger things, fuller lives, but struggle to express that desire, or what it means; hence Hope-ish: a language of intangibles.
The bus swerves at a junction, the driver taking care to turn perfectly, not going too fast, responsible in his load despite the lack of other traffic. Looks like we’re headed for one of those steam geysers. There are some low buildings clustered around, near one of them. The path floats over the rocks towards him as we, strapped to the carriage, float with him.
We pull into a parking lot; more black asphalt to add to the cool look. The rain is a little heavier now, clearly splashing my face as I make my way onto a path with the rest of the group, following both the path and the group around a rock, as directed by the driver, ticket in hand. , ready for inspection.
The entrance to the lagoon is a low-key affair: glass door, horizontal wooden slats, plus clean lines and subtle airport sharpness. My ticket is unceremoniously withdrawn and I am led down the hall to the men’s locker room, where my boots will be removed at the door.
Ten minutes and a pre-spa shower later I step outside and find myself in the lagoon. It’s essentially a large natural spa pool, one of the main tourist attractions here, which explains the crowds. The pool does not have a defined shape, which enhances its natural feel. It has numerous hidden corners where one can sit quietly, as well as the main bathing area where people float, swim and cover their faces in sulphur-laden mud, which is said to be good for the skin. The narrower areas of the pool are spanned by wooden bridges, and there are glass-fronted saunas built into a rock wall on the side of the lagoon. Next to this is a waterfall, below which laughing children playfully push each other towards the waterfall. It’s all very civilized, gentle, not British; the only thing that seems familiar is the group of soccer fans, stopping on their way to or from something, their drunkenness and the volume of their songs drawing many nervous glances. The fact that they are starting to sing in German gives me reason to be happy and depressed: happy that they are not my compatriots, dismayed that they represent my gender, they claim to follow a sport that I love very much, further tarnishing their already tarnished reputation.
There is a strong smell of sulfur throughout the lagoon, and I have been warned not to stick my head under water, at the risk of drying out my hair for the next month or so. I choose to try the mud pack and then float around the pool for a while, enjoying the sensation, discovering the different hot spots in the water, more evidence of geothermal energies, although I suspect here they may have been harnessed by man . . But never mind, there’s plenty of what’s natural, with the outdoors, the spectacular views of the landscape, sitting outside half-naked, not caring about it.
The whole experience is extremely pleasurable, a welcome relief from the stress of flying, though the nagging doubt about going back in time still lingers. The driver told us we had an hour and a half, so with 30 minutes left, I climb out of the pool, my skin wrinkled from exposure to the water, and change back.
My paranoia about leaving late means I have time to explore the restaurant area before I leave, a mistake, as it instantly creates hunger pangs that the delicious multi-currency menu informs me I can’t afford to satiate here. There is, however, a takeout area, where the cheapest item is a hot dog, a reminder of both home and my ultimate destination, as canned hot dogs taste the same everywhere.
The bus takes us back to the airport, all with plenty of time before our flights to explore the duty-free shops, floating through the concourse in a haze of Bjork CDs, fancy chocolates, lagoon body products, everything seems fresh and new, rather than cheap and tawdry as it would have if I had spent the entire three hours here.
The call to board the plane comes and people form an orderly line at the gate, the flow of the building, the lagoon experience, seemingly relaxing enough to allow us to get by without the usual stampede to be the first to board.
Takeoff comes without the usual anxiety for me, the stress of the airport this morning long forgotten. I exhale confidently, instead of holding it back out of fear, enjoying for once the feeling of being whipped skyward. Ahead of me is the glittering continent of America, a modern and impulsive place. Behind me is Scotland: older, more traditional, more established in its customs. Iceland lies somewhere in between the two, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, connected but otherworldly, definitely a place to return to with time to spare.
Iceland Air organizes free tours to the Blue Lagoon at any stopover in Reykjavik between Glasgow and the US, and also allows you to stopover in the country for up to 7 days at no extra cost on the ticket.
