Two Big Hours in Iceland

On a flight to Iceland, feeling a bit deflated, and uninspired to do much at all, I read a few of the materials Icelandair offers its passengers about their small island nation in the North Atlantic. It turns out, there is a lot to Iceland: its series of impossible-to-pronounce volcanos and its ancient Sagas about family feuds and tough-as-nails survival and its glaciers and geysers and naturally heated steam pools and that beautiful blonde haired airport bartender named Olivia with a sleeve tattoo that was the present-day manifestation of old lines of Viking blood. I had never thought about Iceland before, but I was thinking about Iceland very much after I finished my trek across the ocean and arrived back in the United States.

It is puzzling in a way because I did not see any of the country, apart from photos and an awkward documentary on Reykjavik. Even from the plane, the fog was so thick that I was actually startled by our landing, thinking I was still in the clouds. I certainly have heard good things, and digitally saw good things, but the rest was left up to what we infer and the hard-to-define intuition we have about places.

Lost in thought over a Viking (the name of Iceland's national beer), I asked that same airport bartender, a bit naively, what it was like being from Iceland. She smiled and looked off at nothing in particular and said that it was very good in a way that said it was not just her but all Icelandic folk that felt that way about their country. Playfully, I also asked her how to pronounce the volcano that exploded and grounded all European air traffic last year and she told me (Eyjafjallajökull, pronounced [ˈeːɪjaˌfjatl̥aˌjœːkʏtl̥]) and I felt like a tourist or a volunteer in Guatemala who asks astonishingly what animal that is off in the fields and it is just a flock of sheep. She was good with it, or perhaps just not jaded to it all yet.

But life does seem good there, and presumably simple, with its fishing and other things Iceland does I am unaware of. The World Economic Forum ranked its citizens the "friendliest on Earth," however that is defined and measured. People are happy, and the travelers like myself come and go feeling curiously tied to a place they have only spent a few hours behind the glass walls of an airport, lulled to sleep by the effective strategy of Iceland's tourism authority.

After being randomly selected for extra security examination, a jolly officer questioned me briefly on traces of ash found in my bag. He suggested fireworks, or anything explosive, but I had absolutely no idea which corner of the world that ash could have come from. When I unconvincingly offered "campfires," I am sure it sounded a bit fishy given a few colorful passport stamps from the Middle East. In the end, I suppose he did not perceive me as too big a threat, saying he believed me, me saying I was glad, and us getting sidetracked by my Norwegian surname and other casual trivialities. Before being rushed off to the airplane, I told him that I need to come back to Iceland one day and stay awhile. He laughed and told me that is what everyone says.