Fróði Úlfurinn: Til Vík og Foss Þreyta (To Vík and Foss Fatigue)

Daginn,

Finally it's time to get out of Reykjavík! I love this cosmopolitan capital in the north, but sometimes you need room to breathe. It's also easy to forget what most of Iceland is like when you spend all your time in its capital. Iceland is abrasively windswept and dignified despite it's young age. I find that the landscape is very masculine with its rigid fells and utter lack of deciduous trees. It is a maddeningly windy landscape that demands solitude, glaciers and volcanoes wrapped in black sand beaches and dangerous ice storms.

Tom, another Fulbrighter bought a car when he moved to Iceland! How fortunate for Mark and I, because we managed to plan a couple of nice day trips, saving money and enjoying the company of friends. On this first trip, we headed down the Reykjanes peninsula, making our way to Vík (literally “bay” in Icelandic) the southern most village in Iceland an stopping at plenty of sites on the way. What a windy day. To put the nature of Icelandic wind into perspective, I'd like to share with everyone that it was so windy the car door was blowing open a few centimetres letting tons of cold air rush in. Not pleasant. The half of the car facing the wind was freezing, the other half, pleasant. Sixty million layers and lopapeysa and it's not enough.

But the scenery was definitely worth it. We even experienced Foss Fatigue, a term coined by my friends Nicole, Devon and Nathan. It basically describes the fact that the sheer number of waterfalls and vistas in Iceland is exhausting. Toward the end of the day, one cannot be bothered to stop the car and snap a photo, opting to either pass by or take a picture from the car. What a place, where there are so many beautiful sights it becomes physically exhausting to take them all in.

A river or "á" in Icelandic. Funny story, small words in Icelandic are extremely complicated as they often serve many functions. Jón á á á á is a perfectly logical sentence. It means: "Jón (John) of the river (i.e. from a river valley, nicknames like this are common, especially in Old Icelandic literature) has a ewe. " One more time: Jón á á á á. Jón of the river has a ewe. Wonderful. Don't even get me started with prepositions and the cases they govern and when.