A Brief Guide to Iceland

One of Iceland's many hot springs, and a crowd waiting for the geyser to erupt

The only reason I came to Iceland was because of Icelandair’s brilliant marketing strategy: for no extra airfare, you can add time to your layover in Iceland. You can break up a long journey and see Iceland, a country that is somewhat of a global curiosity, at the same time. I have no doubt that this strategy has contributed to an increase in tourist activity in Iceland; this increase isn’t so much visible in the capital city, Reykjavik, but rather in the so-called “Golden Circle” road, a popular driving route that visits some of Iceland’s most famous geological sites: the lake that is on the fault line between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, the massive Gullfoss (Gold Falls) waterfall, hot springs, volcanic craters, etc. Boat tours are also popular—whale-watching and puffin-watching. I did a puffin-watching tour.

Thingvellir National Park, right on the border between the Eurasian and North American plates, and a key stop on the Golden Circle

I’m always oddly fascinated with tiny countries, maybe because I grew up in one of the largest countries on the planet and so have a have time imagining how a country like Iceland, with only about 350,000 people, operates. Iceland itself is not a particularly small island; it’s twice the size of Denmark (which has a population of 5 million) and about the same size as Kentucky. However, it’s pretty inhospitable, because about 90% of the island is covered in cooled magma, and 300,000 people live in or around Reykjavik. Icelandic is a Nordic language like Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, but is actually pretty different from those three. It evolved in a vacuum, without much influence from foreigners, so it is the closest of all Nordic tongues to the original Old Norse.

A street in Reykjavik; you can see all the way to the harbor

Iceland was first settled in about 850 CE by Norwegian and Irish voyagers and has an extremely peaceful (and kinda boring) national history. They peacefully converted from paganism to Christianity around 1000 AD, with none of the religious violence we saw in Europe, and then from Catholicism to Protestantism about 600 years later in the same calm fashion. Iceland was a colony of Denmark for a long time, until the Danish king said “you all deserve autonomy” and Iceland became its own state. There was no war of independence. The biggest tragedies in Icelandic history have been famine and plague.

It's extremely difficult to grow anything on the island. Most everything has to be imported, except for fish and some meat, and this is why food in Iceland is so expensive. I had a salad with smoked salmon and the cheapest beer on the menu, and all of that set me back $30 (although the currency on the island is actually the Icelandic krona, 1 ISK = 0.0079 USD). Lamb is popular, because I kept seeing “Icelandic lamb” on menus, but I never ate it (I haven’t eaten meat since October of 2020). Shark and horse are more “traditional” meats that the first Icelanders ate, but most locals nowadays don’t eat them. Fermented shark is mostly offered for tourists. Icelanders also clearly love their soup; almost every restaurant offers a “soup and bread” combo, the soup is either a fish or meat soup or some rotating specialty. The fish soup wasn’t bad, just like a fish chowder, although I couldn’t identify which kinds of seafood were actually in it. Iceland is also one of the most sustainable societies on Earth--the country runs 100% on geothermal energy. Thank you, hot springs!

Kaktus Espressobar in Reykjavik

I only spent 48 hours in the country, one day in Reykjavik, and one day out in the countryside. I really liked Reykjavik—it felt familiar because it had the same Nordic vibe as Copenhagen, but it was much smaller and a little more run-down. There are no trains or metros on the island, just buses, but I got the impression that Iceland is a car-centric country. Reykjavik was filled with cats—not strays, I don’t think, because they all looked clean and well-fed, but cats that are allowed out by their owners. I’d recommend Kaktus Espressobar and Reykjavik Roasters for coffee, breakfast, and lunch. And definitely try the local beer, because it’s cheaper than wine (no way are they growing wine grapes on lava rock). I got suitably tipsy on the most common beer, Gull, which means gold in Icelandic.