Warming up to Iceland pt. III
Disclaimer: Picture provided by the author. It does not even remotely meet this magazine's photography standards and he friggin' knows it!
Volcanoes and Other Assorted Dangers.
Let’s be honest. Iceland is a dangerous place. At first I was only scared of polar bear attacks, and that was mostly only for show. I wrote to people back home that I don’t like to go outside the house in winter, because of gangs of death-bringing polar bears are roaming the streets, with the exception of the Skeifan commercial area. Traffic there is so terrifying and nihilistic, even polar bears are avoiding that part of town. They might be atrocious predators, but they are generally not a suicidal species.
There are of course no gangs of polar bears in the streets of Reykjavik, BUT THERE COULD BE!
Then there is the winds. Again, nuts! Strong winds do two dangerous things mainly: they blow stuff into you or they blow you into stuff. Both options can really hurt, potentially causing death which is generally quite fatal.
I discussed earthquakes on this platform recently. They can be fun, but also very, very dangerous. Snow storms are also very common here. Usually very cold, death-bringing, yet quite fluffy sometimes. There are avalanches, too. Roughly the same features as “snow storms”, but more compact.
Sheep and ponies are very underestimated. Again fluffy (and ponies sometimes with great hair!), but they can be suicidal (contrary to polar bears), and suddenly stand in front of your car in the middle of the road. You might hit them, which will send you flying through the windshield at 120 kph, transforming your body instantly into a pile of non-living-anymore goo in the middle of road nr. 1.
Now, as if all of that was not enough, there are the volcanoes up in Geldingadalir, or “The Lava Boys” as I like to call them lovingly. They are an accumulation of assorted grave dangers that is really, really hard to top. I mean a volcano alone is already;
a VERY deep dangerous hole in the ground (it goes all the way to the center of the earth!)
suddenly opening in a really random place (could be right underneath you) with
liquid fire exploding out of it
combined with deadly gases
at medium to high speed and thereby
producing death-bringing showers and rivers of melted rock and fire!
But of course since humans are pretty stupid per se, my first thought when I heard about the volcanos was clearly “I have to go immediately as close as possible to one of those craters in an easily inflammable but waterproof and windblocking polyester outfit!” Which I have several times since.
Photo by Katrín Ólafs.
The first time I walked ‘path A’, since there was only ‘path A’ back then and it was not even a path at that time. I was just following the people in front of me through a snow storm (I already mentioned the deadly features of snow storms, see above). Of course those people also did not have a clue what they were doing, since they were only following the guys in front of them. Everyone just blindly hoping that someone much, much further ahead would have some idea of what they were doing.
I was happy once I was past the very steep incline, because if you slipped there and were unable to get a hold again, it was quite an opportunity to crack your skull open on a big razor-sharp boulder or receive some other deadly injury. There are really a lot to chose from!
Once you are up at the craters, it is a very fantastic scenery but also very dangerous for various life-ending reasons as laid out in the beginning. I avoided pretty much all of them through being prepared for the worst. Finally my pessimism paid off and so I was able to enjoy the mind blowing views while still being alive and feeling safe!
Big mistake, because I didn’t take the amount of air traffic around The Lave Boys into my calculation. I counted three helicopters and four or five planes trying to fly as low as possible over the scene. Suddenly two douchers in a couple of Cessnas almost collided. One flew in from the South and the other from the West, and they both planned to fly over the volcanoes and then exit through the same valley in the East at the same time, at the same altitude. “Great minds think alike” - fuck off!
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good picturesque lethal kerosene explosion just like the next guy, but not necessarily directly over my head, more indirect on screen, for example. Anyhow, luckily the idiots missed by about four or five meters between their wing tips.
And that’s not the only type of air traffic. Up around the craters it is generally just the usual amount of stupidity that is to be expected when a lot of people are getting a bit overly excited in a confined area together. Nothing really special except the amount of remote controlled plastic shit that is wizzing around in the air. God, how I hate drones! You hear them before you can see them, and before you can see the guys who fly them. How I always cringe when I hear that “bzzzzzzzzzzz”.
Photo by Katrín Ólafs.
Also, drone drivers always talk about nothing but drones, and you know they don’t have a lot of friends. Maybe that is because they never stop talking about drones, charging times, flight times, flight range, gps systems used, camera resolution, payload weights, and why they themselves are just doing superfine, because they read A LOT about what length a micro penis REALLY starts at.
They made me want to leave, and so I started heading back when I noticed a little steam fountain coming out of the side of a hill. There had been news reports about how most of the craters had initially started with just a little steam fountain from the ground. So let me tell you, being in the same spot where a death-bringing fire-death-crater is just opening is not super advisable. In fact, it can be quite to very lethal, especially if you are wearing all-polyester, highly flammable so-called “functional” clothing like I did.
So of course I jumped over to the spot like a geriatric Alpine gazelle to check it out right away. Was quite boring. Steam. Pffff!
I continued walking back down and came to the steep slope again. A bunch of people had broken their ankles during the descent, but that is not really deadly, is it? I mean to be fair, in winter when gangs of blood-addicted polar bears (“Them Furry Arctic Killing Machines”) might be in the area looking for a quick snack, open bleeding ankle wounds can be extremely dangerous and death-by-icebear inducing, but certainly not in the more summery part of winter (beginning of May).
In the end I reached the car in one piece and alive - organism “Heinz” totally intact! I had not been thrown into the Eternal Void through successfully avoiding to suddenly stop living SEVERAL TIMES. Naturally I felt great, fearless, death defying and stupidly immortal. It was clear that long last I was ready and in the perfect state of mind to roll into the real nihilistic Mordor of Iceland: the Bonus supermarket parking area in Skeifan! So I screamed “Fuck you, death!”, set the satnav to Skeifan, and floored the pedal of my used and severely underpowered car.
Photo by Katrín Ólafs.