If Iceland were to be pulled apart, it might happen at Þingvellir, the crux of the European and American tectonic plates, the divide of the world. Here Iceland stretches, at the rate of about 1” per year, dropping the bottom of valley about half that distance. Oddly, it is also here that Iceland formed its first government, peoples gathering about the Law Rock (“Lögberg”) in 930 CE. This parliament lasted about 300 years before a new code was put into place; nevertheless, the region remained the center of Icelandic cultural identity even as Iceland wrested itself from Danish rule in 1944.
For me, despite the vans, it was a magical passing from Reykjavik, the moon in the January predawn presiding over the endless snow, lakes, and ridges, the lights of distant homes dotting the blue landscape in stark isolation. A church steeple stands alone on a snowy cliff face. Taillights of a single car pass miles distant. Clouds of luminescent ice crystals glow pink with the approaching sun. A wispy layer of snow curls across the road like dust, raised in their own clouds by our deflated tires. Skyline and snowline blur, and our vans ascend.
The roads are difficult. Even these massive four-wheelers have trouble. The snow levels are record, but the day promises beauty, and Þingvellier does not disappoint. The valley is vast, open, with a gentle river and expanding lake on the valley floor, a small 19th century church at its base. We descend to the valley through a narrow passage of lava formations, but—unlike yesterday’s short Blue Lagoon trek, the trail and cold are gentle.
We see no animals, but a large bird calls behind us as we descend. Iceland has only six wild mammals on the entire island: the fox, reindeer, mink, rabbit, and of course rats and mice. (There are no cockroaches or ants on the island at all, by the way.) All of these save the fox were brought by man.
But Iceland is full of unusual combinations which somehow weave themselves into its culture. Half-buried in the snows are brightly-lit greenhouses heated by steam and growing vegetables and flowers. “Cucumbers for the stomach, roses for the heart, what else does a man need?” asks Jon. Our gas-guzzling vans pass a bus moving on hydrogen fuel-cells; Iceland has already produced the necessary infrastructure. Gullfoss was saved from a power company by an argument that natural resources should be measured not just by kilowatt hours but by “pleasure hours.”
After a day of meeting Icelandic ponies and knocking back two bowls of a warm, unidentifiable, but necessary stew, we found as night fell that we had time for one last visit, a geothermal plant where drills bore into the earth’s crust to tap reservoirs of steam and send it to nearby towns. The vans barreled through off-road drifts and eased down a narrowly-plowed embankment to the plant in the valley below us. As we moved past it toward one of the bore holes, the lead van went off the road and ditched itself in a deep drift.
Thus began our last full adventure in Iceland, as our various vans alternatively towed one van only to see another fall off the road, listing precariously over slips into ice fields, fishtailing through snow piles, and slipping forward down an ill-marked road into a field of electrical towers and descending night. We never stopped long enough to see the power plant, but our driver taunted us with a promise that a Starbucks was just over the next ridge. When we finally emerged from the dark snow fields onto the highway parking lot at the back of a gas station, there was indeed coffee, but thankfully not a Starbucks to be found.
Let the earth someday pull this hard and beautiful country apart, but these Viking people should not let it happen at the cost of their culture.
Steve Chisnell (um, on the right) is a teacher at Royal Oak (MI) High School. 
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