{"id":818,"date":"2008-01-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chisnell.www216-119-142-248.a2hosted.com\/chizblog\/?p=818"},"modified":"2017-08-07T03:21:27","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T03:21:27","slug":"iceland-in-the-dark-day-two-11908","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/iceland-in-the-dark-day-two-11908\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland in the Dark, Day Two: 1\/19\/08"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We left the Blue Lagoon geothermal pools to meet the most vicious wind I have ever encountered. Truly I felt that my cheeks were being carved by ice\u2014we could hide nowhere, find nothing to block it. It sliced through ears and clothes, sealed our nostrils and froze our eyes. Only 100 yards, perhaps, through a narrow ravine carved from the lava, and we stumbled and turned about.\u00a0 I understood how this country could kill people.<\/p>\n

Oddly, the snow around us\u2014fairly deep and mostly unplowed\u2014is new to this portion of Iceland in the past several years. In the past 30 years, Iceland has had January temperatures which have averaged two degrees below zero centigrade; however, the past six years have seen the average climb to one degree above. Snow and ice are back this year, and both are quite determined.<\/p>\n

\"\"This was the day we chose to strip down and step into the wind and occasional hail for a swim in the Blue Lagoon, an enormous geothermal-heated pool rich in salt, sulfur, and other minerals. The mud packs and creams created from these pools are outrageously expensive\u2014one small cake of soap averages $20.\u00a0 All of the young women working there were blond and svelte. We used the complementary offers and passed on the rest.<\/p>\n

The power plant nearby provides 45 megawatts of heat (and electricity) for nearby towns (the average person consumes one kilowatt). Six thousand meters below us, a large chamber of magma heats this portion of Iceland; similar chambers provide Iceland with 87% of its habitable warmth; the rest is from electricity powered by the same volcanic activity. Iceland, of course, sits on the tectonic boundary of the European and American plates which slowly and violently separate, occasionally creating oceanic trenches, occasionally creating islands like Surtsey (see yesterday\u2019s entry) or Iceland. Someday the island will erupt again, perhaps even being torn apart. And, somewhere in between the power of the earth\u2019s core below and the wailing ice of the Arctic above, lay a 40+ degree pool of minerals which we call a spa.<\/p>\n

The twenty foot walk from the locker rooms to the pool itself was bracing\u2014the pool itself was simply luxurious. Warm from the shoulders down, sometimes even hot, the steam and cold winds combined with snow and later a light hail across our bare cheeks and heads. We\u2019d duck under a hot waterfall; some of us would float in the warm pools for massages; and all the while attendants patrolled the edges in thick yellow arctic jackets. It was crazy; and it was good.<\/p>\n

The true taste of Iceland\u2019s winter on the walk back was stunning, but it also was a prequel to tomorrow\u2019s trek into the uninhabitable interior, where hundreds of miles of lava-ruined landscape lay buried in the snow and ice, and we will search for waterfalls.<\/p>\n

\"\"The remainder of our day was an assortment of explorations.\u00a0 We met two delusional artists who dream of building a Norse mythology-themed park with five star hotels and various \u201cLands\u201d of the dwarves, elves, dark elves, Hel, and Asgard. They were selling paintings of their scenes for $500 and warned us not use the word \u201cDisney\u201d around them. We saw H\u00f6f\u00f2i House where Reagan and Gorbachev brought about the end of the Cold War. We saw the cavernous Hallgrimskirkja Church, completed in 1984. We discovered that Iceland\u2019s phone books are arranged by first name because the culture has no last names:\u00a0 in the traditional way, children are given second names as the \u201cson\u201d or \u201cdaughter\u201d of their fathers and mothers.\u00a0 My name would be Steven Jerryson, but my sister would be Lanette Zodaughter.<\/p>\n

The idea of a girl taking her mother\u2019s name is new since 1991, but according to our guide Jon Hagarson, this is best because \u201cIt\u2019s more of a sure thing.\u201d \u201cUnfortunately,\u201d Jon says, \u201cwe\u2019ve been brought to civilization.\u201d For the longest time, Iceland had only one TV station\u2014and so there was no television on Thursday nights, the staff\u2019s night off, or in July, their vacation. Now CNN plays behind me while I write this on my wireless connection. Beer was not introduced into the country until the mid-1980s, and until recently even dogs were kept off the island for fear their parasitic worms would infect the small sheep population. Our bus drives by a Domino\u2019s pizza; Iceland now is rated second highest in cars per capita; gasoline prices here are about $9 per gallon.<\/p>\n

For Jon, Iceland is about simplicity.\u00a0 He says three concepts define it: informality, individuality, and lack of discipline. It\u2019s the kind of attitude which appeals to a people rugged enough to endure these winters, descendents of Vikings and the women they captured, living on a land born of volcano, and in their own Ragnarok, fated to end it the same way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We left the Blue Lagoon geothermal pools to meet the most vicious wind I have ever encountered. Truly I felt that my cheeks were being carved by ice\u2014we could hide nowhere, find nothing to block it. It sliced through ears and clothes, sealed our nostrils and froze our eyes. Only 100 yards, perhaps, through a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,304],"tags":[423,425,426,427,428],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chizblog","category-travel","tag-iceland","tag-modernization","tag-names","tag-spa","tag-volcano"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2008\/01\/blue-lagoon1.jpg?fit=452%2C301&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":819,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/iceland-in-the-dark-day-three-12008\/","url_meta":{"origin":818,"position":0},"title":"Iceland in the Dark, Day Three: 1\/20\/08","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2008 Jan 21","format":false,"excerpt":"If Iceland were to be pulled apart, it might happen at \u00deingvellir, the crux of the European and American tectonic plates, the divide of the world. 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True enough, within hours of its seizure of FaceBook and Twitter, Vine and YouTube, critics of the social\u00a0movement rose in efforts to shout it down, using\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/082614_0334_ColdBuckets6.jpg?fit=390%2C290&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2403,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/american-original-sin-archetype\/","url_meta":{"origin":818,"position":5},"title":"American Original Sin: American Archetype","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2020 Mar 30","format":false,"excerpt":"These are difficult arguments, and so, as good symbol-using animals, we tend to reduce the abstract complexity to symbols and fight over those instead. 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