The plane touches down, galvanized rubber wheels screaming resistance as they scrape the runway, gouging the concrete as the brakes, fully locked, reduce a headlong launch to a controlled slide across the runway, the ride ending in a smooth taxi to the terminal. .
The Blue Lagoon is one of the few things I know about Iceland. That and Eidur Gudjonnsson, a striker who currently plies his trade with Spanish giants Barcelona, who is all over the onboard magazines. He’s also all over the airport, a modern building that has smooth, clean lines and a sense of fluidity and efficiency – he just feels Scandinavian.
Outside, the Icelandic sky hangs familiarly low, an endless mass of clouds misting the tarmac with moisture as I cruise across, seemingly undisturbed, but chances are I just don’t feel the rain, it’s falling so gently. We Scots have a word for days like these: drish: a word born of necessity, the only one in our vocabulary that conveys a sense of East – a day we see so often. In many ways it is perfect, a word that sums up not only the weather, but the sensations it induces in the observer. To use it is to surrender to all that it implies: apathy, a dulling of the senses that tugs at the heartstrings; a feeling that one has been here before, that nothing changes, that this can never end. Dreich: rhymes with pain and ends with ‘eech’; guttural, almost Yiddish but clearly Scottish.
As I get on the bus, I wonder how many words Icelanders have for this. In the same way that the Eskimos have so many variations of ‘snow’, I wonder if the natives here can linguistically distinguish between this and, say, a different cold gray day; one in which the sky looks less like a sheet of slate and carries, perhaps, the occasional metallic-looking streak of white, or an odd smear of blue, a distant reminder of warmer climates, faraway lands.
He is an international coach; a strange mix of foreign languages and English with various accents, all asking the same questions, more or less. No one really knows where we are headed: ‘some sort of spa’, the sum total of our collective knowledge. No one knows how long it will take to get there or if we will make it on time for the next leg of our flight. I’m fighting the urge to tell the driver to pull over as we head out of the terminal. I’ll wait back there, I want to tell him. An American accent behind me, confident, calms my unspoken fears, or at least makes me feel ridiculous for thinking them; she’s sure, she tells her son, that no one would fix something like that and let people miss flights. That would be silly. Obviously, I’m more pessimistic than she is, but suddenly it’s too late: we’re on a wide, curving stretch of asphalt that leads away from the airport, away from certainty, and into Iceland.
Even this close to the airport, I can see that Iceland’s landscape is weird. Obviously, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I feel like I’ve seen very little, so personal experience isn’t the best yardstick, but it goes further. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever imagined, except perhaps for the images conjured up while reading about Frodo and Sam’s journey to Mount Doom. It’s all strange rock formations, masses jutting out of solid-looking volcanic spew, starkly highlighted against the gray uniformity of the sky. Before us stretches the road, almost deserted, the asphalt apparently elevated; it feels eerily like you’re floating above the rocks, a temporary resident in this strange environment. It is not fenced or enclosed, and there are no comforting, smooth-looking fields bordering it. Everything seems relentless, harsh, apocalyptic, an impression only heightened by steamy geysers rising at various points in the distance. Apparently, the American voice informs his son, they are the result of volcanic activity. Geothermal action.
Sigur Ros’s music plays from memory inside my head while I observe the scene; a connection I hadn’t realized I had made, yet another thing I know about Iceland. Previously, I had always associated his lonely melancholy with a different kind of visual desolation: that of the North Sea, of standing on top of a cliff at night, watching the distant lights of an offshore oil rig, feeling small. and insignificant as a wave. after the wave hit the Scottish coast below me. He spoke to me, that music, with his made-up language – Hope-ish, someone told me his name. He touched something inside me that recognized loneliness and desolation, evoked a longing for the undefinable. From what I can see through the window here, I know where it comes from: another puny little country in the great Atlantic where people dream of bigger things, fuller lives, but struggle to express that wish, or what it means; hence Hope-ish: a language of intangibles.
The bus diverts at an intersection, the driver taking care to turn perfectly, without going too fast, responsible in his load despite the lack of other traffic. Looks like we’re headed for one of those steamy geysers. There are some low buildings clustered around, near one of them. The road floats over the rocks towards him as we, tied to the carriage, float with him.
We stop in a parking lot; more black asphalt to add to the cool look. The rain is a bit heavy now, clearly splashing my face as I make my way onto a path with the rest of the group, following both the path and the group around a rock, per the driver’s instructions, ticket in hand, ready for inspection.
The entrance to the lagoon is a low-key affair: glass door, horizontal wooden slats, more clean lines and subtle airport sharpness. My ticket is unceremoniously withdrawn and I am led down the hall to the men’s locker room, where my boots will be removed at the door.
Ten minutes and a pre-spa shower later I step outside and find myself in the lagoon. It’s essentially one large natural spa pool, one of the main tourist attractions here, which explains the crowds. The pool does not have a defined shape, which enhances its natural feeling. It has numerous hidden corners where one can sit quietly, as well as the main bathing area where people float, swim and cover their faces with sulfur-laden mud, which is said to be good for the skin. The narrower pool areas are spanned by wooden bridges and there are glass-fronted saunas built into a rock wall at the side of the lagoon. Next to this is a waterfall, below which laughing children playfully push each other into the waterfall. It’s all very civilized, gentle, not British; the only thing that seems familiar is the group of soccer fans, stopping on their way to or from something, their drunkenness and the volume of their songs attracting many nervous glances. The fact that they start singing in German gives me reason to be happy and depressed: happy that they are not my compatriots, appalled that they represent my gender, they claim to follow a sport I love dearly, further tarnishing their already tarnished reputation.
There is a strong smell of sulfur throughout the lagoon, and I have been warned not to stick my head under water, risking drying out my hair for the next month or so. I choose to try the mud pack and then float around the pool for a while, enjoying the sensation, discovering the different hot spots in the water, more evidence of geothermal energies, although I suspect here they may have been harnessed by man. . . But it doesn’t matter, there is plenty of what is natural, with the outdoors, the spectacular views of the landscape, sitting outside half naked, without worrying about it.
The whole experience is extremely pleasant, a welcome relief from the stress of flying, although the lingering doubt about going back in time still lingers. The driver told us we had an hour and a half, so with 30 minutes left, I climb out of the pool, my skin wrinkled from exposure to the water, and change back into my clothes.
My paranoia about leaving late means I have time to explore the restaurant area before leaving, a mistake as it instantly creates hunger pangs which the delicious multi-currency menu informs me I can’t afford to quench here. There is, however, a takeout area, where the cheapest item is a hot dog, a reminder of both my home and my final destination, since canned hot dogs taste the same everywhere.
The bus takes us back to the airport, all with plenty of time before our flights to browse the duty-free shops, floating across the concourse in a haze of Bjork CDs, fancy chocolates, lagoon body products, everything looks fresh and new, rather than cheap and tacky like they would have if you’d spent the entire three hours here.
The call comes to board the plane and people form an orderly line at the gate, the flow of the building, the lagoon experience, seemingly relaxing enough to allow us to get by without the usual stampede to be the first to board.
Takeoff comes without the usual anxiety for me, the stress of the airport this morning long forgotten. I exhale confidently, instead of holding it back out of fear, enjoying for once the feeling of being whipped skyward. Ahead of me is the glittering continent of America, a modern and impulsive place. Behind me is Scotland: older, more traditional, more established in its ways. Iceland sits somewhere in between the two, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, connected yet otherworldly, definitely a place to return to with time to spare.
Iceland Air organizes free tours to the Blue Lagoon on any stopover in Reykjavik between Glasgow and the US, and also allows you to stopover in the country for up to 7 days at no extra cost on your ticket.