Iceland: Sagas, Snow & Steam

So in the middle of our recent heatwave - too much already! - I've been reading the wonderful Laxdaela saga about Gudrun Osviksdottir and reliving the big chill of our Easter trip to Iceland. Here's another extract from my travelblog - prepare to shiver!

Tuesday April 6th

This morning all colours are muffled by the snow drifting across the road. Further east and north, there have been avalanches and schools closed, Bragi says. Outside the bus, black lava pokes through a white landscape. Yellow grasses quiver into the wind. On the heights, mist is smothering the ridges - or it might be snow pouring down gullies. The sky is tearing hanks of grey cloud, a milky light curdling in the gaps beyond.

Bragi reveals that Iceland's tradition of poetry and storytelling is very much alive and thriving with poetry clubs and radio/TV competitions. The tight forms and highly symbolic language of the original sagas are still used, as well as more modern forms. And I'm delighted that our first destination today is Reykholt, the home of Snorri Sturlson, a landmark figure in medieval Icelandic literature. Sturlson penned the famous Prose Edda which recount the doings of the Norse gods as well as Icelandic settlers and several sagas, including one about his ancestor, the warrior-poet, Egil Skallagrimsson. Sturlson was a poet himself and canny politician but when he double-crossed the King of Norway, he was hacked to death in his own cellar at Reykholt. Should have stuck to the pen perhaps ...

Next stop was Hraunfossar, a truly spectacular series of waterfalls that seem to stretch for miles. The wind had dropped at last and the landscape was etched in black rocks, white snow and the piercing blue of the waterfalls and river below. Photographs cannot convey the thundering gush of the water or the creaking of the snow underfoot but you can see we were lucky to catch this place in its wintry colours. It was blistering cold with great ice splinters hanging from the waterfall but we could hardly tear ourselves away.

Back at the Foss Hotel, we were treated to a delicious buffet lunch of home-made soups & breads, salads, coffee and fruit. The sweet tomatoey bread was studded with lumps of salt and the tomato soup was flavoured with chips of aniseed - heavenly. This was typical of the fresh produce we encountered for lunches. We ate till we burst. Bragi was telling us how the local greenhouses were heated by the bubbling hot springs of nearby Deildartunguhver which pumps out water of 97 degrees centigrade and is piped to towns over 60 km away.

The snowy morning at Hraunfossar had been utterly magical. But this was the land of fire as well as ice - and the afternoon was to bring us to the great valley of Thingvellir and the continental rift that runs through Iceland. But that's a whole other story, that place ...