It is months now since
we were in Iceland and for some reason I have found it impossible to get down
to writing my last Iceland blog.
There is a sadness about coming home after a long absence. The lively fire that was my life before
we left seemed cold and ashy when we returned. It
took a while to get going again.
Just now, though, I reread my Iceland blogs and realise I must rectify
matters and write about perhaps the most beautiful and strange place we visited
– the Westman Islands which are raw and volcanic in origin and from time to
time host devastating eruptions still.
To get to the islands you need to go to a ferry terminal close to
Rekjavik. Like all ferries this
one is lovely and even has a little cinema. You disembark after about an hour
and a half into the little town of Heimaey
which seems to huddle in the middle of group of fierce volcanic peaks. The one
and a half hour ferry is relatively new.
In the past it took several hours to cross the often stormy water.
The weather was bleak
and windy when we drove our van off the ferry and made
our way to our campsite just before
midnight. In fact it turned out to be situated in the crater of an extinct
volcano whose sides stretched up around us and had seabirds nesting high up and
soaring back and forth in the everlasting daylight. There were buttercuplike flowers in the crusty volcanic
grass. It amazed me.
To our delight we
found there was a proper camp kitchen out of the weather so we fried up our
Icelandic lamb chops and quaffed
one of our precious bottles of red before creaking into our sleeping bags in
the back of the van. Despite the
huge influx of tourists who hire campervans every year, Icelandic camp sites
are usually pretty basic so this one was special not only for its beauty but
its hospitable amenities.
When I woke to go to
the loo at about five am there were two puffins nearby who took to the
sky,flapping clumsily. It was cold and rainy but yet again the toilet had a no
nonsense heater. On thinking back now, heat and cold were so much part of the
rhythm of life in Iceland. Horrid rainy winds but thermal springs, puffing
geysers but snow capped mountains.
All a far cry from the balmy English summer we had left behind.
There were fascinating
things to see on the island. A volcano museum and a cultural museum as well as
an aquarium that has provided a home for an unfortunate puffin that has never
learnt to swim The Westman Islanders have suffered at the hands of both man and
nature over the years.
In 1627 Algerian
pirates led a series of raids on Iceland and came to the island. They took over 200 people as slaves and
murdered thirty four in gruesome piratical ways, cackling with laughter as they
did so, according to a blog on the subject (that can be found by googling
Algerian pirates in Iceland)..
There is a very good simple illustration of these events in the cultural
museum. Rather surprisingly, close
to this heartbreaking account there is a roomful of pirate costumes for
children to put on. I suppose it was a long time ago and children play cowboys
and Indians after all, but at the time I was a bit shocked by the museum’s
response to such a terrible event.
The cultural museum
also had lots of accounts of the fearsome job of being a fisherman in Iceland’s
stormy waters and the vicissitudes of being a fisherman’s wife. Most of them were apparently bad
tempered and impatient of their spouses when they got home and interrupted the
calm business of child raising and housekeeping.
I was cold and wet
when we arrived at the aquarium and was given a cup of coffee by the very
hospitable curator for which I was very grateful. It’s a small museum but gives a chance to get up close and
personal with a puffin that stands bemused on a table.”Every so often we try to
get him to swim but so far he won’t” said the curator. On the wall beside the stairs are
pictures of children cuddling pufflings (baby puffins) that they rescue each
year when, instead of heading out to sea to start their adult bird lives, they
get confused by the town lights and land up in the streets.
“Aren’t you sorry you
are not a little Iceland boy with a puffling to cuddle? “ we text to grandson
Jacob with a photo. Daughter in law Fredi replies “I too would like to cuddle a
puffling.”, and indeed they look
very bewitching and fluffy.
But of the three
museums the one that sticks in my memory and comes back in dreams is the
Volcano Museum.
In 1973 the Eldfell volcano erupted, sending
up vivid flames from a chain of fissures and eventually engulfing a portion of
the town and forcing the evacuation of all but a few residents who stayed to
try and salvage what they could.
By, what islanders still talk of as a miracle, the weather had been so
bad the day before that the whole fishing fleet had stayed in port and been
there to evacuate the islanders to the mainland, where they stayed for months
with many never returning.
Apparently only one person died from the poisonous fumes and that was
because he was robbing the pharmacy for drugs.
After we returned to
Australia we had dinner with our Icelandic friends Villi and Aldiss. Now Aldiss was from the Westman
Islands and that night I asked her
about the eruption and what effect it had had on her. She wasn’t on the island during the initial eruption but she
spent a lot of time in the deserted town afterwards while the lava was still
flowing and the salvaging was going on. She told me interesting things – how
slowly the lava moved – you could be swimming in a pool and have reluctantly to
get out as the lava crept towards the other end. She told me how prosperous the
island had been because of fishing and how the houses were very good solid
buildings and the enormous loss their slow interment represented. She told me
how the American soldiers took part in emptying houses before they were buried and how you
could pick up your goods on the mainland by finding the address on the
bundles. When asked if the
experience had changed her Aldiss
said “Yes, I am not at all materialistic now. I know that all you own
can go, just like that”
In the early two
thousands an enterprising islander had the idea of creating a “Pompeii of the North” by excavating some of
the houses that had been buried in ash.
Those under the lava were beyond recovery but the ash, like that at
Pompeii proper would have had a preservative effect. The museum is both a memorial to the lost part of the town
and a record of what happened. It is
built over the first of the houses to be unearthed which stands damaged and shabby
and naked in the smart main hall of the modern building It reminds me of my childhood in post
war London when bombsites were such fascinating places to play with random
abandoned household items to be found amongst the rubble. A mirror, a baby bottle
maybe and grimy bits of cloth.
There was a film showing where people talked about the night of the
eruption and the silly choices they made about what to take with them when they
fled. “We took the cake but not
the plate” laughed one man. Valued
new kitchen appliances were rescued instead of irreplaceable family photos.. A photo shows a young girl with a cat
inside her coat arguing on the quayside.
Apparently a lot of animals
had to be put down when the population was evacuated. The shock and heartbreak are palpable as you watch footage
of rocking boats with lines of faces leaving their homes behind.
After seeing the
museum the little town seemed very vulnerable to me. I wondered how people
living there were able to sleep easy but apparently warning systems are better
now.
I was sorry to board
the ferry again after a couple of days.
The beauty and sadness had got under my skin somehow, but the promise of
the fleshpots of Rejkavik and the comfort of a bed in the Peace Centre were a
consolation. However I will never
forget our time in that strange place.
