And the Winner is: Iceland

You’re asked to create your perfect country. What’s on your list?

Mine has: endless hot water; spectacular nature; excellent coffee, pastries and cakes, perhaps some fish to balance the diet a little; lots of sea to gaze at; a lively artistic and social life. Did I mention good chocolate?

I gave that list to a travel agent – challenged them to find me somewhere not clogged with traffic, or tarnished by tourism, nor requiring outdoorsy equipment to get to. Then I sat back and waited – about two seconds. They’d booked me a ticket to Iceland. It came with a guarantee that I wouldn’t be disappointed: I wasn’t.

Iceland: Pleasant shock of the different

Iceland is magnificent, and delicious, and relaxing, and fun. It’s also mind-blowingly spectacular – it is almost impossible to grasp the scale of this landscape until you’re standing in it. And who’s ever heard of Icelandic chocolate? Not me, but now I carry around a couple of kilos of the yummy stuff on my thighs everyday.

Iceland's roads - better in the daytime

I arrived in the dark: big mistake. The drive in from the airport in daylight is essential for that first shock of the different. Lava fields, flat, spreading in every direction. Here it is known as Evil Lava because it’s so hard to traverse. Luckily the Icelanders have laid a smooth, wide, but windswept road. Don’t make a local confront that long and treacherous drive to collect you; catch the Flybus into Reykjavik – it’s cheap and easy – or book a Reykjavik airport transfer. I saw the lava on my return journey. And the moss. Huge, old moss.

So, let’s get the essentials out of the way. Yes, I saw the waterfall at Gulfoss, although the thing that made me jump up and down with joy was the not so distant glacier across the road, glistening in the sun: my first glacier – great joy.

I was entertained by the high-flying steam and water at Geysir. I was truly impressed by the fissure in the Earth’s crust at Pingvellir where the Eurasian and American tectonic plates are ripping apart. And I was reduced to a puddle of relaxation at the Blue Lagoon.

Soaking up the water at the Blue Lagoon

But it was the unexpected things about Iceland that made me really fall for the place. That and its final parting gift to me: a sighting of the Aurora Borealis, the legendary Northern Lights.

Icelandic Horses

Anywhere you go outside of town, you’ll see these sturdy little horses with their long manes and range of colours; there’s around 90,000 of them in the country. The Icelandic horse is a special breed, described to me as strong, fearless, intelligent and filled with character; a late developer but with a long lifespan. These horses have five different gaits; your average horse has three.

The breed is so special that since around the year 1000 the import of horses to Iceland has been illegal. Which leaves one small problem for the Icelanders: how to compete in the Icelandic Horse Annual Championship run by the 19 Icelandic horse organizations internationally?

It can never be held in Iceland because no-one can bring a horse into Iceland. And if an Icelander takes his horse overseas to compete, he has to leave the champion pony there. Conundrum. (You can ride some of these famous Icelandic horses on this Viator horse riding tour.)

Ice cream? Na.

We heard tell of the best ice cream in Iceland. We tracked it down. We tasted it. Conclusion: a country with a tepid summer and long winter does not really know how to make an ice confection. Avoid. Stick with the pylser (hot dogs) instead. As a vegetarian I had mine without the dog – bread, sauce and crunchy onions – sublime.

Knitting in Iceland

The benefit of such a long winter is that this is a country that understands wool. Very warm wool if the sturdy, hairy sheep withstanding those arctic winds on the flat volcanic plains are anything to go by. Icelandic wool itself is a little rough, but very very warm. There are shops everywhere selling locally designed knitted garments and after a day in that cool wind, you’ll be muffling up, trust me.

The most traditional garment is the Lopi Sweater, thick and warm, patterned in a yoke around the chest. But Iceland is far from purely pragmatic. I found shops with shelves full of the softest baby angora wool and mohair; yummy.

Lifeguards

Not something you would necessarily associate with Iceland. But where there is water and tourists, anything can happen. Especially when that water is hot and straight from the centre of the earth. At the Blue Lagoon, the outdoor pool is more of a lake, with rocks around the edges, and steam rising thickly.

As I bobbed happily, silica mud smeared glamorously on my face, the steam cloud parted revealing a Viking in lifeguard attire. Sure, it was not the sort of outfit I’m used to seeing on Bondi Beach. No tiny bathing suit, but an enormous high visibility jacket, thick trousers, fur lined boots and a beanie. I suspect he wore gloves but the steam closed over again and when I swam closer, he was gone. Was he even real? And if I started to drown would he shed that outer layer to reveal speedos with Iceland written across the bum, or would he jump in boots and all?

The Circus Seal

While Iceland does have many seals in its surrounding sea, so many that the locals are known to eat them, the seal I refer to is made of stone and wood. Perched on the hill in the centre of Reykjavik is the Lutheran Church, Hallgrimskirkja, named after Icelandic poet and clergyman Hallgrimur Petursson (1614-74). It makes a great landmark for finding your way around and at night it glows, topped by a small cross. But after a local architect described it to me as a circus seal without a ball, I can never look at it the same way again. Now I love it even more.

The church is not the only worth-noticing building in Reykjavik. The world renowned architects Studio Granda are based there and their City Hall building beside and in fact over the lake is great to walk through. All those windows framing little views and details. They also designed the Supreme Court and the Art Museum. For architecture buffs, there is also the Nordic House by Alvar Aalto. Not to mention all the Icelandic domestic buildings of corrugated iron with colour rooves so you can find your way home in the winter snow.

Icelandic beef

Beef became a topic for discussion a couple of times on my trip. Firstly, because McDonalds have just announced they are pulling out of Iceland due to cost. Great news for the pylsar (hot dog) industry.

Apparently Maccas were importing all their meat from Germany and it is just too expensive. The local franchise holder has promised to continue providing hamburgers to the Icelanders under his own banner, but my question is: Where are all the cows?

On my travels I saw thousands of horses, hundreds of sheep, but no cows. Perhaps they are all in the ocean. Because when I had my delicious lobster soup (reputed to be the Best in the World at Saegreifinn), some tourists were buying whale meat to take home (I know!) and were being advised to tell customs it was beef. On so many levels this made me question the world, but the lobster soup was pretty distracting to my synapses.

Diving

Again, not necessarily something you would associate with Iceland. But there are apparently fabulous SCUBA dives to do. I say apparently because I am not crazy. I will soak forever in the endless geothermal waters, but I will not dive down to the centre of the earth and at Silfra Crack at Pingvellir this is pretty well what you do: dive into the fissure between the tectonic plates. I hear that the water is so clear and pure it is mind-boggling. Further north, you have the geothermal chimney Strytan, a unique underwater wonderland, but only for experienced divers. I’ll just see the movie, thanks.

Hot Water

This might seem kind of an obvious inclusion. Iceland has so much hot water gushing out of its geologically-speaking newly formed ground, that nearly all the houses are heated by geothermal water, vegetables and fruits are grown in geothermal hothouses in towns like Hveragerdi (which also has many healing hot tubs), and their plentiful electricity is geothermically generated.

Some of the most majestic sights are these steaming power-stations, which, although huge, tend to be dwarfed by the landscape. An economic result of all this electricity is the growth of the aluminium industry. The Icelandic government uses cheap power to attract heavy-industry to the country. And not everyone is happy.

Many Icelanders believe they should be focusing on economic recovery by promoting the country as one big health retreat. The Blue Lagoon is already known for its healing power in treating psoriasis and has a clinic attached. And with its clean air and low stress lifestyle, Iceland could well help heal the world. It certainly made me feel better about life, the universe, and everything.

I think Iceland had me at Endless Hot Water.

-Philippa Burne

Planning a trip? Browse Viator’s Iceland tours and things to do in Iceland, or if you’re on a weekend break, check out our list of top things to do in Reykjavik.