Days 2-3: Copenhagen-Reykjavik-Akureyri

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The flight was absolutely fine if you ignored the invitations to buy stuff. Keflavik airport is a fair way from Reykjavik, a fifty-minute bus ride, but the intrigue of the landscape and the occasional burst of recorded commentary – the language seems more musical than its Nordic cousins – made the journey a pleasure. Reykjavik surprises with its compactness. The bus terminus seemed to be in a semi-rural outer suburb – it was as if we had arrived in Thomastown to see Melbourne. Our lodging was supposed to be both close to the terminus and to the centre of the old town, which seemed impossible, yet it was so. Two minutes’ walk found our room, and we were only a kilometre or so from the harbour. We explored that route for a while, then found ourselves at Reykjavik pond, leaning on a railing, watching the swans.

Helen, as she does, struck up a conversation with a woman about our age and her mother-in-law, who had been a teacher for over forty years. They talked about teaching, and somehow the old lady (who still had all her marbles and plenty of them) and I had a brief yarn about Old English and Old Norse language kinship. Anyway, as we were parting after a pleasant quarter-hour or so, the daughter-in-law said quietly to us that we had been chatting to one of Iceland's great poets. She was Vilborg Dagbjartsdottir (accents/umlauts excluded). A communist at 18 and a lifetime feminist, she is still a minor celebrity, it seems – occasional TV presence as a venerated cultural commentator, and has also published some prose and children's books. See here: http://www.jehat.com/en/Poets/Pages/Vilborg.aspx

The weather was not much colder than can be experienced in a Melbourne winter: a range from around 4 to 10 is typical. On our first night we didn’t suffer for lack of a really warm jacket, walking around till we found an authentic-seeming restaurant, ate well and retired to tidy up the remainder of our jet lag.

The following day saw us taking in the vibe of the old town and harbour in the very limited time available. Reykjavik is so not a national capital, rather a large seaside town that has grown out of a fishing port into a cultural fish soup. In the afternoon we had a long drive to Akureyri, punctuated by photography stops for “Well, this is new.” Iceland is volcanic in its essence; it’s not just that the landscape is other-worldly, it seems that over each horizon is a different planet. We arrived late, due in part to my missing a turn-off and not realising it before it cost us an hour. In my defence, we are both agreed that Iceland ranks with Ireland in its minimalist and sometimes downright deceptive approach to road signage.

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