Thursday marks our final day in Iceland. We awaken to the sun streaming in through our window; Jane packs her luggage while I clean our fridge. Into my pack go the leftover bacon-flavored chips, half a chocolate bar, and a few slices of rye bread - fodder for the airport and flight home. We walk to the guesthouse, and I pay for our stay while Jane pours a cup of coffee with toast.
After breakfast, we spend the morning walking around town. Reykjavík was founded in 874 A.D., by Norsemen sailing the coast in search of a suitable place for settlement on the island. They came upon this peninsula flanked by pleasant bays offering protection from the North Atlantic, and saw the plumes of geothermal steam rising from the coastline, thus giving Iceland's first permanent settlement its name ("Bay of Smoke"). We walk to the town's central church two blocks away. Its unmistakable architecture is reminiscent of the rock formations we saw on the beach at Reynisfjara, and in the mountain chamber of Svartifoss, in Skaftafell. Fire and ice are ever-present in the Icelandic landscape - even here in the city. Inside the church, morning services are not yet underway and the organist is rehearsing, his booming notes echoing up and down the aisle. We ride an elevator to the top of the church tower, where we look out across the city in the cardinal directions. To the north, lines of gray cloud skim off the slopes of Mt. Esja and glide over the calm, pearlescent blue bay. The city below us is vivid against the pale March sky - parking lots and office buildings floating in a sea of beautifully colorful roofs and storefronts.
We descend the tower and walk west, browsing candy parlours, clothing stores, and souvenir shops. Jane buys a few gifts and a postcard for her family. I come across an old terrain map of Iceland, produced by the Danish Cartographic Society in the 1890s. There are no highways on this map - no Ring Road to speak of. The town names are many and unfamiliar. But the landscape is recognizable - the snowy plateau that surrounds the capital; the southern coastline hidden by dramatic cliffs and mountainsides; the flat, featureless expanses of ancient lava flows and glacial flood plains. I purchase the map and carry it in a cardboard tube all the way back to Baltimore, where it now hangs against my bedroom wall.
Done with shopping, we stop into C is for Cookie, a coffee shop not two blocks from our former studio whose name wins instant commendation from Jane. We sit down with two lattes and a massive chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven, and watch as the world outside alternates between rain, snow, and beaming sunlight. We have grown quite fond of Iceland. In the corner of the coffee shop windowsill, a bag is labeled "Free Duck Bread". We ask for directions to the waterfowl pond near the city center; in classic Icelandic nomenclatural practice, it is simply called Tjörnin ("The Pond"), and more colloquially referred to as stærsta brauðsúpa í heimi ("The biggest bread soup in the world"). We would like to contribute to the soup, we say.
At the pond, the flock of Icelandic swans turns toward us, invisibly propelled by their feet underwater, like the world's most placid roller derby cruising toward a tasty finish line. The mallards and pintails are drawn from the other side of the pond, as if by a fundamental atomic force. We scatter breadcrumbs at our feet as the feathered congregation grows and grows. At some critical limit, it transforms into a mob, and the petitions become angry, desperate honks. "We're not making it home alive after all," says Jane, who thought we were finished with near-death experiences on this trip. "They've blocked off our exit," I observe of a swan picket line on the ramp leading up to the street. Panic setting in, Jane flings the bread en masse into the water. We flee the city.
As we drive back south across the Reykjanes peninsula, Iceland serenades us with one last, sudden rainstorm that beats down on our car, conveniently wiping it free of mud and grime for the friendly folks at the car rental office. We drop Baby off and take a shuttle to the airport terminal. We are back in Baltimore at 9 PM local time.
Iceland is a place that is difficult to describe. Its rare beauty lies in the convergence of massive, elemental forces and tiny, intimate details. Born from tectonic divergence and molded by ice and Arctic wind, it is a land from time immemorial. It is desolate. The moss grows over everything that higher plants cannot touch, infinitely delicate and fragile. I have captured parts of it in my camera, but it is hard to imagine Iceland staying this way forever. Someday, I will undoubtedly hear of eruptions and ash clouds over Europe, premonitions of highlands growing higher, or a new dark peninsula being dragged out to sea. Or the country upon the land will change, contending in the future - as it has been for decades - with the era of globalization, with fishing and manufacturing industries in freefall, and with questions of national identity - of natural conservation versus economic interest. I wonder about the tour buses at Seljalandsfoss and Gullfoss and Jökulsárlón, about our footprints in the mud at Glymur and Skaftafell. Yes, Iceland is a place of rare beauty, and I wish I could have spent years walking through its ever-changing landscape, aging with the seasons and the wind and the moss. I wish, but there is no easy solution.