Iceland Fire: A Week With No Night: Part One

Roland and I met at a party five years ago, and that encounter changed my life.

To celebrate our fifth anniversary, Roland took us to Iceland. When I suggested it to him, I expected to have to persuade, but it turns out he was thinking the same thing. We’d both heard good things about it from regular world-travelers, as the kind of place worth going back to. I’ve been to Belize, which also falls into this category, and that’s exactly the kind of place we wanted to go.

Now remember from grade school that Iceland is green, and Greenland is ice. This is a very important fact. There are lots of important facts about Iceland, which have been exhaustively recorded on Wikipedia. The primary fact I hope to convey is that Iceland is awesome.

We left the house at about 9am PDT and with two long flights, a layover, and the time change to GMT, we got there at around 9am the next day. And they say time travel is impossible. HA! (Why do time travel stories never talk about the jet lag??)

I wisely chose a window seat on the flight between New York and Iceland. I watched the dense New York lights fade to New England towns, which thinned further for eastern Canada, until we reached the wastelands at the tip of Newfoundland and Labrador. I don’t know much about these places, other than that Labrador seems famous for inventing dog breeds, and judging from the lights on the ground, almost no one lives there. Seriously. The towns had, at most, a dozen houses in them.

I watched the coast approach with eagerness, and saw one lone light on the northern shore… and then nothing.

At some point, a sea of clouds grew. Optical illusions through an airplane window are so fun and frustrating to figure out. It was just dark enough to not be able to tell sea from cloud… or maybe it was fog. Whatever it was, it went on forever, at least until about 2:30am local time, when I saw the sun begin to rise in the north.

Wow.

It was a long sunrise, as the sun lingered there just below the edge of the clouds. At 35000ft, I could see the curve of the earth, and we were as much in space as we were in the air. Eventually, the sun came up well and good. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of Greenland from my window, but saw nothing but clouds for what must have been thousands of miles.

And then we landed and as soon as I could, I started taking pictures of signs.

One recurring theme in the street art (this one’s the only one I shot) were these poems. I didn’t take the time to notice if they were the same author. This one says:

Just look at how the mountains so very mighty be
sharp as razors at the top they span the land and sea
but don’t forget that though
majestic spires capped with snow..

Luna Lindsey (link: http://www.lunalinsey.com) is an indie author of speculative fiction. Her blog covers many topics, including books, writing, feminism, humor, geek culture, political philosophy, weird photos, and random musings.