Yeah right.

The normal response to my telling people that I will be going to Iceland has generally been:

‘I don’t know anything about Iceland except that Iceland is green and Greenland is icy’

However, my experience has been rather different so far. It is icy. It is cold. It is dark. It is also breathtakingly beautiful but definitely not green. Who knows though – it may simply be because it is the middle of winter.

Arrival 1 

Sorry they're blurry but they were taken out a bus window

Arrival 2

Arrival 3

I have a long list of jobs to do so that my staying here for 4½ months is legal and a whole lot of things to sort out. I leave my flat with the best of intentions about getting all the jobs done. But then I see the ocean. Or the mountains. Or the ocean and the mountains. And I give up on my jobs and just walk along the waterfront to the point where I am tired, and then head home.

Looking down a street to the ocean and the mountains

Sun Voyager

Tjörnin

Lake very near my flat that is completely frozen over

Tjörnin

Evidence that it is completely frozen over

Reykjavik Old Harbour

I don't see much green...

Grótta 

Lighthouse on an island, only detached at high tide.

Icelandic people are very funny. So far, I have ‘chatted’ to only two, one of whom was my landlord.  When she asked how I was finding it, I told her honestly.

‘Cold and dark but extremely beautiful.’

She assured me.

‘Oh, don’t worry; it will be better next month. And in summer, it gets so hot that people can’t sleep at night.’

The hottest temperature ever recorded in Reykjavik was 26.2 ˚C in 2008.

So you can imagine my thought when she told me this. As Kiwi as they come:

‘Yeah right.’

Stay warm!