Trekking through Heroic Landscapes in Iceland

Declan Brennan November 2004.

A troll that got caught outside after sunrise

One of the many waterfalls in the country

The beautiful colours of the landscape at Landmannalaugar

A quick glance at a map of Iceland reveals good coastal roads but a more difficult to accesss interior. It occurred to me that one of the best ways to experience the place would be on horseback. So I did a few lessons at the Paddocks Stables located on the Three Rock Mountain which boasts nice forest trails and lovely views of Dublin. Then armed with more confidence than skill, I was off to see "Ultima Thule" as it was called- the last piece of land before America was rediscovered.

Introduction

Iceland has been on the list of places I wanted to experience for almost as long as I can remember. The country is constantly being redesigned by nature. The newest piece of land on earth, (a little island called Surtsey which started its formation in 1963) is just off the south coast and is very interesting for scientists investigating how life colonizes newly formed rock.

The author near the Hekla volcano Originally the abode of a few Irish monks, the main settlement by the Norse took place about a thousand years ago. Many people can trace their ancestry back all this time which has proved a great resource for genetic research. The language has been contaminated a bit by Danish but has changed so little that it is still possible for modern Icelanders to read their sagas. Many of the farms mentioned in these sagas still exist today and many of the places are little changed. This stability coupled with the need to exist in a fairly harsh environment has contributed to a very strong Icelandic culture, despite a population of less than 280 thousand. Although all Icelanders speak English, this is very much a second language. They have kept their own language alive in a way that would put the Irish to shame.

Car insurance only covers travel on the good coastal roads. Moving through the interior is defintely a job for four wheel drives which are very expensive to hire. However even with the best of equipment, these often get stuck and there are strict limitations on where they can go for environmental reasons. This is why I chose to do a few riding lessons, so I could see the country in a more traditional way. There were more than a few rye smiles from the staff of my local stables when they realized what I had in mind and a few insinuations about how tender I might be, come the evenings. And this brings me to the hero of my tale – the Icelandic Horse.

The Icelandic Horse

Small but unbelievably fit – they are no mere pony. The breed has developed in total isolation for over nine hundred years. No horse has entered the country in that time. Any Icelandic, which leaves for a competition, leaves for good. Very good natured; they need no encouragement what so ever, just a seriously tight rein to slow things down a little. With a few mouthfuls of grass and a drink of water every few hours, they just keep going and going in a way that appears to defy the laws of physics.

A collection of curious Icelandics Grooming is perfunctory to say the least – a few hand smacks to clear a bit of dust before throwing on the saddle straight on the back with nothing to cushion it. That doesn’t take away in the slightest from the beauty of the horses with their great manes and lovely long tails reaching almost to the ground. Despite all this hair to work with, there are strict rules forbidding all the hair braiding nonsense that happens before horse shows elsewhere. Icelandics deserve and get more respect than that. There have never been any railways in Iceland. Up until the introduction of the car in the 1940s, they were the only way to get around apart from foot. They linked up isolated communities during the long winters, without which it is hard to see how the society could have survived.

The riding style is a lot more comfortable than in Ireland. You don’t have to press your legs up underneath the horse, so avoiding a lot of pain not to mention bandy legs. Rather than squeezing with the lower leg, you hold on just below the knee with your legs well out to the side. Moreover on the flat, they boast an extra gait that other breeds have lost- the Tölt- sometimes called walking trot, where the back doesn’t move up and down at all. Instead the rider moves forwards and backwards almost like being on a rocking horse.

Steam Vent It may be that the Icelandic horse resembles what existed in Europe in the early Middle Ages- a good all purpose family vehicle for most farmers. After all the Hollywood movies, it is hard to imagine medieval knights tilting at each other on such diminutive mounts. Maybe Don-Quixoti’s choice of a donkey wasn’t so bizarre after all. Alas, with the rise of an aristocracy who knew what they liked and how to take it, the farmers became peasants how could no longer afford a horse. The horse in Europe then developed in two directions – heavy duty cart horses for the merchants and big high performance low mileage beasts for the cavalry.

When Europe was turning into an oppressive hierarchical society, the system in Iceland was almost socialist by comparison. Here there were a large group of more or less co-equal families, a body of law that governed their interactions and even a parliament – a remarkable achievement. Today when you wander around Iceland, you don’t see the ruins of castles or abbeys. Most buildings are not that old. What has lasted down the ages is far more subtle and more durable – a strong confident culture and of course the Icelandic horse.

Eldhestar

I had booked a trip with a company called Eldhestar (Icelandic for Volcano Horses). This trip would be some 240 km along an ancient riding trail across Iceland through the Kjölur highlands. I had a couple of hours to kill at the bus station in Reykjavík while waiting to be picked up by the bus from Eldhestar so I had a bite to eat- what turned out to be half a sheep’s head covered in some sauce. Later that Treking across the Kjölur Highlands evening I had a more conventional and extremely tasty meal at Eldhestar. During the meal it became apart that my new riding companions were almost all far more experienced than me. There were stable owners, people who owned multiple Icelandics, people who had been riding holidays in seven different holidays and nearly everybody had been riding since they were out of nappies. I felt a little bit inadequate with my riding CV of a few lessons, I can tell you.

The following morning we were bussed up around the ring road to the start of our trip in the North after which we settled into six days of riding through amazing landscapes down through two glaciers- Okjökull and Landjökull to the South to Selfoss - the biggest waterfall in Europe. One of the great things about this trip is that we would be riding with a free running heard of horses in a way that had been done for many hundreds of years. This allowed us to change mounts during the day to give the horses a bit of a rest. Each day we split into two groups, one driving the herd from the back and one acting as a wall at the front. In a land almost without fences, we became very attuned to the movements of the herd. It wasn’t long before it became second nature. It wasn’t unusual during a stop to be eating a sandwich with one hand, holding a bunch of reins in the other and supporting a rope for a temporary pen on ones hips.

The Riders share an Evening Meal in a Refuge, (c)Marie Nygaard I apparently was the first person from Ireland on an Eldhestar trip. In our group we had people from Norway, Sweden, Germany and various parts of the States. And what a great crowd they were- a gay couple who ran a doctor’s surgery, some people from a “contemplative community” (It would take too long to explain), that got involved in various historical re-enactments. A lovely couple on their honeymoon- one a personal trainer and one a tree surgeon, a retired environmental diplomat, the owner of a catering company, a German back-packer and a Norwegian girl who was a “house mother” for a bunch of troubled kids. All these disparate people along with our guide, his two assistants and our cook, bonded into a group with great rapidity and we had a great time together.

We overnighted in “huts” similar to the refuges in the Alps- quite comfortable provided you’re not obsessed with privacy. Considering our remoteness, the meals in the evenings were sumptuous and social events greatly enjoyed by all. One of the lovely aspects of the trip was soothing muscle twinges in the evenings in “hot pots” – sometimes artificial inside the huts but often totally natural outdoors fed by hot springs.

We got to know each other so well that it wasn’t long before we were feeding each other lines. For example, one breakfast time, a few of the women were joking: “We heard you blowing up your inflatable woman last night Declan”. I answered: “It was only a pillow, thank God; I haven’t got enough puff for a whole woman.” A grass stop for the horses not far from a glaciar. To which, Brian (part of the gay couple) said: “Well that’s not something I hear very often”. The group bonded so well that it was a little sad when it dissolved at the end of the ride.

In Iceland 4WD vehicles are unbelievably expensive and are required to stick to the highland roads (well track ways really), so horses are the best way to see much of the country. Places like the “Valley of the Thieves” are very isolated to get to on foot, so horseback is the only practical way to see them unless you have a lot of time.

For the first two or three days my body was wondering what on earth was going on- a bit like the beginning of a skiing holiday. Then it settled in and it became a totally painless experience for me and everybody else apart from poor Roman – the German who unfortunately didn’t know how to rise to the trot and got his coccyx bashed to a pulp. He kept going however and refused even to take any pain killers.

Lest you think that all this was entirely without mishap, when I started getting cocky I decided to pass out the horse in front of me and canter up to the front. Once my horse saw open space in front of him, he took off with a characteristic vigor of his breed and was totally undeterred by my feeble attempts to stop him. When the guide caught up with me, he reminded me that while you might shout “go”, it is far better to whisper “stop”.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was the evening I climbed Blaufelt before dinner – an isolated mountain in the middle of the highlands – Soaking away the aches and pains in a Natural Hot Pot, (c)Marie Nygaard it was a crystal clear evening and the views across Iceland were amazing – entire ranges of mountains, lakes and glaciers were all laid out before me. Then late for dinner, I jogged back down to the hut, only to discover that I was so dehydrated that I drank eight glasses of water one after the other.

The landscape in Iceland is truly heroic. From prairies to moonscapes, lava-fields to glaciers, volcanoes to geysers, it inspires superlatives that are totally inadequate to describe it. It really has to be experienced. There are so many waterfalls in the country that many of them aren’t even named.

The kayaker in me was aroused by the great rivers we encountered on our trail, some cutting through great gorges. While guided sea-kayaking and even rafting is available in Iceland, river kayaking is still a relatively new activity. There are a few unique local hazards of course. A description of one river- the Skaftá warns about surfing an innocent looking wave because the entire river disappears through a lava bridge just below it. Organizing a river kayaking trip to Iceland would be a great experience, although 4WDs would definitely be needed to get around.

Trekking on Foot- Landmannalaugar and Skaftafell

I had a brief break in Reykjavík after the trip during which I went to the theatre with one of my Swedish companions- a light-hearted enjoyable show called “Bright Nights” about Icelandic culture. Then I was off again for some trekking, this time on foot.

An old volcanic cone at Landmannalaugar I started by camping at Landmannalaugar in south central Iceland- a beautiful area of coloured mountains and lava-fields and stream vents not far from the Hekla active volcano. This made for a very atmospheric experience. On the way back to the camp site late one evening, it was hard not to believe that the trolls were beginning to stir in their caves. Indeed I came across several petrified examples of poor chaps that had accidentally stayed out after sun-up.

At Landmannalaugur, I discovered just what a hazardous undertaking rock climbing is in the country. For some stupid reason, I decided to climb a mountain by going up a little ravine cut by a stream. This turned into a very precarious rubble slope and initially I was relieved to get to a rock face until I discovered that chunks of rock the size of my chest were coming away in my hands. That was when a little voice started whispering in my ear that I was really being rather silly. I was quite relieved to get to the ridge at the top, I can tell you.

Then I was off to camp at Skaftafell – an erstwhile famous farm nested between glaciers that is now a National Park. A view at Skaftafell It includes a place called Sheep Mountain that was entirely surrounded by ice up until a hundred years ago. As sheep normally don't have crampons, this made for a large natural pen. It is famous more recently in 1996 for an event called a Jökulhlaup. This can happen when a volcanic eruption occurs under a glazier. A large reservoir of water builds up that is sometimes all released in one go, leading to an extensive redesign of the landscape. On the way to the camp site, I passed the metal skeletons of several large bridges that had been swept away by the deluge.

While at Skafafell, I went on an eleven hour trek to a remote part of the park to see a coloured mountain. I didn’t see a work of man, a person or even a mammal for almost the whole time. I could have been the only person left on earth. Walking up a vast empty glacial valley was quite a humbling experience. It started off a gorgeous day but unfortunately while at my furthest from the camp-site, it started to rain – cold, torrential and unceasing for three hours. What’s more there was no shelter- not even a tree worthy of the name, which is not unusual in Iceland. Without proper clothing, such weather would rapidly suck the heat out of you, turning a causal walk into a life threatening event. Despite this “shower”, the sight of the Morsarjökull glazier dropping over a cliff with three water falls and ending in an iceberg filled lake was quite a sight.

The end of the Morsarjökull glaziar I had many memorable experiences at the park including a great guided trip on one of the crevasse laden glaziers and an interesting mountain climb when for the first time since a child, I experienced wind that I was afraid might actually blow me away.

Return to Reykjavík

On the bus back to Reykjavík, I bumped into a doctoral student from Finland who had been attending a fisheries research conference. She was doing her thesis on the “Sexual Behavior of Small Fish in Turgid Environments”. Being a total anorak, I’ve read a bit about the evolution of sexual behavior in different species. We spent the entire six hours talking about sex, much to the amusement of the others on the bus and then went out to dinner when we made it back to Reykjavík.

Conclusion

Iceland is now a real place to me. There cannot be many countries so open that it is possible to ride right across them. Its landscapes and people are etched into my mind. The harsh environment has made them extremely self reliant. For example, a group of farmers built one of the first power stations in the country using metal scrap from shipwrecks and a couple of mail ordered parts. With discount flights and widely spoken English, it is a great place to visit for any kind of outdoor activity. In summer in general it is fairly mild but you certainly need to be prepared for bad weather. I guarantee that after one visit, it will insinuate itself into your soul.

A trip up onto the Skaftafellsjökull Glacier

Getting to Iceland has gotten a lot cheaper recently with the availability of two discount airlines: Iceland Express and Icelandair. More travel information is available from the Icelandic Tourist Board. Guided Sea Kayak Trips are available from Ultima Thule expeditions and guided mountain trips from Icelandic Mountain Guides. You can find our more about the Icelandic Horse here and there's an informative and entertaining guide to riding Icelandics here. I booked my riding with Eldhestar but you could also try Íshestar. If I've piqued your curiosity about the sexual behavior of different species, try the light-hearted but informative "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation".

Despite my bad example in this article, walking remotely and certainly climbing by yourself is not sensible, particularly in Iceland. Make sure that you are properly equipped, always try to trek with others if possible and let somebody know your itinerary.