1 A Brit in IcelandThe Story of a Summer in IcelandJune to August 2003

Dr Graeme Davis mail@graemedavis.com

Preface

This is a series of impressions of Iceland drawn from a ten week visit to Iceland in the summer of 2003 (and also a little time in the Faroe Islands, Shetland, and onboard boats on the North Atlantic). As all travel books, it is written in the conviction that the visitor knows something more about the places described that those who live there. What follows is Iceland through British eyes.

The British Academy are responsible for this book, though they don't know it. It is the British Academy who sent me, a lecturer at Britain's Northumbria University, to the University of Iceland, to write a book - though not this one. The book they wanted written and which was written is A Comparative Syntax of Old English and Old Icelandic (published Peter Lang, 2004). You don't want to read that one. But you do want to read this book.

Sane folk fly to Iceland. It's not all that far by air, whether from Britain, or from anywhere in Europe, or from North America. Icelandair have a good network, plus connections with SAS and some other major operators, and there is now a budget airline, Iceland Express, flying from London and Copenhagen. It is easy to fly to Iceland. So I took my car on the ferry. And the car proves to be the star of much of this account, and the car journey Britain to Iceland a fascinating experience of the never to be repeated variety.

By plane the trip Britain to Reykjavik takes less than three hours. By car the trip from Britain to Reykjavik takes about five days, including three nights on ferries and a mighty long drive across Iceland. The vehicle that braved 10 weeks of the worst roads in Europe is a 1997 Mercedes Benz C180 - a polar white one, which seems appropriate. This car proved to be indestructible.

My thanks to Mercedes for making their cars Iceland-proof. My thanks to my summer visitors from Britain to Iceland, who in various ways have contributed to this account. My thanks to many Icelanders, who may well be horrified at their contribution herein. This is Iceland as a Brit sees it. Enjoy!

Chapter One - Iceland Bound

Journey Outline:

NORTHUMBERLAND (my home) TO ABERDEEN, 246 miles, 5 hours driving - a comfortable little run.

ABERDEEN TO SHETLAND, 211 miles, 12 hours on the boat. This is an overnight voyage by NorthLink Ferries from Aberdeen to the Shetlands' main town of Lerwick (but pick your day - sometimes it is 13 hours and via Orkney!)

SHETLAND TO SEYDISFJORDUR, 580 miles, 31 hours on the boat. This is two consecutive overnights on Smyril Line's ship the Norrona. Don't miss the boat - there's just one a week (and that high summer only), and this is the only ferry from anywhere, absolutely anywhere, to Iceland. That's right, Iceland is served by one ferry a week, summer only.

SUDERLEID ROUTE SEYDISFJORDUR TO REYKJAVIK, 488 miles.Seydisfjordur is easy to find on a map. Find Reykjavik. Then find the part of Iceland that is furthest from Reykjavik. You've got it? That's Seydisfjordur, pretty much as far east as Iceland goes. Which means a monster drive from Seydisfjordur to Reykjavik. There is a choice of roads - the south road or the north road - both much the same length. I took the south road - suderleid - with an overnight in Hofn:Seydisfjordur to Hofn via East Fjords 322 km, 201 miles, 6 hours. Then Hofn to Reykjavik 459 km, 287 miles, 8 hours.

TOTAL DISTANCE NORTHUMBERLAND TO REYKJAVIK 1525 MILES. Five days. Four nights.

The most exciting story of the outbound trip was the one that I slept through!

On boarding the ferry at Aberdeen I was handed a written severe weather warning. Basically this meant that a storm was expected, and in the event of delay, diversion to another port, damage to car or other property, or just about any other eventuality, NorthLink were not liable - passengers were invited to reconsider whether they wanted to travel. I rather gathered that I would be paying the funeral expenses. So now should follow a story of a freak typhoon in the North Sea, hurricane winds, tidal waves and the like. But in fact I went to my cabin and didn't wake up until Lerwick harbour next morning, and if there was a storm I slept through.

Then followed a 20 hour day in Shetland - from 6am to 2am. Spend a few moments thinking about this and let the true implication sink in. And add rain. Imagine 20 hours of non-stop, torrential rain in a region of Britain where just about everything is closed before 10am and after 4pm (and don't forget the extra couple of hours closed for lunch). There you have it - the true Shetland-in-the-rain experience for the through-traveller to Iceland - the only people in Shetland who don't have some form of accommodation where they can shelter from the elements..

So I went to Sumburgh Head in the pouring rain to see the birds, and had the cliffs to myself. It's funny, most folk won't watch birds in a deluge. This is an excellent bird-watching spot, even when torrential rain reduces visibility, and the puffins and guillemots and kittewakes and lots of others can be seen from a range of just a few feet. Notices in Sumburgh Head announce that it is a whale-watching spot, but unless the whales practically came ashore I had no chance of seeing any. Though it was as wet ashore as in the sea, so perhaps anything was possible. Then Jarlshof archaeological site in the pouring rain, and surprise, I had the site all to myself, followed by Shetland Crofthouse Museum in even more rain - there were a few other drowned souls sheltering here. The afternoon got wetter - an exhibition of Shetland Paintings by Ruth Brownlee in Lerwick was pleasant and dry, and there is some good material on Shetland matters in Shetlands Library. For example the Lord's Prayer in Shetland Norn caught my eye:

Fyvor or er i Chimeri. Halaght vara nam dit.La Konungdum din cumma. La vill din vera guerdei vrildin sindaeri chimeri.Gav vus dagh u dagloght brau. Forgive sindorwarasin vi forgiva gem ao sinda gainst wus.Lia wus ike o vera tempa, but delivra wus fro adlu idlu.For do i ir Kongungdum, u puri, u glori, Amen

The Shetland experience continued with an exploration of Shetland night life (which took about five minutes, because I was taking my time), and a heroic effort to make an Italian restaurant meal last more than two hours. Then hours of sitting in my car with the engine running to power the heater, sometimes with te wipers on and sometimes with them off. Rain, rain, and more rain.

This story could well have ended in Shetland. Lerwick is a frontier for the Uniter Kingdom just twice a week when the ferry Norrona passes through, heading for the Faroes and Iceland one way, and Bergen the other. There aren't proper customs buildings here, but security at Lerwick was nonetheless thorough - that's once customs opened at 1am, an hour late. I was stopped at the barrier, which is under a garage-style awning, which means that the rain might not actually fall on your head but it blows in from the side, and the ground becomes a river. They wanted the boot open. And they were greatly puzzled by a new, yellow bucket in the boot (bought for œ1.99 with the intention of using it to clean the car on the kerbside in Reykjavik). So they searched the boot, which meant getting everything out in the wet. Then they searched under the the bonnet. But here they hit a problem, for under the bonnet they couldn't see a thing - Mercedes do rather pack the engine into the space so there are no gaps left for anyone to look through. So first they crawled underneath the car, then they decided to take the screen-wash bottle out. Just in case you are wondering, its not designed to come out, and certainly not with five litres of screenwash in it, but out it came. I gather from the expletives that it was both heavy and awkward. Taking it out didn't really give them a much better view, but they decided that they had had enough. Then they frisked me, thoroughly.

With my luggage somewhat damp and back in the boot - and what wouldn't fit back in the boot on the back seat - they decided I could go. And then the car wouldn't start. When they had asked me to get out I'd left the key in the ignition, while the car's security system requires that the key is taken out whenever the car is being serviced, or indeed having its windscreen washer bottle taken out. As a result the car was well and truly immobilised by its own security system. It just wouldn't start. I was getting as far as wondering what the AA call-out response time would be like at 2am, and whether they could do anything, and whether this situation could get any worse, when the car's security alarm went off - and wouldn't stop.

Finally on the umpteenth cycle through the locking system I got the alarm off and the car started. The moral is simple. If anyone is planning to carry out the next great train robbery, I advise don't try to leave Britain via Shetland. Try somewhere quiet like Heathrow or Dover.

Boarding was about 3am, an hour late, because of British customs delays. The Smyril Line ship Norrona looked like the Starship Enterprise towering above the quayside - all bright lights and with a shape that has to owe as much to design as function. My home for the next 31 hours.

Passengers were mostly Germans and Danes travelling on the first leg of the north North Sea route back to the continent (change at Torshavn in the Faroes for Hantsholm in Denmark). Going on all the way to Iceland the passengers were mainly Danes, with a few Germans and Norwegians, one French family, one group I decided after much eavesdropping on their language were Hungarian, and as far as I could make out not a single Brit other than me. Nor an Icelander.

Smyril Line's Norrona is a luxury ship, every bit as glamorous as the pictures in the Smyril Line brochure and on the web-site. And then there are the couchettes. The British Academy funded my trip, but their support certainly doesn't run to a single person cabin - indeed the return trip in a single-person cabin would demolish about a third of my ten-week's allowance.

For non-wealthy travellers there are couchettes. These are in groups of nine, with three racks of three high bunks in each miniature cabin, and if approached with a sense of humour are fine. They are a nice example of what you need to be prepared to accept to make a trip like this work. If I waited until first class travel was possible for me I'ld be waiting for a long time! So I was in the couchettes, and approached with humour and a willingness to accept over-crowding, sauna-like temperatures, lots of noise and a location below the water-line they were just fine.

First glimpse of Iceland was the Fjord of Seydisfjordur, spectacular with its cliffs cloud-topped and a glimpse of snow on the hills when the clouds lifted. Then Icelandic customs. All drivers reading this, please now pick up a pen and a scrap of paper. Write down please the unladen weight of your car. That's right, what does it weigh? - and in kilograms please. This information is required when bringing a car into Iceland. Don't ask me why. It is. It's on the form. (NB the Mercedes C180 weighs 1350 kgs - and it took 20 minutes of frantic searching through the car manual to find this out.)

This quiz question aside Icelandic customs were fine, my windscreen washer bottle remained fixed under the bonnet, and the process was complete in about two hours. Then the six hour run to Hofn, one of varied spectacle. I'm not even going to attempt to describe it - this one you've got to do!

An unforgettable feature of the first day in Iceland was the worst roads I've ever seen. I've seen bad roads in Turkey, China and Egypt, but there very much off the beaten track, and anyway not this bad. This is Iceland's road number 1, the ring-road, and it might be expected to be good. And there are stretches of good road. But also miles and miles of truly dismal rutted track, some really nasty gradients, bends, blind summits and a long list of motoring challenges. Plus a section of very wet and very muddy road, complete with a deeply mired car that hadn't made it through, and with a tractor in the proces of pulling them out, so I went round through even deeper mud, and there's now mud on every part of my car. Mud in every crease a seam, and my polar white car has turned brown.

Arrival at Hofn needed a sense of humour which I was probably lacking - my excuse is that all the humour had been expended on the Norrona's couchettes. My hotel had double booked. What else is there to say? There wasn't a bed for me. They didn't have the bed they had sold, and they weren't going to boot someone else out. I suggested the manager could sleep on a couch for the night, but he seemed to think this was some strange English joke. Which it wasn't. It took a while for me to hunt round Hofn and find a bed as the town was pretty much full, and I ended up right by the harbour in the Hotel Asgard, a tidy hotel in a nice location. Now Asgard is the Norse paradise, so I guess this is the Nordic equivalent of the Mediterranean's Hotel Paradiso. After three days on boats and a long drive it certainly felt like heaven.

The only problem with Hofn is pronouncing its name. It is pretty much the sound of a hiccup. One of the many good things about Hofn is that it is open in the evening. The contrast with Lerwick is striking. On a wet Monday evening in Lerwick I really didn't know what to do with myself. In Hofn there was plenty to do. For starters the restaurant I found (one of the two in the town) served deep fried fish with strawberries and chips. This is the gastronomic find of the century - deep fried fish and fresh strawberries really does work together - and every British chip shop should be selling it. The restaurant was the sort of place where lingering was possible. The shops in Hofn are open until 9pm, and the museum until 10pm. For that matter I noticed that sports centre, swimming pool, church and social club were all open. There were people about.

The museum is on glaciers, focusing on nearby Vatnajokul and its prize exhibit is the world's first snow-cat, built in 1972. Before snow-cats travel on glaciers was scarcely possible. There are tales in the Viking Sagas of people crossing glaciers, and in more recent times there was a custom of crossing a few hundred yards of a tongue of Vatnajokul to avoid the crossing of the Jokul River. But the first recorded crossing of Vatnajokul dates from the early years of the twentieth century. As the museum tells the story, it was three likely-lads from Hofn who made the trip. It seems they decided that they wanted to do something that would make them

famous, and with minimal equipment and little fuss set out from Hofn to cross Vatnajokul. They made it in four days right across to the dales north of the glacier, getting their place in history - a truly remarkable tale of grit and courage. And then, finding themselves without horses to ride around the glacier and without enough food for the ten-day over-land trek back home, they decided to cross the glacier again. So they were not only the first people to cross a glacier in modern times, but the first people to cross a glacier twice. It's like Francis Chichester sailing single handed around the world, then deciding he's got a few iron rations left on board so he might as well go round again.

The road west from Hofn is a good one - which means a road with a surface all the way - and in parts of excellent quality. But the sites are too good to simply keep driving. For example there is Jokulsarlon - Glacier Lake - the lake between a tongue of Vatnajokul and the sea, and it is choc-a-bloc full with icebergs, and chunks of ice of all sizes.The smaller ones wash ashore showing weird and wonderful shapes. In the morning light the ice was bright blue, and the water, and the sky all blue - the blues were amazing. Pictures of the arctic and antarctic show a lot of white, but travellers talk of the blues. Here there was a lot of ice, and from some angles it was white, but the blues made the strongest impresion. I spent an hour or so on the lake-side, picking up some of the smaller lumps of ice, until hypothermia threatened and I decided it was time to move on. Maybe this chill is why it is called Iceland.

The southern road is a great introduction to the wildlife of Iceland. Bird life is profuse. There are Arctic Terns nesting in the fields anywhere close to the sea, and they defend their territory with energy. Skuas are even more aggressive, even diving at the car. Harlequin Ducks are to be seen. These striking birds are pretty much unique to Iceland. Lupins grow wild - and I drove through mile upon mile of countryside covered in blue lupins, certainly dozens of miles of arctic lupin.

This southern route is a very vulnerable road. In early settlement times the warmer climate pushed the glaciers back a mile or two from the coast and there was a route. However from around 1200 the deteriorating climate more or less closed the route, with scrambles over glacier being necessary for the few brave or foolhardy people who struggled along the south coast. The road that has now been pushed through is built in part on the thin strip between glacier and sea, in part on miles of shifting sand. The pinch-point at Jokulsarlon is no more than a mile between the glacier and the sea, and that mile made up only of sand bars, a lake of ice-bergs and a very fast flowing river. Signs report that the road will be swept away in a few years - there are plans to rebuild, but it will be a major engineering exercise. Another stretch of the road has warnings of sand storms, and the road can be closed and often is closed when the wind blows - there are big gates which are pulled across. In recent years volcanic activity had closed the road for months. This is a very fragile link.

Finally to Reykjavik. The rain stopped, the car was washed, I was washed, my clothes were washed. And so all was well.

Chapter Two - Bearings in Reykjavik

The most important thing to know about Reykjavik is that the hot water comes straight from the friendly local volcano, and smells of rotten eggs. As everyone washes in it and washes their clothes in it the inhabitants of Reykjavik also smell faintly of rotten eggs. That's right, rotten eggs is the ever-present background smell. After just a couple of days here you won't notice it. That's because you too smell of rotten eggs.

Reykjavik in Figures

Average winter temperature -1 degree (not cold)Average summer temperature +10 degrees (not warm)Highest temperature last year (2001) +17 degrees (still not warm)Highest temperature ever +24 degrees (warm but not hot)

Population in 2001 in Reykjavik city 112,276 (plus another 60,000 or so in the communities around). Population of Iceland is 286,275. Reykjavik dominates Iceland.

Cars: 65,671 in Reykjavik city alone - one for every two people. Buses: 77 - one for every 1,445 people. No wonder everyone drives!Planes: 837,668 passengers passed through Keflavik and Reykjavik airports in 2000 - that's three times the population of Iceland!Ships: 48 cruise ships pa call in at Reykjavik (2000)

Life expectancy: men 78 years, women 81 years. Probably the world's highest - anywhere that claims higher is likely to have faulty figures. There is only one hospital in Reykjavik - a big one! All your eggs in one basket comes to mind. GPs are just one for every 2000 people. They're even rarer than the busses! It is curious that a country with a world-leading life expectancy has so few hospitals and doctors. Perhaps it suggests that affluence and lifestyle has the biggest effect on life expectancy, not medical resources.

Employment: there is virtual full-employment - the unemployment rate is 1.3%.86% work in service industries. 14% work in agriculture, fishing or manufacturing.

Reykjavik CityIncome 2002 26,960,000,000 ISK Expenditure 2002 23,046,375,000 ISK- leaving a very healthy surplus. The cost of city services per person is in the region of œ2,000 pa.

Museums

Reykjavik is not short of museums, and over the weeks I spent in Reykjavik I checked out most of them, maybe all of them. So here's a distillation of what's worth seeing:

ù The National Gallery. It's good!

ù The Einar Jonsson Sculpture Museum is within the former home and garden of the sculptor, dating from the 1920s. His art presents a rather tortured mix of Christianity and Nordic myth - the sort of thing that in Germany in the 1930s was taken over as a Nazi art style - not that any official information in Reykjavik suggests this. Also on the sculpture theme is the Asmundur Sveinsson museum, with modern, abstract work in concrete, much of it huge. Rodin he is not! In their way these are both remarkable museums. Yet I have the impression that Einar and Asmundur have their own museums primarily because they are Icelanders, not because of the intrinsic quality of their work.

ù The Culture House at the moment houses the Arni Magnusson manuscript collection while the Arni Magnusson institute is being refurbished - plus a very informative exhibit on the settlement of Iceland and Greenland. The museum presented me with a moral dilemma. On my first visit the entrance fee was waived because it was closing within the hour. On my second visit I was recognised and waived through because I had been there before. And on

my third visit I was recognised and given the red-carpet treatment as a connoisseur of things Icelandic, who couldn't possibly be asked to pay. So three visits, and all free. You will gather that the Culture House is well worth visiting, at least three times, and I should have gone more. The outstanding exhibit is the manuscripts - after all, this is why people go to Iceland. The 1,666 mediaeval manuscripts of the Arni Magnusson collection are unique in their quantity, of superb quality, and contain the mediaeval literature and history of northern Europe. They are stunning.

ù The Arbaer Folk Museum. A reflection on the exhibits in the Folk Museum and indeed much else seen in Iceland is that Iceland has made incredible strides since independence in 1944. Prior to the second world war Iceland was a very poor country - the depression of the 1930s hit it particularly badly. It did do reasonably well economically from hosting British and American troops during the war, but its prospects when independence was declared in 1944 really didn't look particularly good. An honest assessment is probably that its prospects were dire. Yet Iceland is a success story. Icelanders put fish down as the reason for their economic success, but this hardly seems adequate. Geothermal power is surely a big part of the explanation - in effect Iceland has free, non-polluting power - while the role of stable, sensible government for nearly six decades has to be considered a factor. Perhaps too it is easier for a small country to make decisions which suit its economy.

ù Also not to be missed: the Labour Union's Art Gallery, which has some striking expressionist work, and is in a gallery which is itself a work of art.

Independence Day

17th June is Independence Day in Iceland. In 1919 as part of the Versailles settlement Iceland was granted self-governing status within the Kingdom of Denmark with the right to independence after 25 years. The outbreak of the Second World War saw the occupation of Denmark by Germany, and in order to protect Iceland its occupation first by Britain and later by America. While Iceland presumably saw these alied occupations as preferable to the German invasion such as that suffered by Denmark and Norway, they were far from popular. Independence from Denmark was declared at Thingvellir 17th June 1944, at a time when Denmark really couldn't say much about it. In keeping with Iceland's tradition of being out of doors as much as possible the ceremony was conducted outside and in the rain, and the declaration of independence is smudged by raindrops.

The independence day celebrations of 2003 seemed to me to be very subdued, but it is a public holiday, and the library and shops were closed. So as I couldn't work through forces beyond my control I went out to Thingvellir, parliament plains, where the declaration of independence was signed, and drove around the north shore of the lake, Thingvellirvatn.

In the middle of nowhere I was flagged down by two Czech hikers who had had enough and wanted a lift to civilisation. Hitch-hikers in Iceland have a rough time. There's not much traffic on most Icelandic roads, while on roads serving places of tourist interest the traffic is pretty much exclusively tour groups and tourists in hire cars, neither group likely to stop. But these hitch-hikers had the canny idea of flagging a car down in the middle of no-where, where it is inconceivable for a driver not to stop. And once you have stopped it would seem hard-hearted to just drive on. So I took them to their destination - Reykjavik campsite. They are check-in staff from the BA and CSA desks at Prague airport taking their annual holiday. They are doing Iceland on the cheap, which I would have thought takes some doing. Indeed their intended route of hitch-hiking around Iceland I think they will find impractical as there just isn't enough traffic in the east.

Around Reykjavik

Reykjavik stops abruptly, and the real, wild Iceland is just on the doorstep.

The roads just south of Reykjavik are a sharp reminder of the true state of Icelandic roads. The quality modern surface ends abruptly, and the road becomes a single track on mud and gravel with some extreme hills and bends. Tucked away in the fells is Kleifavatn, which is a

sizeable lake of crystal clear, seemingly sterile, water. Local legend says that a monster lives there, and it is easy to understand why, as nothing much else seems to inhabit the lake. A little further south is the geothermal area of Krysuvik. Lots of boiling mud, steam, sulphateras and the like. Also a lake, Green Lake, which is coloured a funny shade of bright blue by the algae which thrive in the geothermal heat. Now why isn't it called Blue Lake ....

Every tourist seems to get to the Blue Lagoon. This is an open-air swimming pool - open year-round, and up to 24 hours a day in summer. The water is naturally warm, at a comfortable 36 to 42 degrees, and an opaque milky-blue colour, full of algae which are claimed to be beneficially for lots of health problems. This is a very special Icelandic experience, especially when the clouds pattern the sky, or even when it is raining.

Every tourist seems to get to the Blue Lagoon once. I managed nine trips. Its addictive! Some days it was rather crowded. There's just too many tourists.... Only on my eighth visit did I notice that in the vestibule a chunk of rock has a brass plate on it. Apparently it is the first chunk of rock excavated when the changing rooms were built - and it was formed exactly in 1226. I don't think I've ever seen this sort of precise dating on a rock.

Chapter Three - Weather and Prices

Mention Iceland to anyone in Britain and there are two possible responses.

The first, and by far the most common, is to assume that Iceland means the British supermarket chain Iceland. Most people in Britain have an Iceland quite close to them, and don't think of it as a place to go on holiday, so the conversation that follows can get a bit confused. My aunt thought I was going to Iceland, the supermarket. I rather think she thought I had at last got a proper job on an Iceland supermarket check-out.

The second response is from people who have realised that Iceland is a country - and still don't think of it as a place to go on holiday. The question they ask is "what's the weather like?", followed by "it's expensive, isn't it?"

So lets get it over and done with - weather in Iceland.

My trip lasted only three months, but this covers three seasons. June is spring, July is summer and August is autumn. And the rest is winter. When I arrived in Iceland in early June I found a few flakes of falling snow within ten miles of the port, while in early August just ten miles from Reykjavik (on top of a hill) I got hit by some hail stones. Snow patches are visible on the hills all the time. Despite the cool weather and short growing season, plants and trees do flourish, and Reykjavik suburban gardens are full of colour. Of course everything is much later than Britain, with for example tulips in full flower in June, and everything races to get its growing and flowering finished by the end of August before winter arrives.

Daytime temperatures June-August in Reykjavik were 10 degrees to 19 degrees centigrade. The highest temperature ever recorded in Reykjavik is 24 degrees centigrade. Even in British terms this is cool summer weather. There was a heat wave in Iceland summer 2003, the hottest summer since before the second world war. Temperatures rose to 15 and 16 degrees, then finally hit 17 degrees in Reykjavik and very briefly a reported 19 degrees, and that without a cloud in the sky. Inland it was warmer - a sizzling 20 degrees on Mossfell. There were even reports that residents of Reykjavik got a suntan, but this is presumably just rumour. Certainly I saw no evidence of it. On the Icelandic television weather programme they had on their best funeral faces. Clearly much suffering will result for Icelanders from enduring temperatures at this level. The special twist to Iceland sunshine is the hours and hours for which it can be sunny. Sunburn and heatstroke can be real risks. Icelanders really are slapping on the sun screen. These temperatures are bothering them. When after the heat wave rain came and temperatures of 11 and 12 the weather guy on television smiled, and Icelanders' sense of relief was evident. Temperatures as high as 16 degrees and 17 degrees just cannot be endured.

And then it struck me - I've been too long in Iceland. Today after the heat-wave it is over-cast and raining, and it's a relief. I've seen no night for six weeks. And when it is not only light but bright sunshine hour after hour it gets weird. Disorientating. So a bit of gloomy weather actually comes in very welcome.

Oh, and prices in Iceland. I've come to the conclusion that most everything is double UK prices. Certainly this goes for supermarket prices, restaurants, hotels, and public transport for those who have to use it. Now I've accepted this I don't have to worry about it. Supermarkets sell very small quantities of just about everything, which sure helps the single traveller. Lots of things are free - for example no admission fee to just about every tourist site, and lots of quality information from the many tourist offices. And a few things are actually cheaper than Britain. Petrol is a little cheaper than UK (which probably only proves that the level of tax Brits pay on petrol is theft by government). Hand-knitted wool items are hard to find in Britain - and the Icelandic prices are quite a bit cheaper. Horse riding is about half the British price, a real bargain.

Lots of tourists seem to spend half their holiday grumbling about the prices. This seems to me to be a waste of energy. If you think the naff troll ornament or puffin cuddly toy in the gift shop is ludicrously expensive (which it probably is) then don't buy it. The experience of seeing Geysir is priceless, and you won't be charged a penny in entrance fee.

Chapter Four - Horses, Roads and Driving

Horses are very much a part of Icelandic culture as they were the only viable means of transport until the roads were built, many of them in the 1950s or even later.

Seeing Iceland from horse-back is part of the Icelandic experience - so says the tourist office, and on this one they are right. So I took a couple of rides at Laxnes horse farm, and a rather more sedate tour at Ishestar horse farm. Great. The big event of my final ride happened just outside the farm gate. Laxnes farm horses have seen their share of cars, motorbikes and dogs, and are pretty unflappable. But what they haven't seen before is a kid in an electric wheelchair shooting out of a gateway more or less into the side of them, with the wheelchair making strained mechanical noises over the ruts in the packed earth. He was one of a group of teenagers, all in electric wheelchairs, in a field adjoining the bridleway, and I guess he had decided to have a closer look at the horses. What he got was an interesting action event as all nine of them took fright and were off at a gallop.

I'm pleased to report that I reigned in my steed pretty promptly. I choose to take this as evidence that I'm getting the hang of the riding lark. Suspicious minds could think that in fact my horse didn't really want to do anything as energetic as galloping, and was all too happy to be reigned in. But I'm sticking with my version - I got it eight.

At Laxnes my car attracted its share of attention. An Icelander reclining on the Laxnes veranda and presumably with a beer too many inside him pronounced "It's amazing! It is not possible to drive such a car in Iceland!" A group of Icelanders present reckoned they had never before seen a right-hand drive in Iceland. And they thought it would be impossible for them to drive on the left. Yet every year thousands of British drivers manage this feet as they take their cars to the continent and spend a fortnight or whatever driving on the wrong side of the road.

Driving in Iceland was a daily experience. I had planned a tongue-in-cheek section to the tune that Icelanders drive their cars as they ride their horses. Icelandic cars, like horses, are pack animals. They like going along nose-to-tail. The one up front likes being up-front, and will drift all over the road to be sure no-one overtakes. The rest follow in a pack. Overtaking is done horse-fashion - you ride parallel for a while around bends and corners, and might get past or might not. Like horses, cars can suddenly accelerate, stop, turn-round or do just about any other manoeuvre that comes to mind.

But I have abandoned this idea. In my time in Iceland I saw one accident happen and came upon the recent wreckage of another six, a shocking total for a few weeks. The worst was at a Reykjavik crossroads, where someone was being cut out of the wreckage of a car. This particular accident was one where I had more opportunity than I wanted to see what was happening as the traffic was just crawling past the mess. Three cars, apparently travelling from three different directions, had gone front-on into one another, and all three were seriously wrecked. There was an ambulance standing by waiting for the poor person trapped in one of the cars. Icelandic driving looks safe but is lethal.

Driving speeds are slow, and the roads range from half-empty to empty. Most cars appear well maintained. At first glance the driving appears very sedate and sensible. Virtually all the road miles in Iceland are done on the roads of Greater Reykjavik, which are in decent condition and well signed. Iceland should have very safe roads indeed. But statistically they don't, and in my experience they don't.

Grapevine, the English language newspaper, reports that during the first weekend in June alone over 100 people were caught speeding by the police of Vik i Myrdal. Now my guidebook informs me that this community has a population of 293 (as well as being the wettest place in Iceland). My atlas indicates that the Vik administrative district is rather larger than the community, but it is still tiny, and there's not many roads there. I rather think if in England the police (or policeman, singular?) of the spot on the road called Bogvalley Bay (which is what Vik i Myrdal means) went out and caught 100 people speeding on one weekend, then the

police would be in court facing civil liberty charges. It is as if the police in Iceland have abdicated responsibility for dealing with bad driving (time and again I see police cars ignore the most ghastly examples of bad driving), and instead are dealing only with infringements of speed. And of all the many examples of bad driving I've seen, hardly any of them has been speed related. Route 1 through Vik i Myrdal includes long stretches of straight, wide road with an excellent surface where you can see for very long distances. And it has hardly any cars. Of course drivers exceed 90kmh.

In Italy the driving is, well Italian, and speed limits which are much higher that Iceland anyway are pretty generally interpreted as minimum speeds. Yet statistics produced in Iceland show that per capita of the population fewer people are killed. Iceland has got it wrong. And this mistake is killing people.

On a hill outside Reykjavik there is a pole with a couple of wrecked cars on top of it, and a sign which gives the number of deaths in road accidents since 1st January. When I first noticed it the figure was 6 - by the end of the summer it was 13. This is a lot of deaths for a country with a population as small as Iceland's. I rather doubt that the gravel roads, ghastly though they are, are often the cause of deaths. Maybe it is months of darkness and ice in the winter. Or maybe it is just plain stupid driving.

Generally speeds are slow, and most Icelanders are law-abiding. This should make for sedate and safe driving. But there are a great many idiots on the road doing idiotic things at slow speeds. Things like parking at the top of a blind summit (to admire the view perhaps?), parked cars flinging doors open in front of passing cars, wandering between lanes and across the carriageway - plus a sense in Reykjavik that just everyone has done their present journey 1001 times and knows exactly when to swerve for the potholes and how late they can leave it before cutting someone up to take an exit.

One accident I came upon was a shunt which led to some broken glass and bent metal, but presumably little else. The police were on the scene when I got there. Indeed a policeman signalled the car in front of me to stop, but the driver apparently didn't see him and as good as drove through him. The policeman gave a clear stop signal to my passenger seat, and as I stopped seemed amazed at seeing what he thought was a driverless car. At least that's how I interpret his mouth falling open. Unless it was just shock that someone had taken notice of a police stop signal. He had a broom, and wanted to sweep up the mess.

I've compiled my personal grumble list about the shortcomings of Icelandic driving, which might well irritate Icelanders, but in view of the number of accidents I've seen I feel bold to offer.

OVER-TAKING. I think I can safely say that the average Icelander has not been taught how to overtake, and has only the haziest notion how to do it. Icelandic overtaking is lethal. The favourite seems to be a car doing 89 kmph being overtaken by a car doing the legal limit of 90 kmph. So they run parallel for half an hour, over hills and round bends.

DISTANCE. Maybe Icelanders think it is just friendly, but they do like to sit on the bumper of the car in front. Perhaps they use less petrol in the slip stream of another car.

INDICATOR LIGHTS. Rarely used. Nor does anyone take much notice of them when they are used. In fact I've been so convinced mine can't be working I've checked them several times.

LACK OF POLITENESS. Given the habitual politeness of everyone in Iceland, the aggro of the Icelandic driver comes as a surprise. Get in the wrong lane at a junction and that's just tough, as no Icelander is going to hold back to let you change lane. Of course all the Icelanders know where they are going - pity the visitor.

TOO MUCH POLITENESS. The guy on a roundabout who decides to stop half way round and wave a car on from an entry road. The guy at a green light on a junction on a dual carriageway who decides to wave pedestrians across, into the path of traffic in the other lane.

BIG IS BEST. Drivers of Reykjavik yellow busses have right of way at all times. I've decided it must be written into the constitution of Iceland. Drivers of 4x4s with massive tyres think they are king of the road. After all their contraption has cost more than the road they are driving on. Toad of toad hall is alive and well in Reykjavik.

THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. Iceland once drove on the left, as all sensible nations. After all driving on the left is psychologically easier, and therefore safer. Then in a spirit of doing the wrong thing in company with their Nordic brethren they changed to drive on the wrong side. An older generation of Icelanders have found a compromise - they drive down the middle. At all times.

DAFT JUNCTIONS. Top prize for what may well be Europe's daftest junction goes to Reykjavik's clover-leaf. This land-guzzler is not only an environmental disaster zone in that it covers acres of green land with asphalt (that's Imperial acres, not European hectares), but it is also downright dangerous. How about a roundabout? If M1 junction 1, London, where Britain's M1 meets the North Circular and many of the busiest roads of London, can be a roundabout then there is no possible reason why a roundabout wouldn't work here. A fraction of the land, and far safer.

Italians break every rule there is when driving, but at least seem to be in control of their vehicles. Icelanders are the opposite of Italians - slow, sedate drivers who nonetheless have accidents. The one accident I saw happen was a car that reversed out of a roadside parking lot into a car that was in a queue of stationary traffic. The offending driver pulled the car forward - then reversed again hitting a second time, and making a second dent.

If Iceland wants to get their death toll down they have to look at their driving test (which I assume is not much of a test) and they have to put the efforts of their road police into dealing with dangerous driving, not pulling up someone who is doing a little over the speed limit.

The dire Icelandic drivers drive on dire Icelandic roads. There are some good ones, but the bad roads strike these from the memory. The exception is Reykjavik where roads are much as any other European city - in no way like the hinterland of Iceland. The tourist whose visit to Iceland is confined to Reykjavik and the road in from the airport will think Icelandic roads are fine. Reykjavik roads are on the whole pretty good and most cars look as if they never go outside of the city. By contrast mine which did go outside was still grubby even with frequent washes, with the mud oozing from the cracks and crevices (and two months after my return home the mud still oozed).

Tourist information boards in Iceland grade roads as follows:1) Metalled2) Unmettaled3) Suitable for Reliable Cars and 4WD4) 4WD only5) Modified 4WD Only (ie caterpillar tracks)

Category one is fine, even excellent. Category two is bad. Think really bad, then a bit worse. In Britain we're used to bouncing over a few yards of gravel and stones in a rough car-park and that's it. In Iceland there's miles and miles of the stuff - even hundreds of miles' stretches of these roads in the north and east. Category three is unimaginably bad. I once tried one road in the third category. After 7 miles I turned back. The surface was no surface at all, and the grades were getting mighty steep.

My car rattles (and has done since the first few miles from Seydisfjordur). There are stone chips everywhere. But Mercedes make them tough!

From the newspaper The Reykjavik Grapevine, June 27th 2003:

Dear GrapevineWhere are all the foreign cars in Iceland?

A week ago I brought my car to Iceland for the summer on the ferry from Shetland. Since arrival in Iceland I've not seen a single foreign registration. My theory is that there's a big hole somewhere that swallows foreign cars, and that I had better keep a sharp look-out!My car seems to fascinate Icelanders. Frequently in car parks and garages I find Icelanders staring at my car, first at the GB sticker and the funny foreign number, then at the steering wheel on the right-hand side. When I parked my car for five minutes in Hveragerdi I returned to find a dozen children looking in the windows.If you are driving a British registered car and you happen to see my British registered white Mercedes somewhere in Iceland, please do toot to say hello.

Graeme DavisUnited Kingdom

Dear Dr DavisNice to get some response, your theory is indeed right. Grapevine research department has led an expedition to confirm your suspicion. The research team managed to find out that this black hole you refer to is indeed in Snaefellsness, simultaneously we have also managed to find scientific proof for Jules Verne's never before proven theory that there is a hole in Snaefellsjokull which leads to the centre of the earth. So what happens is that when driving you suddenly begin to feel a little gravitational pull. Gradually you will end up in Snaefellsness and your foreign car will be sent to the centre of the earth. Our centre of the earth correspondent George T Owen says that is beginning to create a bit of a problem in the centre of the earth, the reason is that there are no roads there and cars are therefore useless.

Reykjavik Grapevine

Well after two days of telling myself I was imagining it I had to admit that the car was making a funny noise. A loud grating when I turned a corner. In fact not a funny noise at all.

So I took the car into the Mercedes garage, and explained that the car was making an odd noise. The mechanic decided he would give it a test drive, then when he saw it was right-hand-drive decided I would drive and he would be the passenger. Of course now a perfect, quiet ride, with not a grate to be heard. Finally as I wrenched the steering wheel to take a turn too fast it grated.

The mechanic ruled out suspension trouble - suspension of a Mercedes does 200,000 kms on Iceland's gravel roads before there are problems (and apparently only Mercedes can manage this in Iceland). And it wasn't steering either. He rather thought maybe a tyre problem, but the tyres are still virtually new and look just great. Finally he found a piece of the under-plate detached and clipping a tyre on sharp turns.

Problem solved in 5 minutes. And as I'm told that in Iceland this counts as a design shortcoming on the C180 - apparently this fault happens a lot on Iceland's roads with the C class, though generally within the first 5,000 miles - so my car with 6 years and 108,000 miles on the clock is judged to be covered by the manufacturer's guarantee, and there is no charge.

Chapter Five - Birds and Whales

The wildlife is one of the joys of Iceland, and one of the main reasons for visiting Iceland. And it is the birds and whales that are truly outstanding.

I saw the following birds in 10 days in July, in the Reykjavik area, Breithafjordur and Lake Myvatn:

Great Northern DiverRed-throated DiverSlavonian Grebe (Horned Grebe)FulmarGannetShagCormorantWhooper SwanGreylag GooseMallardGadwallWigeonTufted DuckScaupEiderHarlequin DuckBarrow's GoldeneyeLong-tailed DuckRed-breasted MerganserWhite-tailed EagleMerlinOystercatcherRinged PloverGolden PloverTurnstoneDunlinPurple SandpiperRed-necked PhalaropeRedshankWhimbrelBlack-tailed GodwitSnipeGreat SkuaArctic SkuaBlack-headed GullHerring GullLesser Black-backed GullGreat Black-backed GullGlaucous GullCommon GullKittiwakeArctic TernRazorbillGuillemotPuffinBlack GuillemotFeral PigeonMeadow PipitWhite WagtailWheatearRedwing

Snow BuntingRedpollStarlingRaven

This is a total of 55 species, and a good proportion of the species found in Iceland in the summer.

What is special about Icelandic birds is the quality of the sitings. The above is not a twitcher's list of birds fleetingly seen, but a list of birds properly seen and properly observed. Very many of these can be seen in Britain, but often not seen easily or seen well. Iceland also seems to be pleasingly short of small, beige birds. Instead most are large birds, easily identified and easily observed.

The Great Northern Divers are the stars as far as I am concerned. These magnificent birds are not particularly hard to see. For example close to the shore on the northern road round Thingvellirvatn I saw six Great Northern Divers at close range plus a glimpse of more well out on the lake. Americans call this bird the Common Loon, though it is hardly common in Iceland or anywhere else in Europe. The Icelandic name - Himbrini - is onomatopoeic, a reasonable approximation of its curious call, a unique sound which with reason many have regarded as the distinctive sound of the lakes of Iceland.

The White Tailed Eagle was special because of its rarity - there are only 50 pairs in Iceland. This bird is enormous, and mankind is largely to blame for the crash in its numbers. In Shetland there are stories of the bird carrying off children - surely fables though the locals seem to credit them - while throughout Scotland, the Faroes and Iceland there are tales - almost certainly false - of the bird preying on lambs. For this reason it was hunted almost to extinction. Numbers are now recovering, but very slowly.

Barrows Goldeneye is an Iceland specialist, which breeds regularly only on lake Myvatn and the Laxa river (which drains Myvatn) - and nowhere else in the world. There are records of this bird occasionally breeding elsewhere in Iceland, but usually without raising its chicks. Myvatn is not particularly big, and the Barrows Goldeneye there have a lot of competition from other ducks. While I gather this duck is not actually considered to be endangered it is something of a rarity, and an example of the fragile hold a species has on existence.

The two birds that got away this summer are the Gyrfalcon, and Brunnich's Guillemot. The summer range of the Gyrfalcon is north Iceland only, so there is no realistic chance of seeing it within day trip distance of Reykjavik. In the middle ages the bird was associated with Greenland, and falconers in Europe got their Gyrfalcons from Greenland, not Iceland - which suggests there were not many of them in Iceland even in the Middle Ages. Its population in Iceland fluctuates wildly year by year as the numbers of its main prey - the Ptarmigan - fluctuates. And for that matter I didn't see a Ptarmigan either. Brunnich's Guillemot I confess to looking for, though I suspect this brands me as something of an eccentric. The bird differs from the Guillemot by having a tiny white mark on its bill, and so can only be distinguished at very close range. So in hunting for a Brunnich's Guillemot I looked closely at a lot of birds which turned out to be very ordinary Guillemots. Browsing the bird books in Eymundson's book shop (a much more cost effective solution than buying them!) I find that sightings in Iceland are almost exclusively in the West Fjords, and only in certain places there. In effect this is a Greenland bird which is found in those parts of Iceland which are closest to Greenland.

One of Iceland's rarest breeding birds is the Sparrow. There are believed to be around six pairs, all around one farm on the south coast. Thus one of Britain's commonest birds is one of Iceland's rarest.

Icelandic birds know that the countryside is theirs. All over Iceland there are signs warning "beware of the birds". These signs don't mean take care that you don't hurt a bird, but rather take care that a bird doesn't hurt you. Arctic Terns attack. They attack people, and in the middle of the nesting season even attack cars. Alfred Hitchcock should have made a film

about them. The Arctic Skuas dive-bomb cars. And everywhere the birds hold their ground. They are the dominant species, and they are not going to be intimidated by those funny humans who come with binoculas, camera and bird-book.

Almost as approachable as the birds are the whales. Minke Whales are the ones most often seen, both on whale watching trips and ferries, and they are lovely, though they are one of the smaller whales, their spout is scarcely visible, and they tend not to show their tail flukes. Sightings of other whales is more hit and miss, but the hits do happen.

The star of my trip on the Elding boat from Reykjavik harbour was a Humpback Whale. This was a good, close sighting of a young Humpback Whale, from as close as 20 yards, and with super views of tail flukes and the whale spouting - everything a whale sighting should be.

There are estimated to be only 10,000-15,000 Humpback Whales worldwide, about 5% of their pre intensive-whaling level. They winter around Iceland and summer in the Caribbean, so it is particularly unusual to see one in July in Iceland.

And seeing this whale really was very special indeed. The whale was a youngster, maybe six months old, and it is because he was a youngster that he - or perhaps she - was in the shallow waters of Faxa Floi, the bay of Reykjavik, and not the other side of the Atlantic in the Caribbean. The life expectancy of humpback whales is ninety-five years, so if this baby plays his cards right and keeps clear of any whaling ships that might take to the seas in the twenty-first century he should outlive every one of the humans watching him. This whale has an impressively high spout (a complete contrast with the Minke Whales). When first spotted he was effectively resting, and just occasionally diving. Later he seemed to wake up, pushed the whole of his tail into the air and twisted it, and a few minutes later made a deep-dive.

In the summer of 2003 Iceland announced a resumption of whaling, with a "harvest" of Minke Whales. Iceland's stated reason for whaling is "scientific whaling" , a reason which the British press regards as bunk.

I find whaling very hard to justify, and reported my feelings on a web site I was running during the summer. I was swamped with e-mails from angry Icelanders telling me that I had got it wrong, and in fact whaling was a perfectly humane, necessary and proper thing to do, as well as being legal. Possibly one e-mail was from a regular reader of my web site - but the source of most e-mails appeared to be an orchestrated pro-whaling campaign which had found my web-site and decided to try to correct what Icelanders saw as the error of my ways. In all the e-mails the tenor was that whales eat cod, and that in order to maintain cod stocks, whaling (implicitly at a level to deplete the whale stocks, though this never actually stated) must go ahead - though curiously one e-mail states that only 6% of the Minke Whale's diet is cod. I am amused that Iceland and Icelanders are so thin-skinned about the issue that they are searching for obscure web-sites (ie mine) which make moderate criticism of whaling, and taking the time to write e-mails of protest. It seems to me that it must be difficult to defend the indefensible, though the e-mailers are having a good go.

The story was widely reported in the British press, for example in the unemotional Financial Times:

Iceland faces protests over new whalingFinancial Times August 23/24 2003

"Sales of fresh meat from the first Icelandic whales to be harpooned for 14 years were brisk in the supermarkets of Reykjavik this week, but outside the small island nation the decision to resume whaling has been greeted with less enthusiasm.

Foreign governments and environmental and animal welfare groups have protested ..."

The article points out that the US is reviewing Iceland's resumption of whaling under the 1967 Pelly amendment, which permits trade sanctions against nations deemed to have violated

International Whaling Commission rules - though it suggests that while Iceland has breached rules the chance of the US imposing sanctions against Iceland is remote.

Icelanders do passionately believe that whaling is right, and that they should be killing whales. It is virtually a matter of national pride, and I rather think Icelanders are prepared to nail their colours to the mast on this issue. They think the rest of the world is soft in the head for opposing this harvest of the bounty of the seas. The situation is made worst by the urban myths circulating in Reykjavik, which don't stand up to scrutiny. One is that the numbers of whales, particularly the Minke, are at an unsustainably high level, another is that the Minke eats substantial quantities of cod, and another that it is legal for Iceland to whale. All three statements are set out as myths by the British press and for anyone who cares to look at it by the scientific and legal literature also.

I suggest that the starting point for thinking about whaling is that Iceland has, according to the FT, broken international law. I trust the FT to get its facts right. Whatever the rights and wrongs of whaling, Iceland has shown its disregard for the international community and international law in breaking international law. Of course Iceland has done this before during the Cod Wars. Then Iceland broke international law in order to prevent non-Icelanders fishing what were at that time international waters. Iceland "won" the Cod Wars (or wasn't brought to book for breaking international laws) when the law was changed in line with Iceland's claim. And just as most Icelanders don't believe that Iceland acted disgracefully during the Cod Wars, most Icelanders don't see any reason why Iceland should take the least notice of the rest of the world on whaling. Yet the simplest objection to Iceland whaling is the categorical one that whaling is illegal in terms of the international agreements to which Iceland has signed up.

A second objection to whaling is that killing a whale is often a particularly painful business, and a form of slaughter we would not accept for farm animals. We are very keen to ensure that cows are quickly and humanely slaughtered in abattoirs. Icelanders point out that we accept the harvest of millions of fish, and that these die in a way which isn't very nice. Maybe, but a whale is a large-brained mammal, while a fish is a fish. And we are now the twenty-first century, and are moving away from the ethic of mankind being, like the rest of the natural world, red in tooth and claw.

A third objection is that whaling isn't essential to Iceland's economy. Certainly cod is crucial , and cod stocks are fragile at the moment. Iceland's desire for a resumption in whaling is primarily in the hope of boosting the cod stock by reducing the numbers of a predator, the Minke Whale. The intention (at least as implied by Icelanders) is to slaughter enough Minke Whales to substantially deplete their numbers. But this isn't going to work. While the low level of cod stocks is a horribly complicated issue, it is not as simple as saying that cod is depleted because Minkes eat cod. And while the whale's carcass has an economic value, and much would doubtless be eaten by Icelanders and others, the Icelandic economy doesn't actually need this income stream to remain prosperous.

A fourth objection is that there are environmental issues in hunting an animal where numbers are depleted. The Minke Whale is far more numerous than a few years ago, but is still well below its previous maximum numbers, a fact clearly stated in the British press and with impecable academic support, but a fact Icelanders louldly dispute. Other whales - admitedly not part of the present resumption of whaling - are on the brink of extinction.

But Iceland seems to feel that she will get away with whaling without an international backlash. One pro-whaling e-mailer pointed out that Norway resumed whaling without a noticeable blip in its tourism industry. Yet Iceland is facing talk of a boycot by Britain of tourist travel to Iceland (reported in the FT, as above), and calls for British companies to think twice before doing business with Iceland. I don't recall this happening when Norway started whaling. Maybe Iceland will find there is an economic backlash that hurts.

Chapter Six - Tourism

Iceland was voted top destination 2003 by Observer newspaper readers. I'm not surprised - Iceland is a very special place. With lots of media coverage of Iceland in Britain, and the low-fares airline Iceland Express delivering a good service from London, Iceland is set to see a tourist boom.

Iceland Express is much in the Icelandic news. They have taken Icelandair - the state airline - to the monopolies and mergers commission in Iceland - and won! Icelandair have a near total monolpoly on flights (ie transport) to and from Iceland, and charge the extortionate rates of monopolies. Iceland Express have come along on the London and Copenhagen routes with low prices, and Icelandair have responded by dropping some of their prices below Iceland Express's level - in effect Icelandair are making a loss on these routes so that they can drive Iceland Express out of business.

The ruling is complex, and it is also Icelandic in its logic. Basically Icelandair are now required to charge prices which are higher than Iceland Express. They do have better times than Iceland Express and Heathrow slots, so maybe they can compete on quality. Maybe. But I guess the champagne is flowing freely at Iceland Express.

Once in Iceland the "Golden Circle" is the trip just about every tourist manages: Kerith (crater), Geysir (the original geysir from which they all take their name; in English we're supposed to spell it geyser), Gullfoss (waterfall), Thingvellir (site of the Icelandic parliament and national park). These major tourist draws are each one in their own way unbeatable. The other big tourist draw is the "blue lagoon" outdoor pool - in all ways unique.

Tourists can also find the most unexpected places of interest. For example Nesjavellir is the geothermal power station for Reykjavik from which the city's hot water comes, The plumes of steam and acres of steaming ground means it should be used as a James Bond film set.

On one and the same day I saw two faces to tourism in Iceland.

One was a guy I met at the morning coffee break at a conference at the University of Iceland. The conference is using two hotels. There's the very respectable Leifur Eiriksson, where I stayed last year, which is a comfortable hotel in a central location. And there's the Holiday Inn, which offers a cheaper but doubtless similarly respectable alternative. Now this guy is not staying at either of them, but rather at the Salvation Army hostel. I imagine this is clean and tidy as everything in Reykjavik. If he were in his 20s I might even have thought this was a sensible way to deal with the costs of Reykjavik. But this guy was mid 50s. He had brought food with him from England, and was tucking into the conference coffee break's free cake as if he hadn't eaten since he left England. He was physically in Iceland, but his constrained finances meant he wasn't planning to leave Reykjavik, which means he really wouldn't see much of the country. And he certainly won't experience the Icelandic horse, or the blue lagoon, or any other of the fun things Iceland has to offer. A shame.

A little later in Eymundsson's I overheard a middle-aged lady buying some books. Now Iceland produces some super books, but at prices that have to be seen to be believed. If costs matter to you at all you look in the bookshop, then go into the internet caf‚ 50 yards away, order the same book on-line through Amazon, and pay the UK or US price which is about half the Icelandic price. The books would be delivered to your door at home in a very few days (indeed probably before you get home), and you don't have to carry them. Basically a foreigner buying a book in an Icelandic bookshop is, well lets say comfortably off. She was also American, which meant that the sales transaction was conducted in that carrying voice that is so much a part of American self confidence. "Would you like a tax refund?" the shop assistant asked. "No thank you". "But its 700 krona!" (about œ5.40, $8.10). "Thank you for telling me, but it won't make me any richer and I couldn't be bothered".

I've no doubt Iceland prefers the second sort of tourist. And for Iceland a few tourists and wealthy makes more sense than a lot of tourists and poor. The American's œ5.40 donation to

the Icelandic economy - which is what not taking your tax refund amounts to - is a largesse that the Brit in the Salvation Army hostel won't be giving.

It does raise questions on whether tourism is to be regarded as an industry. I rather think the answer for Iceland is that yes it is. The high costs in Iceland are almost exclusively for the things which tourists have to buy. Hotels are top notch prices - but no Icelander ever uses a hotel as they have relatives and friends everywhere. Excursions are expensive - but Icelanders have their own cars. Car hire is expensive - but no Icelander ever hires a car. Flights to and from Iceland are expensive (save for Iceland Express), though they are cheaper in the winter when few tourists travel, so Icelanders aren't hit as badly as tourists. Alcohol is seriously expensive, but in a country where prohibition lasted from 1912 until 1989 I suppose this is inevitable. And maybe a consequence is that it keeps the lager louts out. Restaurants are reputed to be expensive, but I'm not sure that I agree - they are a lot cheaper than London prices. And prices in supermarkets - well, you get used to them. When you've just paid 299 ISK (œ2.40) for a few lettuce leaves you jolly well enjoy them. Cars cost a lot - pretty much double UK prices, but then housing costs are quite a bit cheaper than Britain, so maybe it balances out. Icelanders might like to grumble that everything in Iceland is expensive, but they don't do so badly. Tourists however are skinned alive. And if you see tourists as an industry, why not skin tourists alive?

At least it stops too many people coming, which keeps Reykjavik crime free and Europe's last wilderness relatively undamaged.

Accommodation in Iceland is often in short supply, at least in the summer. The better hotels usually have a room, but at a price. Mid-range guest houses tend to be full. So that leaves youth hostels, school dormatories which double as summer hostels, and camping for hardy folk.

Once tourists have done Reykjavik, the Golden Circle, the Blue Lagoon, and a few other destinations around Reykjavik a trip to the north is likely to be attractive. Akureyri is the big town in the north - big in Icelandic terms. It's a long way to Akureyri - about 250 miles. On my trip I stopped at Glambaer, which is a nineteenth century farmhouse, turf-built with a grass roof. A stop somewhere makes sense.

For tourists Akureyri is a pleasant town, but the big draw is the proximity of lake Myvatn. The grand tour is to Godafoss, around the lake, around and beyond to the volcanic area. The falls are great, and as indescribable as most natural wonders.

On my trip the range and quality of bird-sightings at Myvatn was second to none. Great Northern Diver (singing, if that's the word for the strange sound this bird makes). Red Necked Phalarope and chick at four foot range. Slavonian Grebe, again very close. Merganser. Harlequin's Duck. Barrow's Goldeneye. Lots of others. All these birds can be found elsewhere, most in Britain, but I know of nowhere where it is possible to see them all within a couple of hours and up close. But however enthusiastic you might be about the birds, no-one can speak of Myvatn without mentioning the midges. They bash into a car with a sound like falling rain. When out and about they are an ever-present nuisance. A face net is recommended and worn by most tourists, certainly including me.

Once the birds have been seen there's the sulfateras and volcanic activity of Krafla volcano, which includes a very recent lava flow, with steam rising through it in plumes. There are clear notices warning of the danger, but everyone ignores them.

East from Myvatn the road runs into the central dessert. In the middle of the wilderness is Grimsstadir, an Icelandic farm in the desolation that covers much of NE Iceland. What is remarkable is that a family are making a living farming there, and have done for generations. Accommodation is available at the farm - pretty basic, but all part of the genuine Icelandic experience. Nearby is Dettifoss. This fall is the most powerful in Europe, the water dark with basaltic dust and contasting with the pure white of the rising spray There is a sense of power here - it is beautiful, but also raw. In theory the road goes on to Asbyrgi, a canyon I would

very much have liked to see, but the road was just too ghastly. For on;y the second time in Iceland I decided that a road was too bad and turned back.

From Grimsstadir on to Egilstadir, the main town of the east, the northern road is better than the southern road, and in view of the volume of roadworks will all be surfaced in a couple of years. But there are still some rough stretches, and my car grounded once, briefly, and pulled free with an interesting scrunch.

Chapter Seven - History

Iceland has a lot of history but an absence of ruins. For a Brit familiar with a mediaeval church in every village, used to living and working in Georgian and Victorian houses, and familiar with evidence of the past just about everywhere, the lack of tangible history can take some getting used to.

For example Skalholt is the main bishopric of Iceland and effectively Iceland's Canterbury, but the church building there is brand-spanking new - because in Icelandic fashion churches are rebuilt every couple of generations. Exceptionally at Skalholt there is an archaeological site which is presently being excavated, and a few remains in the museum, but the overwhelming impression that the visitor to Skalholt gets is not of its antiquity but of its newness.

Yet there are surprises. Take Reykholt. This is where Snorri lived and was murdered (1241) - that's Snorri Sturluson, one of the great writers, scholars and politicians Europe has produced. The museum at Reykholt really is very good - but what knocked me for six is Snorri's bath-tub. We've nothing left in Britain from Geoffrey Chaucer's life, and precious little for William Shakespeare, but here in Reykholt is of all things Snorri's bath tub. It's a stone lined pool fed by a longish channel from a hot spring. The water temperature strikes me as on the hot side, but apparently people do still use it to bathe, and I was tempted. This is a most curious link to the thirteenth century.

Even more surprising than the bath tub is the quality of the mediaeval studies library at Reykholt, and at which on several visits I was the only scholar. This is a serious research library, and situated literally in the middle of nowhere. I suppose Reykholt could be compared with Iona as a church retreat plus study centre out in the wilds - but with the key difference that there has been a continuous tradition of study at Reykholt, while Iona is a modern resurrection. The Prose Edda, Heimskringla and Egil's Saga were all written here, and much else. In Britain we have a very Mediterranean-based cultural world picture, in which the idea of Iceland as a centre of learning really doesn't fit. Yet when Britain was in the grip of the Middle Ages, Iceland was experiencing a Northern Renaissance, which with a little nurturing might have given the world a two-centuries head start into the modern age.

Iceland has some super historical sites that Icelanders seem to undervalue. One of these is Stong.

I had a great trip to Stong, though the start was not promising. Rain that morning was heavy, and at times torrential, but then this is Iceland. I was heading out for Thjorsadalur and Stong, and it was becoming clear that it was a longer journey than I had expected - but again, this is Iceland, where everything is further than seems possible. And when I pulled in at Selfoss to check opening times for Stong, the tourist office staff somehow managed to imply that they couldn't understand why anyone would want to go there.

But the rain turned off suddenly, leaving a bright day with breathtaking views. Breathtaking is a bit of a clich‚, and I'm not at all sure that any views can be described easily or even at all. These were very special. The Thjosa - the Bull River - is a large river, as wide as the Thames at Dartford or the Tyne at Tynemouth. It runs on a lava base formed in what was one of the world's biggest ever lava-flows about 8,000 years ago, and therefore has an un-eroded course full of islands and jagged chunks of lava.

Then into the Stong access road, which is a good excuse for a digression on Icelandic roads. Of course some are excellent, and there is a massive programme of road-building. The road up Thjorsadale is one of the excellent ones, brand new, with stretches of the old gravel road sometimes running parallel. But many Icelandic roads are as far as Brits are concerned unimaginably bad. You've got to see them to believe them. I met an American in Reykjavik who was going to hire a car to drive round Iceland. I said something about the road quality, to which he replied that the roads in Chicago are terrible. He then said he had been to Scotland where the roads are really bad, indeed they just couldn't be any worse, and Iceland could have nothing on the terrible roads of Scotland. I managed not to tell him I'ld lived in Scotland

for nine years and could compare the roads there with Iceland - and even Scotland's worse road, whatever that might be, is head and shoulders above the Icelandic standard. I now imagine him duly humbled by the roads he will have found in Iceland.

For the final stretch to Stong the only access is 5 miles along a road which is one of Iceland's category two roads (and supposedly therefore not even the worst category for an ordinary car). The road was 5 miles of car-juddering, bone-shaking ghastliness. No one in Britain would take a 4x4 on such a "road" - they would be worried about stone chips on the expensive paintwork or even damage to the suspension and steering. And as for the Land Rovers and Discoveries that run around Wimbledon with a pair of clean green wellies in the boot, well they and their drivers would just give up and go home. Imagine a mud track, transversely corrugated like a ploughed field, covered with stones and boulders of very varying size, and deeply potholed. That's the surface, and its much worse than I've seen off the beaten track anywhere else I've been. Then add the hills - one on this stretch must have been 1:3 - the blind summits, bends, and drops at the side of the road. This road had a novel twist - about 2 miles of driving across sand. Not golden sand of British summer holidays, of Margate or Bamburgh, but rather volcanic sand, a mix of rocks of varying sizes overlayed with grit. There really wasn't a road, just a direction. The trick seemed to be to avoid where most of the other cars had been as that was where the potholes were deepest.

At the end of this truly awful road was a very sedate car park, with three very ordinary cars there and a very old bus. That's right, a bus, which I can only assume had come in by flying saucer.

Stong must be one of the world's biggy archaeological sites, though just about no-one seems to have heard of it. A bit like Nemrut Dagi in Turkey, another hard-to-get-to and stupendous archaeological site which no-one seems to have heard of. In 1104 Mount Hekla erupted and buried under tephra the farm at Stong and a couple of dozen other farms. In fact everything in a 30 mile radius was destroyed. Archaeology has therefore been presented with the remarkably good remains of farms of 1104. This is the clearest archaeological guide to how people were then living in Iceland, and throughout the Germanic world - a farm in England of 1104 would not have been so very different.

Stong is additionally remarkable in that we know the names of people who lived there. In the tenth century it had been the farm of Gaukur Trandilsson, a farmer and warrior who seems to have managed a remarkably prosperous life in what must have been a very comfortable farm house. A mediaeval ballad tells of an affair between Gaukur and a woman in a neighbouring farm, Steinastadir - neighbouring in Icelandic terms, miles away in ours. The affair got out of hand, and Gaukur was killed in a duel with Asgrimur Ellida-Grimsson, who was a relative of the woman at Steinastadir (some people say her brother, some her husband) - and as it happens he was also Gaukur's foster brother, so it was a real family feud. The weapons for the duel were axes - the real intention of such Viking duels was that one or both of the men would be killed and the problem thereby solved. Asgrimur won, and as victor, Asgrimur would have kept the axe used by Gaukur, which would in effect become an heirloom in his family.

Icelandic genealogies have been preserved in amazing detail, and we know that fifty years later Asgrimur had a direct descendant, Thorhallur Asgrimsson - either his son or more likely his grandson, - who in the 1150s went on a crusade to Jerusalem led by the Viking Earl of Orkney. On return to Orkney en route for Iceland it seems that Thorhallur and his Icelandic companions became a little bored (if Orkney on a wet evening then was anything like Shetland now that's easy to understand!) and decided to break in to the ancient burial mound of Maes Howe, presumably looking for treasure. It seems they found no treasure (unless they kept very quiet about it), but they then spent quite a time carving graffiti on the interior walls of the tomb. When the mound was first excavated in 1861 the Viking graffiti was found, including the inscription:

These runes were carved by the greatest rune-master in the west, with the axe once owned by Gaukur Trandilsson in the south of Iceland.

With real-life stories like this it is easy to see where JRR Tolkien got his ideas from! It does seem quite amazing that the story of Gaukur and his duel and the Maes Howe graffiti can be linked, through Thorhallur's pride in owning an axe which his ancestor had won in single combat. And Thorhallur's own achievement in travelling from Iceland to Jerusalem and back again is quite a saga in its own right!

A few days after visiting Stong I discovered that there is a pub in Reykjavik called the Gaukur of Stong. So the Gaukur story lives on in popular memory. The pub seems a little on the lively side, but perhaps today's Vikings are not quite into axe fights, even on Friday nights!

Stong is sited in rugged countryside. A half mile away is an impressive gorge which I'ld like to explore better some day. In the area I saw Harlequin Ducks, the bird that every foreign bird-watcher in Iceland looks for, three of the battling along a very fast flowing stream. On my visit to Stong the flies were maddening and did not encourage lingering. The area of Stong can never have been particularly fertile, and no-one seems to be farming it now that it is coated with ash from Mount Hekla. Yet Stong was a large and comfortable home.

Back along five miles of juddering semi-road, the Icelanders have reconstructed Stong on a site close to the main road - and gone out of their way only to do what is supported by the historic record rather than create a Disney-style long-house. The result is fascinating. Among the sources they have used for information on doors and other timber are Viking remains in Greenland, which in some cases have been better preserved by the ice there than anywhere in Europe.

Stong is a great site. Yet it is dwarfed by the nature around it. In the vicinity is Hjalparfoss, yet another superb Icelandic waterfall. And everywhere there are views of Mount Hekla, today snow-covered and at no time completely clear of clouds. It seems to have a big eruption about every 30 years, the most recent in 2000, some more violent than others. Since 1104 it has blown its top off no less than 15 times. The 1947 eruption lasted 13 months. It is a popular climb and can be done in about eight hours I'm told ... though not the safest of climbs now, and becoming less safe year by year as 2030 approaches.

Chapter Eight - Icelanders

Iceland is doing its bit for South American prosperity by drinking coffee.

Now I drink coffee, and rather a lot of it. I get through a 200g (large) jar of instant in just over a month, and perhaps another 100g or so a month in filter plus cups out, say getting on for 4kg per year. My friends tell me I'm a coffee addict. Yet in fact my consumption is an example of exceptional moderation. The average Icelander gets through 12kg a year. And if this is the average many must drink more, so what the heavy Icelandic coffee drinker must get through beggars belief.

It seems that this has been the national drink for centuries. Even in the eighteenth century every farmhouse had a coffee grinder. Today Iceland has discovered quality coffee and caf‚ culture. Coffee in Iceland is good. It can also be lethal. It is often strong, and when served after a meal in a restaurant can reach a strength which is almost intoxicating. Maybe in a country that was dry, coffee took the place of alcohol. Italy cannot match this brew. A double espresso in Turin is nothing to the punch delivered by an Icelandic coffee. And there are no Italian-style little coffee cups here. Coffee is strong, good, smooth, long, black and strong, and did I say strong? And there are as many free top-ups as can be managed. It's a bit like the Birmingham tandoori that reputedly offers its hottest curry free to anyone who can eat it.

Television feels as if its only just made it to Iceland. Iceland in theory has a number of channels, but the reality is that many people only have one, the state channel - and that one channel transmits evening only. Lots of the programmes are in Eglish with Icelandic sub-titles, though news and weather are in Icelandic - which is the closest I came to an incentive for learning Icelandic. One evening full up with pepperonni pizza and claret I found myself watching the Icelandic evening news. After one lead international story (on Iran) the news switched abruptly to Icelandic news. The big story of the day was something about a Keflavik company that is marketing Harlequin Duck eggs for the discerning Reykjavik pallet. Then a story about Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant, with a map showing the spread of pollution to Iceland. Basically the story is that Britain has polluted Iceland. A follow-up showed pictures of what was probably Britain's Pontefract power station and focused on Britain causing acid rain in Norway. Then Harry Potter, with the new novel released today. I've been surprised at the prominence that JKR gets in the bookshops - after all this is a children's book written in English, and can reasonably be read by children who speak English. Perhaps the reality is that Icelandic children can read English almost as easily as Icelandic.

Spending a summer in Iceland means staying in a flat with an Icelandic landlord and landlady. Typically Icelandic houses have basements (often in fact a ground floor) which might be a flat, an office, a workshop, or utility space, linkes to the main house above. So I was living immediately below my landlord and landlady, and I got to glimpse how Icelanders live.

When my landlord and landlady went on holiday they left me in charge of watering the geraniums. By geraniums I mean what we are now supposed to call red pelagoniums, and in fact just a couple of stunted specimens. I've grown geraniums in Northumberland and got halfway decent results, though nothing to what the Mediterranean can produce. The Icelandic specimens are going to flower, but they really need temperatures of 30 degrees or more and must be freezing in Reykjavik. I've been asked to water them, and I'm doing as I'm told. But they're drowning. In the Med, geraniums flourish in pots of hot, dry dust. The best thing that could be done for these sopping wet specimens would be to never water them again. Let them dry out completely.

By contrast the arctic lupins in the Icelandic countryside continue to bloom, with great carpets of blue for mile after mile. And hardly anyone in Iceland bothers to grow them in their gardens. They could have the world's best lupins - but Icelanders seem to think they are a weed.

My landlord and landlady have also asked me to pick up their mail and put it on a table (out of sight of the glass panels in the front-door) - and to be aware that their house is empty and at risk from burglars. But I'm not to be hasty in hitting anyone who comes in, as their neighbour

and son and perhaps others might come in. So in fact I'll have to assume that anyone who appers should be there, unless they are actually wearing a balaclava and carrying a bag marked swag.

Today at about five someone indeed came in - and tried to leave after a few minutes. But they had problems with the front door. It must be something to do with the Icelandic psyche that most doors are wooden, don't fit properly, and are a pain to open and close. My flat's front door takes a shoulder or a foot to open it. There is a knack to closing it, and I've mastered it to the extent that I now manage second or third or fourth time. Never first. The main door to the building clearly has the same sort of problem, and I've heard my landlord and landlady slamming it. But whoever visited today really had problems. Serious problems. I reckon it took them ten minutes to get the door locked behind them. PVC double glazing and doors don't seem to have made it to Iceland.

Visitors to Iceland often get the idea that Icelanders don't have a sense of humour. They might just be right.

Icelanders have a very serious view on life. Maybe months of Gothic night every winter has its impact. Their television news is read in a monotone, even when it is clearly a good-news story. Their television weathermen must feel they will be sacked if they ever smile. Ask an Icelander a question and you will get an answer - a full and comprehensive one, so make sure you have the time. Icelanders are at their worst when talking about local writers, painters, sculptors and the like. Invariably they start: "the world-famous prize-winning writer X lived here". Don't they realise that if you have to say someone is world-famous, then by definition they are not?

In England we tell jokes about the Scots and the Irish. In America there's a fair few Irish jokes. Even in Ireland they tell County Kerry jokes. In Iceland they tell jokes about Norwegians and Hafnies.

Norwegians are seen as Vikings who haven't mellowed. They are seen as over-fit, over health-conscious, over sophisticated. Which probably proves that no-one in Iceland ever goes to Norway.

Hafnies are the folk who live in Hafnafjordur, the next town to Reykjavik and its poor relation. Apparently in Hafnafjordur they tip-toe past the chemist's shop so as not to wake the sleeping pills. People there go shopping with ladders because they know the prices are high.

One Icelanders never seem to tire of is "What do you do if you are lost in an Icelandic forest?" The answer is "Stand up". To relish this joke you need to know that "forest" in Iceland is birch and willow scrub not more than three or four feet high. To laugh on the 100th telling of this lame joke you have to be an Icelander.

The biggest joke is directed at foreigners. It concerns hand-knitted Icelandic jumpers. Iceland has a centuries-old tradition of knitting, some distinctive patterns, and super quality wool. They also maintain the home-industry of knitting. Their jumpers are great quality, ideally suited for the Icelandic climate, a genuine Icelandic masterpiece of art and utility . and in Icelandic popular culture worn only by half-witted yokels. No Icelander will wear an Icelandic jumper. Ever. They are now exclusively worn by foreigners.

Shops hide certain products. Toilet rolls are now on display - apparently a few years ago they were kept under the counter. But Icelanders seem mighty self-conscious buying such things. At the supermarket check-out the regular question is "Would you like anything else?" Now I found this a puzzle. I've just unloaded my basket onto the conveyor belt. What can the check-out do? Run round and get me another carton of milk if I've forgotten it? Or am I expected to say, "Yes please, I'll have a dozen of your horribly expensive polythene carrier bags"? Then finally the guy in front of me at the check out said yes, he did want something else. And a rather small drawer was opened beneath the till to reveal the contraband. One half was full of tobacco, the other half condoms. All unpriced. Clearly if you're buying illicit products you mustn't worry about the price.

Icelanders have a complicated view of alcohol. For some a bottle of wine is clearly the ultimate sign of culture, an indulgence picked up on holidays in the Mediterranean. And a bottle of wine presented by a visitor to an Icelandic home seems to be a most acceptable gift (and far too precious to be uncorked in front of the visitor). Icelanders pay anything from œ50 to œ250 a bottle in a restaurant for what looks like a bottle of unremarkable wine (I didn't sample it - for this price I want vintage.) Wine is in effect a rather naughty indulgence. Ordinary shops cannot sell it - alcohol is only available through state-owned off-licenses. There aren't many of these - and outside Reykjavik they tend to be not a shop but rather an alcove in a hardware shop or similar. Opening hours are short, and the state monopoly keeps prices astronomic. Yes, wine is cultured, decadent, reassuringly expensive, proof that you are affluent, and really wouldn't be worth drinking if it were cheap. But the reality is that Icelanders drink very little wine, and don't know their Chianti from their Claret.

Alcohol has another function in Iceland's night life. It is drunk with a view to getting drunk. I'm informed that if you drink the cheapest stuff available, œ80 will see you under the table.

Iceland does not have a class structure that Karl Marx would recognise. There is no proletariat. Specifically there is no large class of factory workers, as there are hardly any factories. Those few working in fishing, fish packing and farming are paid good wages - unless they are foreigners who are allowed to do the work for low wages. Fish is where much of Iceland's wealth comes from, and the Icelandic workers receive their reward. Around Iceland virtually everyone is in what we would regard as middle-class jobs. Shops and restaurants tend to be staffed by young people and students who are doing the jobs on a short-term basis, just passing through as it were - you just about never see anyone over 25 in these jobs. Rather just about everyone is a professional. In Iceland it is not the bourgeoisie that has withered away, but rather the proletariat. And no-one does what Marx would recognise as a proper day's work.

It is very hard to get a feel on peoples' wealth. This is a country where peoples' greatest aspirations are to climb Icelandic mountains, spend a week camping (summer or winter), cook their evening meal on a barbeque, and get geraniums to bloom virtually on the arctic circle. And you don't need to be rich to do any of these. Statistically Iceland is the world's seventh wealthiest nation. And most of the top six are Gulf sheikhdoms where wealth comes from oil, which will soon run out, so they really don't count. Icelanders are rich in global terms. Cars in Reykjavik are a very mixed bag, though there is an argument that the roads are so ghastly that a car will get wrecked anyway, so why not run around Reykjavik in an old banger? Outside Reykjavik the 4x4 is king, and there are some seriously expensive vehicles on the road, and owners wealthy enough not to be bothered about getting their toy damaged by driving hundreds of miles on tracks and through fords deep enough to sweep a 4x4 down-river. For while a brand-new 4x4 will certainly manage Iceland's interior "roads" (I'm looking for an alternative word to road - some of them aren't even tracks, just land you drive over) and even get across the rivers (crossings cannot reasonably be called fords - they are long drives sometimes of dozens of yards through far from shallow rivers) it won't be scratch and bash free at the end of the trip.

Housing is all very middle-classed. There are very few really big houses, though it seems the rich go for second and third homes rather than one big house. Which means many Icelanders have at least a bungalow somewhere outside Reykjavik.

One of my regular e-mailers sent me a line on the difficulties of buying a railway ticket in Peru. That' one problem that doesn't exist in Iceland, as there are no railways! There is however an old steam engine preserved by the harbour which was used to haul stone to make the groins. Long-distance busses are rudimentary. It is possible to do the loop, but an Icelander at Reykholt told this as if it was an example of the madness of foreigners. It would take at least 4 days to get round, with lots of long journeys, and on routes where there is not necessarily even a bus a day. I guess to go right round the ring road in a car would be 20 to 24 hours of driving. Iceland is big!

But the e-mail on the difficulties of buying a railway ticket in Peru made a sharp contrast with Iceland. Everything in Iceland works. The idea of queuing for ages to buy a ticket would be incomprehensible to people here.

And this sort of level of comfort and order is just great.

Chapter Nine - Icelandic

Diglossia rules in Iceland. Even triglossia. Polyglossia. Everyone, just everyone speaks English. Most of the television is in English. Everyone is exposed to English for hours every day. There are lots of people here who speak better English than the English. Fluent, idiomatic, professional. To trump this linguistic excellence most Icelanders do nearly as well in Danish. And they can understand pretty much all the other Scandinavian languages. Faroese is the closest to Icelandic, and for this reason Icelanders seem to feel a special kinship to the Faroese people. The story is that when the immigrants were travelling to Iceland the seas were rather rough, and those who were very sea sick stopped off at the Faroes. So the Faroese are the closest relatives of the Icelanders. And if you speak Danish you can of course understand Norwegian (which, lets face it, is Danish, just don't tell a Norwegian he's speaking Danish) and Swedish. Oh, and most learn German at school. Linguistically this is an impressive list of languages. But it's not a reason for Brits to bewail their linguistic ineptitude. Icelanders need to speak languages because no-one speaks Icelandic. Brits don't because the world either speaks English or is learning it.

Learning Icelandic would be tough. Given that all Icelanders speak English, when are you ever going to speak Icelandic? The textbooks are not brilliant either. And Icelandic has a volume of grammar that makes Latin look a grammar-free zone.

Icelandic today is as near as we are ever going to get to hearing English as it was spoken a thousand years ago. The Brits and their descendants worldwide are of course of much the same stock as the Icelanders. And Icelandic, because of its isolation, has remained relative unchanged since the first Vikings pulled up their ships on Reykjavik shore in 874AD - while English has been bashed and battered over the centuries. Only two languages in the world have true English th sounds - English and Icelandic. And there's no sound in Icelandic very different to the sounds of English. Sure, they've got a lot of grammar, but they are doing pretty much English things with it. And the vocabulary isn't all that hard. If I wanted to learn Icelandic it would be possible. But bottom line is that much as I like Iceland I cannot think of any need to speak Icelandic. In Italy a few tourist phrases help a lot. In Iceland you either speak fluent Icelandic or you speak English.

For centuries people have been predicting the death of Icelandic. And for centuries the prophets of imminent language death have been shown to be wrong. Now Iceland feels confident of her language, and proud of it. Icelandic is stronger than it has been since Iceland was a Viking Commonwealth. Everyone assumes that Icelandic is going from strength to strength. And as a linguist I find it nice to think that Icelandic is secure.

Then I meet a couple of Icelanders - Valur (with a rolled final r, that English tongues can copy but English ears can't really hear) and Jon. In their twenties. English faultless. So good they are making the sort of mistakes that native speakers would make. Okay, they are good even by Icelandic standards, but they are not such a rarity here either. And they are the death knoll of Icelandic.

There are no past examples of languages surviving the sort of diglossia that now exists in Iceland. None. Nought. Nix. Nil. Zilch. Not one. Icelanders love their language and culture, and will not credit that it is under threat. Yet every example from historical linguistics points to the demise of Icelandic. The chips are down for Icelandic. Within a hundred years it will be pretty much gone - that's my prediction. Enjoy while you can.

Chapter Ten - The Countryside

Iceland has a lot of countryside. Not British farmed countryside with fields and hedges, a footpath every few hundred yards, and a road every mile or so, but real wilderness.

Maps of Iceland are not ideal. Curiously Icelandic cartography started very well. Indeed some of the early cartography of Iceland is surprisingly good. For example the Kaerius map of 1598 and the Hondius of 1607 are roughly equivalent in quality to maps by these cartographers for Britain. However cartography doesn't seem to have moved with the times, and maps from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are dire. The standard mistake is to put Iceland far too far north so that the Arctic Circle cuts through it - when in fact Iceland sits just below the Circle. Thus the whole of Iceland is out by a hundred miles or more.

Modern maps of Iceland are okay but don't sparkle. The scale for the whole country in maps which can be bought in shops is 1:250,000 (compare OS green series at 1:25,000); often there is a lack of clarity as to precisely where a named item is; they are not up to date - particularly noticeable in the context of the programme of asphalting former gravel roads, which is not reflected by the maps. All in all the mapping could be regarded as adequate rather than good.

So exploring the Icelandic countryside is just that - exploring. No-one in Britain is advised to go walking in the hills without a map of 1:50,000 or better - but those readily available in Iceland are at just a fifth of this detail.

Yet the countryside is incredibly rewarding. For example a few miles east of Reykholt is Hraumfossa. Here a sizeable river - the Hvita - gushes from beneath the lava to fall in a series of torrents approaching half a mile in width into a gorge. The cumulative experience really is quite something, and as with so much in Iceland it is unique. My guidebook gives just a couple of lines to this remarkable waterfall, and it is actually hard to imagine what more it could have said. As with so much in Iceland you have to see it. Or a few miles west of Reykholt is a hot spring , which shoots out 180 litres per SECOND of water at a tad below boiling point - 97 degrees. It is used as the hot water supply for Borgarnes and Akranes. Again you've got to see it.

Waterfalls are everywhere. Gullfoss, Godafoss, Dettifoss feature elsewhere in this account. Another one lurking in the Icelandic countryside is Glymur.

This waterfall is over 600 feet, and the tallest in Europe. It is situated in a deep gorge, and is absolutely vertiginously spectacular!. 600 feet is a lot. The summit of Beachy Head in Sussex is 535 feet. There are Fulmars nesting in the gorge, with the result that you can look down hundreds of feet onto a circling bird. The gorge is very narrow, which somehow emphasises the depth. Lonely Planet is less than enthusiastic about this fall. Maybe the point is that the site is as impressive as the fall itself. This is Europe's highest fall, and also one of the deepest gorges. It is the gorge that is as special as the fall. It is about an hour and a half's stiff climb up to the fall, and there is nothing resembling a proper path.

And while I'm talking about waterfalls don't let me forget Hengifoss, which is Iceland's third highest waterfall. Or one thousand and one other waterfalls seen in all parts of Iceland, all of which would be major tourist sights in Britain. It is easy to get an overload of waterfalls, but they really are magnificent. Britain and the continent are too weathered to have the big falls.

The countryside begins immediately outside Reykjavik. Close to Reykjavik is Helgafell. When I climbed it it was .... let me say Icelandic. The weather deteriorated from overcast to high winds to rain to hail. The path got steeper and steeper. And in this Gothic, Tolkilnesk landscape the sumit was reached, with mist and rain and hail, and a growing sense that even decent quality walking boots aren't waterproof when you step in puddles deeper than the tops of the boots.

Without the pollution of most of the populated world the views in Iceland are just superb. When the weather is good - and it sometimes is - the views across Reykjavik bay - Faxa Floi - are rather remarkable. Snaefellsness is big and clear. It's 85 miles away, but looks 10. You are supposed to be able to see Calais from Dover, a mere 26 miles, but with the Channel pollution I've never managed it. Brighton to Dieppe is 40-something miles, and I've never heard of anyone who has seen across - though there are cliffs both sides. So to see clearly 85 miles is quite something - and that from sea level. Jules Verne says that there is a tunnel from Snaefellsness to the centre of the earth. Some today reckon that UFOs land there. In reality the mountain is a draw for the eyes - you can't stop looking at it. It was one of the landmarks used by the Vikings on the Greenland crossing - the other being Cape Dan. The Vikings state that from the middle of the crossing they could see Snaefellsness to the east and Cape Dan to the west. The distance is over 200 miles, so this means visibility of over 100 miles in each direction. And with the sort of visibility possible in this unpolluted corner of the globe I have no difficulty in believing that this was possible, and indeed would still be possible.

You don't realise it at first, but only the top half of Snaefellsness is visible. The bottom half is of course hidden by the curvature of the earth, and is a superb visual demonstration that the earth is curved. Viking navigators were well aware that the earth was curved. There is a description of the direct route from Bergen to Cape Farewell where sailors should pass north of Shetland and south of the Faroes in a manner so that the sea appeared half way up the mountains of each group. Then continue due west .. This should work, as this is a correct latitude of Cape Farewell. Snori Sturluson went a stage better than a statement that the world was curved, and described the world as a sphere. And all this hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus's crew were worried about falling off the edge of the earth!

Iceland has got used to being said to resemble the moon. After all this is where the Apollo astronauts trained. But now Iceland has to get used to being told it resembles Mars. NASA are building a research centre at Krafla volcano to investigate the likely nature of life on Mars, as Krafla is believed to resemble Mars.

Chapter Eleven - Arctic Nation

SSSHHHH!

Don't tell the Icelanders! Iceland is NOT an arctic nation.

Of course this begs the question what an arctic nation might be. Probably the simplest statement is that people live north of the arctic circle, north of 66.33 degrees. By this definition Norway, Sweden and Finland are all arctic nations. About a third of the length of Norway is north of the circle, and there are some sizeable towns there - Narvik and Tromso for example. Sweden and Finland have a firm presence north of the circle. Russia is an arctic nation, with cities well north of the circle: Archangel and Murmansk among others. Canada has much of its territory north of the circle (though hardly anyone living there) while even the USA through Alaska has a not so small hold north of the circle. Uniquely Greenland is the only nation with more land north of the circle than south. All these can claim to be arctic nations. But poor old Iceland has only the most tenuous toe-hold in the north. Iceland does claim an uninhabited rock way north of the circle (and more to the point lots of fish in the seas around), but the only proper land north of the circle is the island of Grimsey.

And it is not even all of Grimsey. Just half of this little island lies north of the circle. The population count is 92, and it so happens that the village in which they live lies a few hundred yards south of the circle. The post-office almost makes it over the line, but even this is 20 yards or so south. In Iceland no-one habitually goes to bed in the arctic. Maybe a tourist occasionally pitches a tent on Grimsey north of the circle, but for arctic residents that is it.

Not that the folk of Grimsey seem to have let this bother them. The island economy depends on fishing, which in Icelandic terms means that the state wraps it in cotton wool. Fish is important in Iceland. The island has a ferry three-times a week to the mainland, a four-hour crossing on a smallish boat. And it does have daily flights to Akureyri - assuming that the little planes have decent weather and can scare the birds of the Grimsey landing strip. The island has its road, which approaches a mile in length, and it appears that every islander has a car, and is determined to clock up some miles even if that means running back and forwards on a mile of road. The ferry can take a car or two, with a winch to load them on the boat. It seems the people of Grimsey pass their time playing chess, and the island has produced several masters. I guess 92 people have to do something to keep sane in the long winter.

Nor does Iceland have arctic weather. Greenland does. There is a case for arguing that Cape Farewell, Greenland's southernmost point and well south of the arctic circle, is nonetheless arctic. The weather is a tad cold at Cape Farewell, there be polar bears there, and the terrain of Greenland is so forbidding that no-one has managed to build any roads anywhere. But Iceland is far milder.

Icelanders grumble about their winters. No wonder. Three-months of unrelieved darkness, a winter that can stretch to 9 months, and raw, freezing temperatures cannot be fun. Yet even so Iceland is surprisingly mild for its latitude. There are towns in Italy that have colder average January temperatures than Reykjavik. Virtually all of the American continent this far north has a white-out for the whole winter, and most of the US mid-west has colder winters than Reykjavik. Iceland is more-or-less the latitude of the world's coldest place in north-east Siberia. Yet the gulf stream that warms Britain and so much of northern Europe does its bit for Iceland, so that in reality Iceland is actually not all that cold - at least it could be much, much colder. But if you should come in January don't forget your thermals!

Icelanders point out that their capital is the most northerly in the world. They are almost right. Greenland's Nuuk is not strictly a capital, as Greenland is still part of the kingdon of Denmark. And even if Greenland goes its own way, Reykjavik still claims to be north of Nuuk. Nuuk considers its centre to be at its centre, while Reykjavik considers its north to be its centre. And by a few seconds of latitude Reykjavik trumps Nuuk. But more to the point Russia has big cities in the north, cities far bigger than Reykjavik.

Plants and animals here are northern - and this might be the best claim to being considered an arctic nation. Polar bears make it across on the ice flows every few years and would be native in Iceland if the Icelanders didn't shoot them. This is necessary self-defence - the polar bear is one of very few animals that will routinely prey on man, and no Icelander wants to be a polar bear's lunch. There are arctic foxes, and the bird-life includes many northern species. Yet even here the conclusion is far from simple. Many of Iceland's birds and plants can be found in the Scottish Highlands, and even further south. And there are Greenland birds that rarely or never come to Iceland.

In summer the arctic ice wall is reached about 200 miles north of Akureyri, and typically extends from Greenland to Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen. In winter, ice regularly girdles the north and west coasts, though not since the hard winters of the late 1940s has ice encircled Iceland. Reykjavik harbour is now open throughout the winter. In the European mini-ice age of 1200-1900 Iceland probably could claim to be arctic. But with the warmer weather we are now all enjoying this seems unconvincing.

Chapter Twelve - Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands are frequently treated as a chapter or two at the end of a book on Iceland. They deserve better! But I'm doing just the same. The homeward journey goes through the Faroe Islands, and ferry schedules require a three-night stop-over. So the Faroes were an add-on to my Iceland trip - though very different from Iceland - and therefore an add-on to this book.

My exit from Iceland through Seydisjordur was easy, save for a distinct lack of signs saying where cars are supposed to go to board the ferry. At Seydisfjordur they didn't want to dismantle my car, which was a nice bonus. I had plenty of time to get my tax refund on a woolly jumper - at least I was given a 10 Euro note for over 1100 Icelandic Crowns tax refund, which is a miserable exchange rate, but at least it is something. I wasn't going to argue that 110 ISK to 1 Euro was a truly abysmal exchange rate as I had read the small print on my refund chit and realised that tax refunds are supposed to be presented at customs within four weeks of purchase, and mine was more like eight weeks.

I was very positive indeed about Smyril Line on the way out. However I found it not so good on the return. They had a certain hygiene problem with flooded loos which they seemed to be making no effort to resolve and which was beyond a joke. This is like the grim tales people tell about the old ferry on this route - the one they had up to 2002 - and it is a pity if they cannot get something this basic right on the new ship. I also noted because I was travelling with a vegetarian that there is no vegetarian option in their cafeteria, which really isn't good enough for 2003.

The Faroes experience on the Smyril timetable is a three-day weekend.

Friday

Arrival in the Faroe Islands is a shock to the system. For starters the wake-up call on the boat is at 3.30am Faroese time, which is 2.30am Icelandic time - pretty much before most people have had time to go to sleep, especially in the Norrona couchettes. This wake-up call is a full hour and a half before docking and seems intended to give everyone plenty of time to buy breakfast. Arrival is at 5pm, and disembarcation and customs take all of five minutes. The time is a bit early for any arrival, but with sunshine it really didn't matter. And I was lucky.

The Faroe Islands are a country immediately neighbouring Britain, yet a land which most people in Britain know next to nothing about. For example we don't know that they topped the league through the 1980s as the world's wealthiest country (per capita of course), or that in 1992/3 the Faroe Islands effectively became bankrupt. Their economy is based on fish, and with exclusive fishing in a 200 mile territorial water they don't do badly. We don't know that their currency is the Faroese Krona (on parity with the Danish Krona), or that they are part of the kingdom of Denmark, albeit with a vociferous independence movement and outside of the European Union. Their population is 48,000 - Britain has villages bigger than this - and was just 4,000-5,000 from the settlement until the mid nineteenth century. Which means that every Faroese is related to every other Faroese. The Faroe Islands were occupied by Britain during the second world war to keep them free from German occupation, and as a result of this they seem to think well of Britain. It's nice that someone likes us.

Torshavn is a surprising town with a distinctive culture. About a tenth of buildings, both new and old, are grass-roofed. Lots are brightly coloured. It does have many of the essentials of our consumer society, including a little shopping centre complete with car parking restrictions. There are enough shops to buy the necessities of life, though the range doesn't sparkle. Fruit and veg has all travelled a very long way to get there, and looks it.

Rain and fog on Friday afternoon discouraged too much exploring, but we stumbled on the Viking farm ruins at Kvivik, as well as checking the ferries for the bird cliffs.

The Faroes have a markedly different range of plants than Iceland - far more English in fact - and different birds. Trees are in short supply. Torshavn has a plantation of trees, which demonstrates that the Faroes could support trees. Otherwise the islands are virtually tree-less.

Saturday

Vestmanna bird cliffs. This is a small-boat trip, for which read cold, wet and choppy. These cliffs are every bit as remarkable as the guide books suggest. They rise to over 600m (about three times Beechy Head, England's big cliff), which translates as they just go up and up. Sheep graze every ledge, and are regularly put to graze on stacks. This last practice was once prompted by poverty, but is now continued out of some sort of machissmo. Climbing a couple of hundred metres up a cliff without a rope in order to haul a few sheep up (typically 3 to 5 per stack) is not my idea of fun, and there is no way that the modern Faroese have an economic need to risk their lives grazing these marginal sheep. Bird catching still goes on, but mainly for sport. Fulmars have been found to carry disease which can spread to humans and are not now eaten, while the gannets, guillimots and gulls are not really to modern taste. Puffin is however served in restaurants and apparently eaten in homes. The sheep are all colours: white, black, piebald, brown and anything in-between - as the custom in the Faroes over the centuries has been to use the wool in its natural colour without dying, selective breeding has not created the predominantly white sheep of Britain and most of the world.

On from Vestmanna to Esturoy and the village of Eidy, and east from there on a road which has to be seen to be believed. The surface is fine - but the bends, gradients and precipitous drops into Funningur are something else. I had thought Iceland had thrown everything at me in the way of roads, but this was something else.

The curator at the Gota folk museum was far more interesting than the museum. Of her 4 great-grandmothers, three were sisters. Her husband's four great-grandmothers include two sisters, and these two are the same as her three. And she knows of many other inter-relationships in her and her husband's family. Her daughter is about to get married - to someone from the next island.

Sunday

As my friend was going to mass on Sunday morning and I wasn't so keen on this, I had the previous day asked the tourist office for ideas for what to do on a Sunday morning. They though long and hard and came up with the following:

1) Drive to Saksun, and walk along the cliffs, but dress warmly because bad weather is forecast.2) Drive to Tjornuvik, and walk along the cliffs, but dress warmly because bad weather is forecast.3) Drive to Eidi, and walk along the cliffs, but dress warmly because bad weather is forecast.

Finally as I was leaving the tourist office they asked me if I was interested in culture. On receiving a yes they offered the cultural alternative:

4) Go to church.

So I took the boat to Nolsoy.

The captain was interested to find a foreigner aboard, and told me that he makes frequent trips to Scotland delivering cargo. I have the impression that most Faroese treat a trip from an outlying village to Torshavn and a trip to Scotland as if the same sort of distance - the wrench is in leaving the home village.

Nolsoy island has a single fishing village, with a whale-bone arch marking the entrance from the harbour. Many of the locals came down to the jetty to see the ferry in, including around a dozen men all aged twenty or thereabouts, and all looking more alike than most brothers.

Sunday afternoon took us to Torshavn museum, which has a first class collection of mediaeval carved wood, much of it of a super quality. For example there is a thirteenth century Madonna and Child made in England for a church in the Faroes, and comparable with the best mediaeval wood carving to survive in England. Also on Sunday afternoon to the Faroese National Art Gallery, which honestly was underwhelming.

Chapter Thirteen - The One that Got Away

Can I squeeze in a chapter on the place I didn't visit? Greenland. Available as a day trip from Reykjavik. But alas, there was no availability when I wanted to go. If you want to visit Greenland, book your trip in good time. I'm thinking about Greenland for 2004.

Greenland is of course the key stepping stone in the Norse discovery of America around 1000AD. The British still associate Columbus wit this event:

In fourteen hundred and ninety twoColumbus sailed the ocean blue.

And so he did. But he didn't didcover America. I was actually taught at school in England in the 1970s that Columbus was the first European to discover America. Which is a neat example of how wrong information can be taught. In a quiz I bet the majority of Brits would say that Columbus was the guy who discovered America. There was a cruise ship in Reykjavik harbour yesterday called Christopher Columbus, and you name ships or anything else after the guy who did something first.

Yet the discovery of America by Leif Eirikson around a thousand years ago has been widely accepted since at least the 1880s. There is no possible justification for anyone alive today having been taught the myth of Columbus as the discoverer of America.

Norse archaeological remains in America are more numerous than generally perceived. The one big site is the settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows on the north tip of Nova Scotia. Leaving aside Greenland (which is of course America) there have also been verified finds on Ellesmere Island, Baffin Island and the north of Labrador - typically finds as thrilling as the odd ship's rivet, but nonetheless authenticated Norse remains. And given the immensity and desolation of these territories there is every reason to expect more finds.

Norse settlement of the North American continent does not seem to have been a great success - it appears that the native Americans attacked any who tried to settle. But it is now realised that this did not stop the Greenlanders making coastal forays to America for wood and other goodies - the colony couldn't survive without this. Trade with Europe was subject to a monopoly that restricted it to (usually) one ship a year. Of necessity there were voyages to North America from Greenland every summer as long as that colony survived.

The fate of the Greenland colony is something of a mystery. It seems to have come to an end by 1500, though perhaps not long before - it was certainly around in 1448. There is a long twilight from the end of the Greenland Commonwealth in 1261 to the extinction of the colony. Ideas that the population inter-married with the Inuit are not supported by archaeology or genetics. Archaeology suggests that the colony was pretty much starving in the fifteenth century, probably because a new wave of Inuit settlers had appeared who out-competed the Norse communities for resources. One idea is that they simply starved. In Iceland however the idea that is most popular is that the Greenlanders - never more than perhaps 4,000 - simply migrated to Iceland. Plague in Iceland meant that at the end of the fifteenth century there was vacant land in Iceland - newcomers could be accommodated, and as they were linguistically and culturally the same as the Icelanders would easily be assimilated.

I've never met anyone who has visited Greenland, and I know next to nothing about it. There is a tiny exhibit on Greenland just opened in Reykjavik, with the view of boosting tourism to Greenland. The Culture House Viking Exhibit additionally includes information on the settlement of Greenland. Some facts include the following:

ù The name of the country is not Greenland, but Kalaallit Nunaat. The indigenous people are called Inuit (Eskimo now being considered a very rude name).ù Greenland is huge - more than 1200 miles north to south. Virtually the whole is an ice cap.ù The population is tiny - just over 50,000. 88% Inuit and 12% Danish.

ù Greenland is a part of the kingdom of Denmark, and benefits from all the services of any other Danish county. However it has home rule, and therefore its own regional government and flag.ù There are no roads between settlements. All transport is by boat, plane, helicopter or dog sled. ù Summer temperatures are 5 to 20 centigrade in the settled areas. That's not cold! Winter temperatures are decidedly chilly.ù The national language is West Greenlandic. Examples include:Inuugujoq - helloQaqugu qimusseq aallartarpa? - what time does the dogsled leave?Tuluttoorsinnaasoqarpa? - does anyone here speak English?Numbers only go up to 12. In East Greenland (which is the bit most tourists from Iceland vist) West Greenlandic is not understood - there the language is East Greenlandic Inuit. Apparently there is an EGI to French vocabulary list published some years ago, but this is the sole source of information about the language, and not in the University of Iceland library.ù The Inuit entered Greenland from Ellesmere Island, and established settlements first on the north coast, then the east and last the west coast. They arrived only shortly before the Icelanders.ù Icelanders settled West Greenland and established a flourishing colony, which, like Iceland, was a Commonwealth. There are numerous archaeological remains, as the climate has tended to preserve them by putting them in a natural deep freeze.ù Greenland has a University in Nuuk, with around 100 students.ù Greenland is the only territory ever to leave the EU.ù Greenland is looking for just a few, high-spending tourists. Many come by cruise ship, or fly from Iceland on short tours. Greenland also receives expeditions of varying degrees of adventuro ù ù usness. The story is that in all cases tourists are turned upside down on arrival and shaken to ensure that they are parted from the largest possible quantities of cash as quickly as possible.

Chapter Fourteen - Final

In Britain we hardly know Iceland exists. To the average Brit Iceland is a supermarket selling frozen food. And this ignorance is daft.

First of all Iceland is accessible. Flights are under 3 hours, which makes Iceland as close as Spain or Portugal and closer than Greece. Prices for flights are no longer high now Iceland Express has broken Icelandair's monopoly. There is no visa requirement, no jabs, and the currency is fully negotiable. Prices are not cheap, but they are not as high as people say either. "Reassuringly expensive" is a good description. Access by car remains problematic because of the journey time, though this might change. The Eimskip cargo-boat service Hull to Reykjavik is scarcely practical at the moment (it takes only a handful of passengers and a couple of cars, and these in crates) but this might change.

Second Iceland has a very special summer with 24 hours of daylight. The weather changes a lot, and there is no-way anyone is going to bathe in the sea around Iceland (not even Icelanders do this!), but the weather really isn't all that bad. I might even have a hint of a sun tan.

Third Iceland has the only true wilderness in Europe. It is clean, unspoilt, and full of wildlife; it offers volcanoes and geysirs, and waterfalls everywhere. Here I've seen Humpback Whale, Great Northern Diver, Barent's Goldeneye, Harlequin Ducks and lots more.

Fourth Iceland has made a contribution to Western culture disproportionate to its size. The Sagas are world-class literature; Iceland had the earliest functioning post-classical parliament; Icelanders pioneered the northern route to America. Icelandic impact on western though is more significant than perhaps usually realised - for from the court of James IV of Scots to the world of Wagner, Iceland has had a distinctive input.

The recent marketing of Reykjavik as a party city seems a little unfortunate. Reykjavik cannot compete with Amsterdam and Dublin for wild parties, and surely doesn't want to.

Facts Britian should know about Iceland:

1) Iceland is not in the Arctic, and is not cold. Okay, I'm not planning to come in January, but honest, it's not cold.2) Iceland has the highest or second highest life expectancy in the world (it depends whose figures you lok at) and one of the highest standards of living (often quoted as seventh). There is virtually no crime. Education is superb. Iceland is doing something right.3) Iceland was settled by the Vikings and their Irish wives and slaves (ethnically Icelanders are around two-thirds Viking and one-third Irish). This is two of the main stocks that go into the British mix. Icelanders are mighty similar to Brits (an idea they would hate!) Of the world's languages, only English and Icelandic have a true th sound, which has to say something about our kinship. Brits should feel pretty much at home in Iceland.4) Icelanders discovered Greenland and North America around a thousand years ago. The Greenland colony continued until the fifteenth century, trading with Olafsvik on Snaefellsness. The Greenlanders got their wood from North America. Christopher Columbus spent a winter in Olafsvik some years before he "discovered" America. We really do need to get away from the Columbus discovery myth.5) Snorri Sturlusson is mediaeval Iceland's outstanding writer, an intellectual and politician. We should know about him! We still have a lot to learn from his work. He is one of a handful of geniuses, a man who stands alongside Van Gogh and Michaelangelo, Dante and Shakespeare.

And so to home.

Faroes to Shetland is an all-day sailing on board the Norrona (so no need to experience the Norrona's couchettes, though curiously you have to book at least a couchette to get a ticket). The Faroes were left behind in fog and drizzle, but somewhere on route the sun came out.

First view of Shetland is the island of Foula. This is on my list of places I'ld like to get to. It was the last outpost of the Norn language in the British Isles, with rumours that it was spoken well into the twentieth century. The island boasts a unique breed of sheep, and a unique sub-species of mouse. One day I'll get there.

Shetland weather behaved itself. It was dry at least half the time. As the summer comes to an end it is clear that this year has been a catastrophe for sea-birds in Shetland. The sand eels - food for many birds - have scarcely appeared in Shetland waters (perhaps because of global warming?) Puffins have frequently not bothered to nest, while there is scarcely a report of a successful Arctic Tern nest. Fulmars, Guillimots and Kittewakes have all had problems, typically with chicks starving. The Gannets have done better than most, but are still reduced in numbers.

The Noss Island Gannetry was established only in 1911. It is curious how and why birds suddenly decide a spot is good for breeding. This year a good way up a cliff is a sizeable section of fishing-trawler net, whose location is something of a puzzle. The Shetlanders don't think wave and wind could take it up so high, though the idea of gannets pulling it up seems equally implausible - it would surely take more than one, and would therefore imply co-operation. Tourist access to the Noss reserve is by a three-hour boat trip from Lerwick. It was choppy in harbour, and the crew realised that one or two people were getting ankious, so they decided to reassure their passengers. They announced that the two-man crew could boast between them a century and a half of experience of the seas around Shetland - for both were well in their 70s. The gannet collony on Noss made the trip worthwhile, and the seals were a bonus, but with three jumpers on I was still not warm (and most of the passengers were shivering). What's this about some warm weather in Britain this summer?

My highlights of Shetland inclde the following:ù Esha Ness cliffs. These are great cliffs, weird geology (there is a geo here) and lots of wind.ù Artist's Studio. A guy from England who has bought a croft (for œ10,000), is managing it, and running a studio - mainly commission painting. He seems to be doing okay. Crofts have to be managed, though rather than graze sheep he is as it happens paid by the EU to manage the land to promote heather (ie keep the sheep off!) A strange lifestyle, but one which seems tp suit him.ù Wildlife refuge. Here is a seal, brought in a few years ago after an accident witha boat. She has a paralysed rear flipper which means that she cannot be released back into the wild, and is now a rather sad permanent resident.

ù St Ninian's Isle, with its curious spit of sand connecting to the mainland.

There's a lot of water on the north Atlantic. I was in a boat for part of each of the final eight days of this trip. I've discovered that I am a good sailor!

Shetland to Aberdeen was the home stretch. Not straightforward however. First of all they the ferry - NorthLink's Hjatland - had a loading problem because the ship was transporting a crane which filled up a good chunk of the car deck. Fitting the cars on was tight. I drew the short straw and had to reverse down a very narrow and steep ramp to access parking space. Not funny. Then in the middle of the night I was hauled out of bed to move the car, because they had got the loading wrong, and needed to get a car out at Kirkwall that they had parked behind mine. Then a delay on disemrarcation. The crosssing was a bit choppy at least on the Lerwick-Kirkwall leg. All in all NorthLink ferries should have done better, while the weather served as a reminder that at 60 degrees north in August autumn is just around the corner.

It's a strange feeling to leave a house for 10 weeks, and wonder what state it will be in on return. In fact everything was okay. Gardens were baked as a result of Britain's heatwave - though the begonias were in full flower, flourishing in a hot, bone-dry compost.

And so back to everyday life. A very lively wasps nest required a call to pest control. My gas boilers required a British Gas call out to re-start them (they were serviced last September, so they really should have started). But otherwise fine.