Welcome to Another Planet: Iceland in May

I have always believed that the natural world is capable of things that defy description. I have seen photographs of Iceland my entire life, read about it, heard people return from it slightly changed and struggling to explain why. I thought I had a reasonable sense of what to expect. And then I went, and I realized that nothing, not a single photograph or travel essay or glowing recommendation, had come anywhere close to preparing me for the reality of it.

Iceland does not ease you in. From the moment you land and begin the drive toward Reykjavik, the landscape announces itself immediately and without apology. Vast lava fields stretch in every direction, black and ancient and carpeted in a soft luminous moss that glows almost unnaturally green against the dark rock. The sky is enormous. The horizon feels farther away than it should. You get the distinct and persistent feeling that you have arrived somewhere that exists outside the normal rules, a place where the earth is still figuring itself out and you are simply a visitor passing through while it does.

Reykjavik

Reykjavik was a wonderful surprise. I had expected a small and sleepy capital and found instead a city with genuine energy and personality, cool and creative and completely sure of itself. Colorful houses, excellent coffee, a thriving arts scene, and a warmth in the people that caught me off guard given the reputation Scandinavian cultures sometimes have for reserve. It was a perfect base for the days of exploration ahead and more than worth the time we spent simply wandering its streets.

The Southern Coast and Vik

The drive along Iceland's southern coast is one of the most relentlessly beautiful stretches of road I have ever been on. Every few kilometers something new and staggering appears. Skógafoss, one of Iceland's largest and most powerful waterfalls, thunders down from a cliff face with such force that you feel the mist from a hundred meters away. On a clear day a rainbow hangs permanently in that mist, which sounds like something from a postcard and turns out to be completely real. Seljalandsfoss offered something even more extraordinary, the rare opportunity to walk behind the waterfall itself, through a narrow path that takes you inside the curtain of falling water with the landscape visible in a shimmering sheet through it. I stood there for a long time.

The black sand beaches of Vik stopped us completely. There is something deeply strange and beautiful about a beach that is entirely, uniformly black, the dark volcanic sand stretching in both directions under a grey sky with the Atlantic crashing in from the south. The warning signs are real and should be heeded, the waves here are powerful and unpredictable and the beach demands respect. But standing at a safe distance and watching the ocean meet that black shore is an image I will carry for a very long time.

The Icelandic Horse

Along the roadsides and in the fields throughout our drives we kept encountering Iceland's most charming residents. The Icelandic horse is a breed unlike any other, small and sturdy and extraordinarily beautiful, with thick flowing manes that give them an almost mythical quality. What makes them truly unique is their protected status. No horses are allowed to be imported into Iceland, and any Icelandic horse that leaves the country can never return. This law has been in place for over a thousand years and has resulted in a breed of extraordinary purity and resilience, uniquely adapted to the harsh Icelandic climate and unlike any horse breed anywhere else in the world. We pulled over more than once just to watch them standing in the fields, completely unbothered by the wind and the cold, looking exactly like they belong to this landscape in a way that nothing else quite does.

The Golden Circle

The Golden Circle deserves every bit of its reputation. Thingvellir National Park, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are visibly pulling apart and where the world's oldest parliament was established in 930 AD, is the kind of place that makes geology and history feel equally alive and equally astonishing. The Geysir geothermal area, where Strokkur erupts reliably every few minutes sending a column of boiling water shooting skyward, drew genuine gasps from everyone gathered around it every single time, including from people who had already watched it erupt three or four times and knew exactly what was coming. And Gullfoss, the great double waterfall that crashes in two stages into a narrow canyon, was the kind of sight that makes you go completely quiet. The scale of it is simply beyond what the eye expects.

Whale Watching

We ended the trip on the water, which felt exactly right. The whale watching tour out of Reykjavik was the perfect final chapter to a trip that had been defined from start to finish by the sheer scale and wildness of the natural world. Bundled up against the cold on the deck of the boat, the city shrinking behind us as we moved out into the open water, we spotted humpbacks breaching in the distance and felt the now familiar Iceland feeling wash over us one last time. Small. Grateful. Completely alive. There is no better way to say goodbye to a place than from the middle of the ocean watching something enormous and beautiful move through the water like it owns the world, because out there, it does.

What Iceland Gives You

I came home from Iceland feeling something I did not entirely anticipate. Not just awe, though there was plenty of that. Something more like recalibration. A reset of what I think of as big, as powerful, as significant. The earth is so much older and stranger and more astonishing than our daily lives allow us to remember. Iceland does not let you forget that for a single moment. I think that kind of perspective is one of the most valuable things travel can give you, and it is something I try to bring back into my work and my life every time I go somewhere that makes me feel small in the best possible way.