Icelandic wool

We are presently on a bus heading away from Reykjavik towards the airport. The weather has turned. I think it’s raining. It might be snowing. We’re passing through the most bizarre lunar landscape of black, jagged rocks, almost entirely covered in snow, but a mist has come down, and we can’t see for more than about thirty metres. I now know exactly what everyone meant when they told us we’d lucked out with the weather! 

Yesterday found us exploring Reykjavik more thoroughly. We took ourselves to a frozen lake in the middle of the downtown area and dared to walk across it on the ice. I say “dared” but a group of girls were playing a game of football on it, so plainly there wasn’t any great risk of falling through! I have no idea how deep the water was as I blithely skidded across, but it’s certainly not an experience I can expect to repeat in the near future. I am just about old enough to remember cold winters when we were able to walk across rivers and things in the UK. I think they even used to flood a field in Kennilworth for ice skating... but I’m sure global warming has put paid to that. 

There’s an area on the side of the Reykjavik lake into which they pump warmer water, meaning the ducks, geese and swans have something to float about on. We stood by the side of the lake to watch them, and were astonished by the appearance of three young swans who rushed up to us and started honking, plainly hoping for a bit of food. 

Nathan is a sucker for any animal he can anthropomorphise, so immediately demanded we head to the nearest shop to find them something to eat! Twenty minutes later, we were back at the lake with a bag of raisins, having read that they make a lovely treat for ducks. 

Of course we all know what happens when we eat too much fruit, so I have images of the entire population of water fowl suffering terrible diarrhoea today. 

We met a couple of Nathan’s friends for lunch: an actor and a politician. Everyone in Iceland knows each other. Asking an Icelander if they know one of their fellow country people is not at all like Americans asking English people if they know the Queen. In fact there’s an app here which tells you how closely you are related to a fellow Icelander which is often used by people going on first dates. The theory is that you don’t normally need to go back further than four generations to find a link! 

We met outside the parliament building, which is the least securely protected parliament I’ve ever seen. The square in front of parliament is where Icelandic people go to register their disgruntlement. The first time people went there en masse was in the early twentieth century, oddly to register their disapproval at the idea of an under-sea phone cable being created. 

Most recently, in 2009, thousands gathered to demonstrate against the government’s response to the country’s economy collapse. I’m not sure why Icelanders took to the square to bang pots and pans together but the event is known as the Kitchenware Revolution.

From the parliament building we went to Harpa, an astonishingly beautiful concert hall by Reykjavik Harbour, which was designed, I think, by the same bloke who made the brilliant Weather Project at the Tate Modern. That was the one with the giant rising halogen sun, which remains one of my favourite-ever pieces of art. 

The building is something else, based around tessellating hexagons and cubes of glass and steel which hang off the ceilings and cling to the walls like a blue, white and mirror-ball beehive. The views from the concert hall as as impressive as the architecture itself, across the lavender blue sea to snow-bedecked mountains on the other side of the bay. 

We did some souvenir shopping. I always like to buy a bauble for the Chanukah Tree whenever I’m somewhere special! The Icelanders have a particularly strange - and spectacularly pagan - Christmas tradition, which involve thirteen different, hugely mischievous Santas called the Yule Lads visiting Icelandic homes in the thirteen days before Christmas. They are the sons of a giantess called Grylla and they have somewhat bizarre names which describe their specific, anti-social tendencies. There’s Door Slammer, Sausage Swiper, Window Sniffer, Spoon Licker... Despite their puerile tricks, they leave little gifts, unless the child they’re visiting has been naughty, when they leave a potato. It must be great fun to live in Iceland during this period! Why stop with one, benevolent Santa when you can have thirteen evil ones?!

It started snowing at about 4pm. It was the first time we’d seen snow falling since our arrival, so it felt very magical as we walked along Laugevegur. 

Nathan’s knitting friend Rósa picked us up from our hotel in the late afternoon to take us on a tour of some of the many yarn shops in the Reykjavik area. It was an incredibly brave thing for Nathan to do as he has no idea whether he’s welcome in the shops or not. The most painful aspect of his horrifying experience was seeing friends of his - good fiends whom he’d holidayed with, shared experiences with - publicly distancing themselves from him after being told by some of the Social Justice Warriors that if they didn’t denounce him, they’d be next for the treatment. 

The deepest cut of all was the designer, Stephen West. I went on holiday to Italy with him, and thought we’d got on very well, so when he made his public statement telling the world what a horrible person Nathan was, I desperately wrote to him to explain exactly what had happened and that what he’d been told was nothing more than rumour and lies. I was literally at the end of my tether and I reached out to him for his help. He ignored my email. He didn’t even offer an explanation as to why he’d done what he did. I was utterly devastated.

To make matters worse, the person who badgered him to denounce Nathan, (a terrible podcaster with a face like a gurning, melted candle) was subsequently sent to court on charges of fraud. What a veritable beacon of morality she turned out to be. Well done Stephen: you sold your soul to the devil. 

Seeing books by him in the shops we visited was a hard pill to swallow and the experience made me feel highly uncomfortable, but everyone we met was utterly charming, particularly Rósa, who is one of the most beautiful and generous souls I’ve ever met. She asked me why I didn’t knit. Would you want to be part of a community which would eat its own?

Reykjavik is part of a continuous collection of different towns and cities which come together to form a mega-conurbation (at least by Icelandic standards!!) We visited one of them: Hafnafjörth, which looked very lovely. Rósa tells us it’s architecturally similar to Bergen... 

After a fabulous evening meal, Rósa took us back to Reykjavik, tipping us off about a little sculpture park in the vicinity of the main church. I noticed, as we drove past, that the gate was still open, and the place was floodlit even at 10pm, so, after being dropped off, we took ourselves back there for a look around. 

It’s so very “Iceland” to have a sculpture park which you can walk around at night. There was no one there to read us the health and safety riot act. No signs to tell us to beware of pick-pockets. No impending sense of danger, or group of lads smoking weed under a doorway. It was free to enter. We just got to wander around by floodlight, all on our own, our long shadows dancing on the glistening snow. It was a deeply memorable experience. 

But then again, that’s Iceland. Around every corner, something magical is waiting for you. You just need to open your eyes to it. I can’t begin to describe what a wonderful time we have had here and how welcoming and beautiful we found the people. I return to London feeling inspired and excited.