Reykjavik

Waking up naturally in the dark is a very surreal and confusing experience. You literally have no idea what time it is and whether you’ve woken up in the middle of the night, or if you should be thinking about starting your day. 

The air up in the mountains in Iceland is as pure and soft as any I’ve ever experienced. Before we left the summer house for the last time, I stood outside taking huge gulps of pure oxygen, wondering how awful it must be for an Icelander to arrive in London, and then, how many years I’ve knocked off my own life expectancy by living in the metropolis since the age of 20. 

I learned this morning that the centre of Iceland, an unimaginably huge area of land which they call the Highlands, is entirely inhospitable and uninhabitable. There’s apparently a single road, which dissects the island and links the north and the south, which is closed for close to eight months of the year. I’ve been looking at pictures of the Highlands. They are profoundly beautiful in an utterly otherworldly way. It’s so bizarre to think that so few people will ever get to appreciate the area in the flesh. 

The Northern Lights we experienced last night were more glorious and magical than any we’ve seen on the trip so far. They are almost certainly our last before returning to London, as we’re in Reykjavík from now on, where there’s a great deal of light pollution - and the forecast is for overcast skies. But three straight nights of the phenomenon is about as good as it gets. Last night’s were brighter and more vivid than any we’ve experienced before. They were bright green with splashes of yellow and the sky turned into a giant lava lamp at one point. 

Watching the northern lights from a hot tub is one of life’s most decadent and wonderful experiences. Ice crystals actually form in your hair whilst the rest of your body slowly cooks!! 

On our way to Reykjavík this afternoon, we crossed over a river which had entirely frozen over. Thoranna and her daughter Ysold were both astonished and said they’d never seen the river like that before. 

The sun’s been incredibly watery today and was hidden behind milky, pastel clouds, which gave us far more of a sense of how depressing it must get in this country when there are long periods without the glorious, bright sunshine we’ve been experiencing for the last three days.

We are staying downtown in Reykjavik. It’s certainly unlike any other European capital city I’ve visited. It’s small, slow-paced and architecturally unique. A lot of the older buildings have roofs and walls made from corrugated iron. Many of the houses are painted in bright, vibrant primary colours. I’m sure they very much brighten up the winter months for the locals. 

We walked up to the main church, a striking building which looks like a giant Art Deco fan. We ventured inside for a few minutes, but I can never stay too long in a church without beginning to feel incredibly uncomfortable - even in Iceland, where the majority of people are atheist, and where Christians tend to be more tolerant than anywhere else in the world. 

The organ inside the church is stunning. It has over a thousand pipes and some of them stick out at very bizarre angles, almost like a heavenly band of bugles. For some reason I imagined those particular pipes providing sounds on the brassier end of the spectrum! 

The tarmac on the road leading up to the church has been painted with a giant pride rainbow. I’m not sure I can imagine that ever happening in the approach to St Paul’s Cathedral but it’s hugely indicative of the Iceland’s general embracing of “other.” It feels appropriate at this point to point out that Iceland doesn’t have an army. Many feel that this implies a general tendency towards pacifism whilst others argue the Icelanders are way too laid back to take up arms. Yet more suggest that they have a healthy disregard for authority. My kind of people, then! 

In the late afternoon, we visited the Penis Museum in Reykjavik, which is a sight to behold! It’s filled with jars with cocks in formaldehyde belonging to an assortment of animals from whales and elephants down to hamsters and mice. And yes, there are human penises there. 

The art and sculpture inspired by phalluses was fascinating, the picture of a dolphin pleasuring itself was hysterical, the ancient examples of condoms were bizarre and I very much wanted to have a toot on an ocarina shaped like a dick, but the willies in jars made me feel increasingly queasy.  I suppose it’s something to do with penises being life-givers and seeing them cut off and in jars felt utterly wrong. 

This evening we took ourselves to a drag show at Iceland’s premiere “queer” bar, Kiki, which was a huge amount of fun, despite the place being half empty and the drinks being twice the price of the UK. (Ironically, it was happy hour!) Based on the numbers in the bar, I’d wager that Iceland is either so tolerant towards LGBT people that no one needs a gay bar or that Sunday night is not party night here. There were certainly no Icelanders in the bar apart from its staff. Our drag queen was called Faye Knús. Get it? Fake News? Apparently “knús” means hug in Icelandic, so it’s a clever little name. She was very witty, very crude and a great lip-syncher.

The audience was invited to get up on the stage to lip-sync numbers, so I put Nathan’s name in the hat to mime to “And I’m Telling You” in a suitably over-the-top and comic manner. It went down a storm. Sadly no one else followed suit... I think they were intimidated.