Reykjavik Lighthouse
An Outing to the Seltjarnarnes Peninsula, 17th April 2015
Today the plan to go to Hvergerdi with the Kosovan group fell through, so as a last minute change of plan I decided to take them on a long walk to the Reykjavik lighthouse. The walk – which follows the gnarled edge of the Reykjavik coastline out onto the windswept peninsula – normally takes about an hour from the town centre. As we set out and approached the black rubix-cube outline of the Harper concert hall, the weather was not promising. A thick blanket of cloud hung low over the capital, submerging the pinnacles of the Esja mountains in the far distance, so all you could see was the arms of the ice-blue range fading off into the sea.
Low-lying Cloud and Electrifying Sky
However, after twenty minutes or so the ceiling of cloud began to slowly raise (like a stage curtain), leaving gaps of clear blue sky visible overhead. The further out of the city we got, the more I marvelled at the almost unnerving smoothness of the North Sea, which in the windless morning was so still and calm that it appeared to have been ironed flat. Smothered by cloud, the sea had the appearance of a large grey-silver table cloth, unruffled, calming and endless. I chatted amiably with different members of the group — one girl in particular; who seized the opportunity of the long ramble to tell me about a love affair she had with a Brazilian modelled by and organised through pre-arranged Skype conversations. I was inspired by the selfless beauty of such a romance – one bereft of physical contact, whose only target, variable and gage, was the thrill of regular human conversation.
Sea Tangle
The coastline was rugged, picked out by the rough, irregular forms of boulders and rocks slammed up against the black-sand beaches. Along the edge of this quarried coastline of sand and rock skerries, lay an untidy sea-tangle of mud-brown marine vegetation whose slick tendrils and pods almost invited the hand to squeeze them. We eventually passed a small wooden fisherman’s hut and the small natural geothermal pool which hides in the rocks next to it. We had arrived at the peninsula. The lighthouse was clearly visible from here: a dirty white tower which rose out from the piles of rocks and sea boulders at the peninsulas’s outer extremity. On its long white flank, one of Reykjavik’s urban artists had painted the outline of a large seabird balancing a tiny black crocodile on its beak. The view was magnificent: now the cloud had lifted and the sea was no longer iron grey but lavender. Its stillness was echoed by the shoulder of snow-sprinkled mountains hunkering into the sea in the far distance. I could pick out, among its shapes, one of the table mountains that David had described during a video presentation on the geological features of Iceland. Table Mountains — another geological curiosity created by the grinding action of glacier ice on volcanic debris — are formed when a finger of molten lava blasts through an ice glacier, leaving a column of rock behind it when the glacier has melted. The erosion of many years nibbles away at the column allowing scree, dust and pebbles to tumble down the side – hence the recognisable shape is formed: a low flat top with curving inclines on either side.
The patchy erratic sky; electrifying, changeable, formed of every imaginable combination of white, grey and blue shades, thick textured clouds and ribbed nimbus, cavorted and spun about the mountains tops and the sparse, sea-weed strewn peninsula, couched in shorn hillocks and mounds. We ate our lunch upon these rocks and waved at an ageing hippy who had been enjoying the respite offered by the geothermal rock pool near the hut. Then we began to walk to the Vesturbaejarlaug swimming pool in the Reykjavik downtown area.
Vesturbaejarlaug has been my favourite swimming spot to date. It is modern and beautifully designed, situated in Reykjavik’s suburban downtown area beside busy kindergardens and junior schools, buzzing with giggling children in thermal hats. After several hours of submersion in hot pots of various temperatures, some volley balling and ten laps in the pool, we began the long, slow happy walk back home.
Now, as my ‘group’ have all eaten dinner — a wonderful feast that David prepared of slow-cooked lamb shank and sweet potatoes — they have all settled comfortably down to a late-afternoon nap. While they sleep David and I sit in the living room, enjoying the time to ourselves. I have a lot of respect for my Czechoslovakian co-worker, we have a professional, efficient kind of relationship; and I think as team leaders we work well together. His rationality and excellent organisation skills offset my enthusiasm and arts-major focuses, to perfection. It feels that we have created a little, eccentric international family. We schedule in the family activities and structure and manage its organisation, grabbing at whatever spare time we can find between the chaos. When I want coffee he has already set it to brew in the French press, when he wakes I have already supervised the breakfast preparations. We are like a professional, if traditional, husband and wife team.
I realised as I popped outside for a quick cigarette, what a strong contrast my time as a team leader in Reykjavik presents to how I organised my exploration of Ghent in Belgium. By the time I finish this two-month initiation period I will be an expert tour guide of this city. Every time I find something I love about this city I will show it to others. My loves will become theirs – my internal city map will define their experiences and so my joy in the city will inform theirs. What a contrast to the solitary way that I explored and understood Ghent! In Belgium I also undertook a kind of mighty urban exegesis of one place, assimilating a topographical understanding of a city that began as a study of visible places and ended as a study of invisible ones. But here, in my highly socialised role as tour guide and group leader, my understanding of the city is defined and to some extent determined by what I can communicate of it. This is no longer a self-serving or potentially existential exercise, it is part of the creation of something. I will become an Reykjavik expert: a city that I am also discovering and that is still unravelling itself to me in real time. So I am not just supervising and curating ‘group dynamics’ – to borrow a term from office jargon – I am crafting an experience of place, a literal human geography.
833 words a day 