Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes.
Icelanders have ample opportunity for bathing in the country's many geothermal springs, lagoons and swimming pools.
(Silvia Otte)
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Back at Holar, Skuli invited us into the cafeteria for coffee. We asked him if the brown algae was anything we should be concerned about. He laughed. "No," Skuli said, "that algae is safe, and I know what I'm talking about, since I am a freshwater biologist!
"In Iceland," Skuli continued, "there is nothing in nature that can harm you. Except maybe a volcano."
THE SNOW STARTED AGAIN THAT THIRD AFTERNOON soon after Holar, after we left the valley and began up the mountain road. The snow became even worse after our stop at Solgardar. A half-hour of white-knuckle driving later, we finally arrived at Siglufjordur, where the sign at the swimming pool read sundholl.
"That literally means 'swimming palace,' " Hjalti said.
By late afternoon, the hot pots were crowded with people. We shared the 100-degree hot pot with a group of middle-aged women. Hjalti was writing a historical novel set partly in Siglufjordur, and he quizzed one woman about where several old buildings existed. After we swam our laps, Hjalti wanted to drive around the snowy town to see some of those buildings.
We drove down to the harbor and cruised around the docks, where commercial fishing vessels were anchored. Smoke billowed from the fish factory, and the pungent smell was overwhelming. "In Iceland, we say that's the smell of money," Hjalti said.
Near the docks in Siglufjordur is something called the Herring Era Museum, housed in a red triangle clapboard house. The museum is a nostalgic monument to the profitable early 20th-century herring runs on which the Icelandic economy was built. Siglufjordur was once a boomtown during the herring season. But about 35 years ago, the herring "simply failed to show up," according to the museum. Siglufjordur went back to being a typical remote Icelandic fishing village.
Before leaving town, we decided to stop for a bite to eat at the local "Sportsbar." That's at least what the sign said. When we walked inside the bar, what we saw instead were dozens of racks and displays of men's clothes -- dress shirts, slacks, blazers, suits -- where the bar tables should have been. A well-dressed older man stopped us and said, "The bar is closed today because I am selling clothes here." The man said that he'd be in town three days so that the town's fishermen could buy their fancy clothes for the season. He told us that he traveled around Iceland every year, selling men's clothes in small towns. "I'm on the road 100 days of the year," he said.
From Siglufjordur, we planned to try to make it to Akureyri, Iceland's second-largest city (population 15,000), by evening. There was a mountain pass that we wanted to take, but the snow was still coming down hard, and no one in Siglufjordur could tell us if it was open. "Ask at the Esso station," they all told us.
A few miles down the road, we came to the gasoline station -- which in rural Iceland also serves as the local cafe and the place where people can buy long, skinny hot dogs (heitar pylsur) and licorice candies, powdered soup, pickled herring, smoked lamb and rubber boots, and then perhaps rent all four "Lethal Weapon" movies in yellowing boxes. We got some coffee from a blond woman wearing a red smock, and she told us the mountain road was closed. We'd have to drive back around the fjord the way we came, adding at least two hours to the trip.
Of course, we would do it. Over the next three days, we'd encounter more snow -- as well as hail, driving rain and even a sandstorm along the south coast. But every few hours, after miles of driving around a fjord or across glacial plains, we'd come upon a town or village or settlement, and we'd swim in another pool. By the time we'd returned to Reykjavik, triumphant and wrinkled, we would have soaked in roughly 50 pools.
Hjalti and I finished our coffee and opened the door to leave. As the snowy wind sliced into our faces, the woman behind the counter shouted, "Bless!"
"Bless" is how Icelanders say "goodbye."
Jason Wilson is the editor of the anthology The Best American Travel Writing. He last wrote for the Magazine about Florida shuffleboard players. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.
