Everywhere Em: How Not to Die in Iceland
Em finds tranquility on an extraterrestrial land and takes a dip in a geothermal pool or three.
Rushing through crowds, suitcase handle digging into my hand just slightly painfully. My armpits are getting sweaty, damp under a black puffy coat that’s much too warm for this 80-degree day. The sun is strong and I’m squinting as I bump into strangers. Disculpa… perdón… con permiso…
The only benefit to the crowds is that now my suitcase doesn’t rumble so loudly over cobblestone and uneven sidewalks. I push it in front of me, hoping to gently carve my route out of the masses of people. It smells like a combination of beer, cigarette smoke, frankincense, and my own sweat as I dodge in and out of slowly wandering crowds.
Spanish people are filling the street for Semana Santa. It’s Good Friday and I have a bus to catch for the airport.
Fast forward six hours and I’ve landed in Keflavík International Airport, an hour outside of Reykjavík. The airport is entirely empty. Even the people from my flight seem to have disappeared. I feel like I’m in an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Standing outside, looking for my transfer bus into the city, I breathe in cool, clean, refreshing air. Maybe this is what it is like to breathe for the first time.
No cigarette smoke. No bodies to run into.
Clearly we’re not in Spain anymore. Are we even on Earth?
We board our bus.
Soft sound of the radio. Earth Wind & Fire is playing. The hum of the highway road below us. Eyes glazing over a stony, deserted landscape. My eyes trace grooves and ridges on rocky terrain. Speckles of faintly green moss that might just be waking up for springtime. Something about looking at this terrain must be good for the nervous system, I think. Fluffy clouds are suspended overhead, blobs of grayish purple color that might turn pink or orange as we approach sunset.
Eventually a man-made structure comes into view. Human civilization. A sleek, cubicle building. It could be a bunker or a spacecraft landed on this Martian planet.
More houses come into frame now as we approach Reykjavík. Modern Scandinavian style I would call them. I look at the cool, straight lines and pristine white exteriors. Sleek and minimalist and similar to one another, they could be called sterile if not for their occasional pop of color: red corrugated steel, or an indigo blue front door. Small but sufficient apartment balconies with just enough “clutter” to signify human life occurring there: a bicycle, hiking shoes left outside to dry, a kid’s toy. Likewise, the houses have just the right amount of windows, intentionally placed so as to allow just enough sunlight in during their Midnight Sun in the summer, I imagine.
I even get to sneak a peek inside one house we drive past, their window blinds open as if the house is a model house or a decoy of some kind. And what do I see inside? Much like the balconies, everything perfectly manicured. One moka pot on the stove. Just one, because one is sufficient. A single flower in a vase, sitting on a window ledge. A blanket folded neatly on the back of a couch.
I get a strong sense of calm here. Tranquility. Everything has a place and everything is in its place. There is no excess. Everything is just sufficient. Houses are almost identical, but they vary enough to be interesting. There’s just enough movement and stirring here to create the illusion of life being lived here, although you’re not really sure. It’s a ghost town, but without being spooky.
I think about living here. That things appear quite planned, timed perfectly. I imagine that when you invite someone over for dinner, they come just on time. Maybe they bring just the right amount of food or wine to be polite without being excessive. They leave at an appropriate time so as to drive home safely and allow the neighbors to sleep. Although I don’t imagine they have the paper thin walls we have in Spain, through which you can hear a neighbor sneeze. But regardless, I imagine that here there is a level of respect which is ingrained into societal norms so as not to allow a neighbor to be, intentionally or by accident, a bad neighbor. I imagine this respect (which maybe would appear strict to a Spaniard or other outsider,) is tastefully, carefully, tactfully ingrained— much like the design features on their houses— in a manner that is sufficient, just right, and not in excess.
Of course, this very well could be my perfectionist, tourist daydream as I stare out at a landscape I don’t know, watching cars use their turn signals for traffic circles they circle every day. But on such a barren and quiet landscape, it’s easy to project your own desires.
Black Sand Desert and Ways to Die in Iceland
I’ve always found the emptiness and vastness of desert landscapes to be quite special and peaceful, ever since I went to my first desert four years ago at Joshua Tree National Park in California.
Deserts appeal to my morbid curiosity, my interest in the strange and the bizarre and the spooky. Something about feeling like you’re on the precipice of mortality feels paradoxically peaceful and recharging for me. While you stand out in the desert on your hike or locking your car door, memorizing your spot in the parking lot, it’s impossible not to think “What would happen to me if I got lost out here?” Or if the car broke down. If you ran out of water. Cell reception. The answer? Likely death. And next my mind moves to the creatures that live out in the desert, surviving in such extreme conditions. I don’t know what the feeling is that this train of thought brings, other than perhaps awe. Maybe this exercise fills me with some subconscious appreciation for life as I contemplate the very luck I must have to be a living creature existing in this environment at all.
It wasn’t until I was in Iceland, 4 and a half hours deep in a 12-hour roundtrip tour, that I really framed this as a desert excursion. Since most trips to Iceland are full of glaciers and waterfalls, it’s hard to believe there is also desert landscape here. But since deserts are categorized by their amount of rainfall, there are areas of Iceland that technically qualify as deserts. And once you frame it this way, your hours of banal one-lane-each-direction driving with a glacier somewhere in the background, slowly getting closer to you, becomes a desert road trip. A desert made up of black sand from millennial of volcanic ash, with the last eruption in this area occurring in 1996.
While you won’t die here of heat exhaustion or dehydration (nearly every stream in Iceland is made up of potable water from glaciers), there are plenty of other dangers in this desert. For example, hypothermia or volcanic eruption (and all the subsequent dangers that can follow: lava flows, toxic volcanic ash, glacial melting, flooding, etc.).
Just a bit further on our tour, we encountered the black sand beaches of Iceland. There, black sand, made from volcanic ash, meets the crashing waves of an angry North Atlantic Ocean. These beaches are famous on Instagram, and infamous for many deaths caused by sneaker waves. These are waves that are significantly larger and more powerful than the rest. Sneaker waves (as the name implies,) come out of nowhere, without warning, sometimes surging 150 feet further onto the beach than the foam line. These powerful waves suck innocent tourists into the rough, choppy, and frigid cold waters, usually drowning them. And Iceland is quick to remind tourists that rescues in these areas are often forbidden, as they are too dangerous to risk.
Every sight you set out to see in Iceland is the result of a drastic and potentially extremely dangerous natural event. Rivers are sometimes created from lava columns collapsing and filling with glacial water. Glacial Lagoon exists thanks to volcanic activity and eruptions occurring beneath a glacier and melting part of Europe’s largest ice cap.
Instagram’s favorite “diamonds” of Diamond Beach are, in fact, icebergs which have broken off of the glacier and washed ashore. You’ll even drive on a bridge overtop the lagoon and where it meets the ocean. An iceberg melts off, lands in the lagoon, and is channeled out to the sea, where it might wash back up onto the beach for you to take a picture with it, of course.
Iceland is a land of contradictions. An island of fire and ice. I feel both so calm here, and yet all around me are extremes. Destruction leads to creation. A volcanic eruption destroys one landscape, while another is built from its ash and debris. Islands and mountains that never existed before, now beloved sites for tourists. The very desert we drove through, once underwater, our tour guide reminds us. Seismic activity. Erosion. Sediment deposits. Lava. Water. Rock. Lava again. Some natural cycles. Others entirely accelerated by climate change.
Things move at a glacial pace. And also rapidly, all at once, like a sneaker wave on the beach. The ebbs and flow of nature, uncontrolled by mankind here in Iceland. Instead, Icelanders live among it all. Baking bread in geothermal sands, using the sulfur-smelling hot springs to heat houses. Clean, free drinking water everywhere. Farmers that stick around during volcanic eruptions, waiting for it to pass. Just remember to keep the horses away from the volcanic ash, it’s toxic. A tour guide will tell you how a volcano hasn’t erupted in about a decade, reassuring you that we are safe. And in the next moment they will tell you how it is due to erupt soon, actually. But don’t worry, it hasn’t in a while…
If you’re morbidly curious like me, you can check out this interactive map made by Kristján Hlynur which maps tourist deaths in Iceland since 2020.
For the book that sparked my morbid curiosity in Joshua Tree four years ago, check out Justin Kerr’s A Place to Bury Strangers, a fictional murder mystery interspersed amongst real-life retellings of mysterious deaths and disappearances in the high desert.
Brúarfoss and Staring into the Void
There’s other parts of Iceland where you can flirt with death, too. For example, along the Golden Circle, we found Brúarfoss.
Leaving the parking lot and approaching the waterfall, the path is decorated with warning signs: WARNING - DANGER! Yes, it’s truly a beautiful river, but it is also very dangerous! It has claimed lives. You are here at your own risk but please don’t go too close. The sign is in six different languages.
When we arrive at Brúarfoss, we cross the Brúará river on a wooden bridge that feels not quite as safe as you might expect, given all the danger signs leading up to it. Standing on the bridge, the raging but beautiful river below me and the signature Icelandic wind whipping at me, I take a few shots of the stunning vista, gripping my phone tight.
It’s complicated to explain just how stunning this waterfall is. It’s not just one waterfall. It’s a cascade of water from different directions, all meeting in a central crevice marked by vibrantly blue water. You can look down into that central crevice and imagine it goes quite deep, despite it’s narrow appearance from above. Peering over the wooden rail of the bridge, staring down into the abyss, considering if the river is feet or miles deep, is truly incredible. And how violently is the water churning beneath the water’s surface? And just how horrible would it be to fall in? Staring down into the void, unable to look away, really hoping I don’t— for any reason— fall into it. And then I find myself snapping a picture of the thing.
I find myself compelled to keep walking, not quite ready to turn back around for the car. Following the footpath, we go along the Brúará river, with all its shades of blue and black and indigo. It feels like a real adventure as I take the rockier side of the path, choosing rocks to walk on while staying a safe distance from the river.
Eventually, I decide to sit for a moment on a rock that feels inviting. A cool breeze comes off from the rippling river below me. A treacherous and unknown topography beneath the water’s surface. Sometimes the water is clear. Sometimes it is white with rapids. Other times it’s a beautifully mystical, opaque blue. It glistens and shines in the early afternoon light, blue like an unexpected gem.
I assume the water flows the same for the most part, aside from differences in season and temperature and rainfall, of course. But that the chaos of water rippling over one particular rock, twisting and turning, moving into crevasses I can’t even see from above— that all of this supposed disorder is in fact, as it should be. One day these rocks will look different in shape and size or even disappear completely. Time will erode some rocks, while others will form from volcanic ash or lava deposits somewhere nearby. And when these changes occur, the particular ribbons of water will move differently, speeding up here instead of there, getting trapped for a moment behind a new rock that has found itself in this stream.
Sitting so near to the water and listening to it roar, watching these ribbons of water move in such a mesmerizing way, it’s quite relaxing. And yet, I find my mind playing tricks. Perhaps keeping me safe. Because sometimes I’ll hear what I think is a bigger swell. Or the layer of water over one particular rock looks to be thicker than usual.
Is the water splashing up on the river bank in a usual way? Or is it threatening to spill over, engulfing me in the freezing water that is too opaque for anyone to see me beneath the surface as I tumble between rocks and boulders and twigs…
And then the sun comes out, warm on my skin, tempting me to take a layer off and soak in it’s warmth. It makes the blue of the water twinkle just a bit brighter. And the black of the volcanic rocks in the river looks even darker now against the brighter-blue of the water. And then just as quickly, a gust of cold air will hit my cheeks, stinging a little bit. I picture the air whipping across the freezing river in front of me, picking up all the cold before it hits me in the face.
Freezing Yourself to Death (Cold Plunging and How to Enjoy a Hot Springs)
After plenty of hikes where I contemplated how I could perhaps be killed, it was lovely to enjoy one of Iceland’s most important cultural activities: the hot springs.
As we now know, Icelanders live with nature so comfortably that the idea of relaxing in water heated by volcanoes doesn’t faze them. They’ve figured out the areas of geothermal activity where they can comfortably soak without boiling alive. This practice alone gives you a good idea of tradition in Iceland, as knowledge of these geothermal hot spring locations have been passed down from generation to generation. In just one town, Laugarvatn, I experience frigid cold waters with warning signs for hypothermia as well as boiling water where locals go to boil eggs or bury tonight’s lamb stew to slow cook.
Hot springing— if we can make it a verb— is just as extreme as anything else in Iceland. Paradoxically, its extremes (100+ degrees Fahrenheit to below freezing) also make it oh so relaxing. I loved it so much I went three times, to three different hot springs— Blue Lagoon (you know this one from Instagram and Iceland Air commercials), Laugarvatn Fontana, and Hvammsvík Hot Springs
At these hot springs, I embrace every part of it: the steam baths, the Finnish sauna, the hot springs, and the cold plunges.
The experience really begins in the locker rooms. They’re clean with relaxing, dim lighting. Everything made from organic materials: wood and stone and exposed concrete. It smells like their signature soaps — Blue Lagoon body soap, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, and so on. Free aromatherapy.
Here in the locker room, I find myself alone with strangers, getting naked and directed to shower myself off in open-air, semi-communal showers with my fellow locker room-mates. Modest American tourists shyly ask around, "Oh, okay. So we shower in there? No bathing suits? Haha, oh, okay…”. It’s kind of funny to see the differences in culture as they play out in the locker rooms: American and British tourists much more shy, while the Spanish, Italians, and Eastern Europeans tend to be less fazed by nudity. By my second hot springs, I’m feeling like a pro. Fellow tourists ask me questions in the locker room and I whip my bathing suit off and hop in those showers— ready to get to the hot springs that wait for us beyond the locker room.
You’ll find plenty of women at the hot springs with full faces of makeup, hair blown out, ready to pose on a rock and post the picture for their followers. I don’t mind this at all, really. Everything is beautiful, of course you want a picture. But I do feel that these visitors are missing out a little on the whole experience. That this is a wellness ritual. That your pores will be opening up in the steam, and your mascara will run. Your hair will frizz up. You really should try the complimentary face masks, and cover your hair in their conditioner before you leave the locker room.
Because hot springing is a sensorial experience. I’m hot springing solo at times, and without my phone. So I really have only my body and the elements of water at disposal for my entertainment. Getting too hot in a pool? Go to the cooler temperature one. Feeling fidgety? Go to the pool with a gravel bottom and feel the pebbles massage the bottom of your feet. Bored? Go into a sauna, stay for 10-15 minutes (or as long as you can bear it), and then go cold plunge.
At Laugarvatn Fontana, I find myself spending a lot of time in the Finnish sauna. The interior is completely covered in cedar wood, and there’s usually always at least one other stranger in there with me. I wear my sunglasses, close my eyes, and imagine each drop of moisture evaporating from my pores. I let my body relax, succumbing to the heat.
I flutter my eyes open and look out the glass window which faces the cool, glassy blue Lake Laugarvatn. It’s beautiful. Someone is taking a dip.
Occasionally the nondescript, usually Eastern European stranger in the sauna with me will throw water onto the stove. My nostrils fill with a burning sensation as they quicky absorb the fiery hot steam.
And when I can’t take it anymore, I gingerly lift myself from the bench I have melted into, and take myself out of the sauna. The 40-degree wind outside hits my skin with a mixture of relief and shock. It feels great. Refreshing. Equilibrium being restored.
But then, simply because the option is available to me and the idea has crossed my mind for even a split second, I decide to go for the cold plunge. I find myself wading into the frigid cold water, hands gripping the pier. I inch myself further and further in. I didn’t know how deep it was, so I couldn’t dive in. So now the lower half of my body is beginning to stiffen up at the cold, as my mind and body fight each other, trying to get the rest of me in the water too. Finally I get my arms in and splash my face a bit. And then I dunk my hair. I want to scream. I realize I’m holding my breath, so I let it out. Breathe. Pins and needles cover my body.
I’m trying simultaneously to stay in the water for just a bit longer, while also keeping my wits about me. Can I get hypothermia in this water? Could I die? I don’t want to be another dead tourist. This is good for you. Breathe through it. How much longer? Another couple seconds.
Eventually I’m getting out. Moving each muscle is an effort. I’m moving carefully, knowing that what I just did was very intense. As I walk along the pier, back to the various baths, I’m wiggling my fingers and my toes. Shaking out my wrists a little as if I’ve just been holding a handstand.
I feel accomplished. I feel refreshed. Like I just finished a marathon— or just evaded death, I’m not sure. My prize? A nice warm hot tub and a lake view.
I do this routine three more times before I find myself back in the locker room shower, stripped and lathered in herbal-scented soap. Toweled dry, hair still wet, I open my locker and start the process of dressing. Layer by layer: underwear, leggings, sweatpants, thermal under shirt, fleece quarter-zip, two pairs of socks, scarf, jacket, hat. I put each one on with care.
So cozy. So relaxed and refreshed. So happy to be alive.
What a wonderful and insightful experience …. So glad you shared it with us!
What an incredible description. I love the parallels of Fire and Ice with Life and Death, or at least how my mind interpreted your writing. I could imagine being next to you through your journey. Thank you Em!