Arriving in Iceland
Dandelions, both in full flower and soft seed, sprinkle the rocky fields beside the highway. Lilacs, too—or a purple cousin—in swaths where water’s pooled long enough to make soil. We’re heading out of the Reykjavik airport on the way to the first campsite of our month-long exploration of Iceland.
It’s 6:30 AM in Boston time, where I’ve lived for the past six months. When I left my Mission Hill apartment it was 89 degrees; I was sweating buckets to carry two duffel bags down to the T station. Here: 56 degrees (13 for Celsius), sunny, a generous cool wind from the sea. We stare out the window on a sleepy mid-morning bus ride through another planet.
That’s what people say: it’s like another planet, so barren, so vast. Lee, another student on the program, says twelve miles visibility when it’s flat. In our visibility now: a Costco, a KFC, an IKEA. Of course, that’s what we know; we don’t recognize the names we can’t pronounce. Hagkaup, Krónan, Bónus. Colorful Icelandic graffiti tags on white corrugated walls. Iceland has its own series of chain stores, though many of the stores seem similar to the ones at home. Bónus, the largest chain, has only thirty-one stores—in Massachusetts alone there are fifty-two Wal-Marts. We compare and we contrast; we’re here and we’re home. It helps make the world feel smaller. The houses have slanted roofs so heavy snow slides off. A creek runs beside the stream not much bigger than the borrow ditches in Vermont. I can almost see paper boats floating down it, childhood friends beside it cheering.
Exploring Iceland’s Geology
We’re here because it’s our planet. Specifically, because it’s an excellent example of the geologic processes that occur all over the world. We plan to study igneous minerals, view recent lava flows, swim in geothermally-heated hot springs, and immerse ourselves in Icelandic culture. As a rock lover, I can’t wait to hold pumice and hike up new volcanoes. As a plant lover, I feel a little out of place. There’s hardly any soil here, and the soil that is here is usually six inches thick and filled with moss and lichen. What makes it so moon-like is the lack of trees; groves of woody plants line our campground but are otherwise rare. The rocks are mostly cooled straight out of the mantle, something foreign to us surrounded by metamorphosis and forests. But the processes at work are the same throughout the planet. Here we see the formation of the world, the beginning of everything.
Back in New England, everything is old. The mountains formed with ocean sutures multiple Ice Ages ago and have been weathered down since. The houses have plaques on them. Of course a bunch of Patriots would think Iceland looks like Mars—it’s all we know. The landscape here is being created before our eyes in more obvious, more aggressive ways than how Connecticut river breaks down and carries sediment. But it’s the same Earth, and we’re the same people.
Beginning The Adventure
On day one, our tents are shaken bright and early. We eat a cold breakfast of Skyr, cereal, coffee, and oatmeal. We wash our own dishes in the bathroom sinks and make sure our buddies are awake. I leave behind a couple necessities—my mechanical pencil and my baseball cap—but much of the day is spent on the bus anyway, watching out the window and listening to tour-style announcements from the professors at the front of the bus.
Amy, a geologist with curly pink and white hair who’s been on this same dialogue for many years, asks, “Do you see those purple flowers on the side of the road? With the white tops?”
The ones I thought were lilacs.
“Those are lupins. And they’re not native to Iceland—they were planted by soil conservationists to stabilize the soil and prevent erosion. They are nitrogen-fixing, meaning they have relationships with bacteria to add nitrogen to the soil. Iceland has the oldest soil conservation department in the world!
“Not everyone is in favor of the lupins. Some consider them invasive and think only Icelandic plants should be seeded. Others think they are a good starting point and native plants will fill in the future successional pattern.”
Common dandelions, now a pesky weed, are thought to have first been brought over to North America on the Mayflower as medicine.
Iceland used to be covered in birch trees.
In a country that appears other-worldly to many, I had thought everything would be foreign to me. Instead, problems of erosion and controversy over tourism are strikingly similar to those in my home state. Who and what should explore the land? How do we maintain natural integrity in a world that’s changing faster than we can keep up?
We learn, too, about the debate over geothermal energy production. While geothermal is considered a renewable energy source, it does have a limit to how much can be extracted in a certain time period. Some companies have started to sell geothermal to industrial plants both in Iceland and across the sea, rather than back to Iceland. In America, large companies buy up land to grow corn for biofuel to export. Everywhere you go is the pressure for more, better, more. We hope to study the beginnings of things; we also hope things don’t end.
When we leave the lunch site, we comb through silty sediment to make sure we left no scrap of lettuce or potato chip on the ground.
On a land that appears so drastically different than home, I recognize dandelions, native to Iceland. The same yellow flower and rugged root I fork out of the ground at work in Boston. I recognize the polarizing nature of lupins, something planned but uncontrollable.
I recognize that all parts of Earth still need care and attention from the people who love it. I recognize the work that needs doing for this planet—the same planet—and its people. I tie my shoes.
