It had taken the four of us six days to adjust to the Icelandic rhythm in a land of natural wonder and coastal weather. We arrived between volcanic ash plumes and forced airport closures then rolled the six hours north through lonely, powerful landscapes to the tiny fishing village of Dalvik at the entrance to the Skiladour.
Iceland’s north is harsh country settled by hearty stock who carved out an existence through fishing and farming in a land that was once much colder and much snowier. Both livelihoods are now in decline and the abandoned farmsteads that dot this countryside are a monument to a disappearing lifestyle in a country that seems torn between an allegiance to the past and an embrace of the future.
In the farmhouse that was once Bergmann’s childhood home, we spent our down days eating home-baked breads, dining on traditional foods such as barbequed whalesteak and listening to classic Icelandic tales washed down with Kaldi beers from the local microbrewery in a country where most alcohol was illegal until 1991—a strange fact Bergmann explained through the lens of Nordic history.
From their founding sagas to their local histories, Icelanders are storytellers. This trait seems either due to the island’s isolation or the Irish that makes up the other half of this culture’s DNA, but every oddity we encountered and every place we visited came with both a powerful backstory and an unfinished narrative. And the Hidden Land, our second untapped heli destination, which sat just across the water, was another Icelandic place shrouded in story.
Iceland is a beautifully isolated culture, with an independent character defined by flexibility and practicality. In ten days we have learned to adapt like Icelanders—to power outages, rumors of economic crashes and to the coastal weather—rather than stressing about schedules and circumstance.
“There is a word in Icelandic that means the rope that binds you to your origin,” he says after the heli leaves us alone with a view out the valley to the fjord. “And it’s an extremely strong feeling within all Icelanders, even if it’s a mess at times, with eruptions, earthquakes, harsh winters, darkness and everything, its extremely rare to find Icelanders that leave Iceland for good. They always come back.”
We break for lunch in the sun and trade stories about our families, then we lift off again to ski Stairway to Heaven, a classic glacially carved run. It is one of six runs on a day of four first ski descents in a dramatic land with a powerfully welcoming pull.
By the time I ease into Sigur Ros and Bjork in Iceland Air’s Saga class, home has started to seep into my sleep-deprived thoughts. It is a tough thing to find, but the concept exerts a powerful feel. It is power in a whirlwind, peace in turbulence and strength in uncertainty—a sense of calm from a sense of place. The vortex we discovered is a tough place to leave, but our time in this foreign homeland has come. Yet, somehow, feeling home in such tangible form is inspiration to cultivate those same roots. And, in essence, isn’t that the one place we all travel to find?
