Iceland: a perfect North Atlantic layover

North Shore, Reykjavik

Iceland was amazing and very beautiful! It was not quite what I expected. While I knew it was not all ice and snow as the country name suggests, it had barren wastelands which looked like a Luna terra firma, with lush green grasslands in adjacent valleys. Iceland has a lot of hot and cold water everywhere. It was common to see steam rising out of the ground and to feel streams which had glacial melt amalgamating with hot spring water.

Strokkur Geyser

A source of fresh water is glacier snow melt. I saw one of the large glaciers, which was amazing, as it rose up out of the hills or low lying mountains and seemed endless against a cloud filled sky. It was quite bizarre, as the glacier seemed to have a lot of volcano ash on it which is causing it to melt at an accelerated rate of nearly 6 metres per annum. I read the glaciers are the same size as during the 16th Century, which was when they began to grow again. Now the glaciers are melting super fast with one recorded as melting 100 metres a couple years back - the reason - black volcanic ash has settled on top which causes the ice and snow to heat up due to the abortive nature of the black (cf the reflective nature of the white snow). I also saw the world's largest geyser - the Great Geyser and her slightly smaller sister, Strokkur, in Haukadalur. Old Faithful in Yellowstone Nat'l Park, WY is the second largest geyser. The word “geyser” comes from Iceland and was incorporated into English after British scientists saw the natural phenomenon.

Mid-Atlantic Ridge, separating Eurasian from the N American Plate 

I also went to the Fantana Steam baths and pool for a little hot springs action. Afterwards I had rye bread, which was cooked using the natural boiling water from the ground, and smoked salmon. As I was walking back to my hostel I saw the Aurora Borealis above the city lights of Reykjavik - they were the most beautiful sea of green lights darting through the clouds and open night sky the surf on waves coming ashore. I felt I could touch the lights and was drawn to their magical trance. My photographs were feudal attempts to capture what my eyes were seeing.

The night before I left I had organized a mtg at a local pub - The Icelandic Bar - of a few folks I met while taking a day tour. We tried Whale, Shark, Puffin, Icelandic bier and chocolate. I cannot say I am a big fan of the Shark or Puffin, but the others were pretty good. The Icelanders love hotdogs and I had one at a hotdog stand made famous when US Pres Bill Clinton visited the island. They have an odd mix of dehydrated onions mixed with fresh onions and served with a brown sauce on the underside of the hotdog - it was really good and one of the few affordable items on the island. 

Reykjavik, Iceland

A major thrill was relaxing in the Blue Lagoon, which is a major resort where guests soak in sea water heated by a hot springs in the middle of a volcanic rock field. It is crazy, fun and calming. They also have steam rooms and saunas to help relax and release the toxins in the skin. Everyone was wearing the mud face packs, thus I tried it too and I think it helped my skin ;-) I boarded the plane the evening after my long 5 hr soak in the lagoon and it was the most relaxing flight I have ever had - I found a new way to travel. The flight was topped off with a glass of white wine, window seat, beautiful cloud views and a find selection of music and films. I watched a film - The Adjustment Bureau and read the book The Prophet. 

Is Iceland the epitome of a reckless and out-of-control state?

It can reasonably be deduced that Iceland’s reckless banking and investing regime contributed enormously to the financial crisis which flowed from the American sub-prime mortgage fiasco. Now that world leaders have committed to reducing global carbon foot prints, Iceland once again is the weakest link in the causation chain with a volcano setting targets back by as much as one year. The ash cloud from Iceland’s volcano also caused thousands of flights to be cancelled and the loss of millions of Euros in trade and commerce.

In April 2008, Seðlabanki Íslands announced economic trouble had hit Iceland, a north Atlantic island country of just over 315,000 people, when it was revealed that Iceland’s banks had accumulated huge amounts of foreign debt (toxic assets). Iceland’s three largest banks: Landsbanki, Glitnir, and Kaupthing had ‘borrowed freely on the international markets, stretching themselves far beyond their modest depositor base at home.’

Iceland’s banks, for the most part, were not investing in sub-prime mortgages, but the global credit squeeze, triggered when the US banking industry began to encounter liquidity problems, hit Iceland harder than any other country, as their banks had assets 8-times Iceland’s GDP. Proceeding the 2008-09 Recession, banks took on large foreign debts to finance overseas expansion; the Krona’s weakness to the larger global currencies has contributed to the increased amount Icelanic banks must now pay to service their debts.

By October 2008, Iceland was teetering on the brink of national bankruptcy and the government opted to nationalize the domestic operations of the three largest banks. In July 2009, the Icelandic government fully nationalized the three banks and borrowed heavily from international funds to circumvent total economic failure. Many fairly stable nations, such as Switzerland, had not been pulled into the financial crisis until the collapse of the Icelandic banking industry, which was a major link between the Americas, Europe and Asia.

On 20 March 2010, a volcano under Iceland’s Eyjafjallajoekull glacier began erupting for the first time since 1821, by 14 April 2010 the volcano started hurling a plume of ash 11km (seven miles) into the atmosphere, which subsequently drifted into the airspace of many European countries.

By 15 April 2010, and for the first time in modern European history (since World War II) and first antebellum reason, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Denmark, and Norway, along with Sweden, Finland, Belgium and The Netherlands closed their airspaces to all civilian aircraft due to the tiny particles of rock, glass and sand contained in the ash cloud, which could be sufficient to jam aircraft engines. On the morning of Thursday, 15 April alone over 5,000 flights had been cancelled due to the Icelandic ash cloud and by that evening France had shut down 24 airports, including Paris-Charles de Gaulle, while Germany closed its Berlin and Hamburg airports.

Iceland first caused economic damage to the world by its overly zealous banking practices, now it is causing a second wave of economic damage due to the abrupt standstill the ‘no fly zones’ have caused on European business, trade and commerce. Worse yet is the environmental damage the Icelandic volcano is causing on the world.

According to figures from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier volcano could potentially equate to a large portion of all man-made emitted carbon dioxide (CO2). However Scientific American uses the same data to report a much lower estimate. None the less, it is a matter of fact that Iceland has now contributed more CO2 to the environment than can reasonably be expected of an island state of just over 315,000 people. While this volcano is not likely to cause a spike in the long term reporting of CO2 concentration levels, which is what is spurring global warming; it has negated the conscientious efforts of environmentally minded individuals.

‘[S]ome scientists believe that spectacular volcanic eruptions, like that of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, actually lead to short-term global cooling, not warming, as sulfur dioxide (SO2), ash and other particles in the air and stratosphere reflect some solar energy instead of letting it into Earth’s atmosphere,’ reports Scientific American. The longer term cooling effects of Eyjafjallajoekull remain to be seen.

What is apparent is that Iceland cannot manage banking and finance or the environment and air pollution.