I knew nothing about Iceland except for the Northern Lights when I landed in Reykjavik airport on a crisp spring morning. The sun appeared bright and warm outside the plane’s misty windows. That illusion didn’t last long; ‘and the temperature today in Reykjavik is Iceland. Haha! Or four degrees Celsius!’ announced the cheery flight attendant.
I boarded an empty bus into downtown Reykjavik. The views outside the window were unearthly; a rugged landscape of volcanic rocks and mountains. My hostel’s rooftop bar turned out to be a popular hangout spot for the locals. I approached them, and began my social experiment; asking the locals in each country I visited to describe their country in one word. I got ‘Unique, Brutal, Free, Small, Spacious’ amongst many others.
Next morning, I joined up with a few other backpackers, and embarked on a road trip up the Eastern coast of Iceland, an area known locally as Vesturland. The earth laid all around us in a frozen stupor, ancient, allowed by the hand of time to take whatever strange shapes it had desired over the millions of years. The air smelled of old moss and awakening grass. It was a silent, endless country, where I thought the wild things were.
Late in the morning, we stopped at a petrol station to refuel and grab a coffee. The middle-aged attendant was chatting to another woman and a young girl. I approached them and asked them the question; spacious, nature, beautiful. Those three words were how they described Iceland to me.
That night, we swapped stories of cars breaking down in the middle of nowhere, of blizzards and lonely roads with the few other backpackers in the hostel. But the hot topic were the Northern Lights. The two Canadians, over their steaming bowls of noodles sucked greedily through hungry lips, told us about how they had seen the Lights only a few nights ago; out in the middle of nowhere with no light pollution, where the nights were still night-like.
Almost simultaneously I decided to stay up and try my luck at seeing the lights. I had somehow ended up in Iceland, at the very end of the Northern Light season. I was miles from the nearest town, the skies seemed clear, and someone had seen the lights recently not far from where we were. I told myself, this was my chance. I was exhausted after a day of driving, but I told myself I was going to stave off the exhaustion. I was here. And I was going to give it a go. And so the great game of waiting began that night. The Canadians soon headed to bed. We played card games as the drape of night descended slowly around us, hushing all noises. By midnight, everyone but me, Max and Sam had retired to bed. By 12:30, we were out of beers and conversation topics. At one o’clock, Sam too had had his fill.
Thinking that a cigarette might help pass the time, I reached for it in my trench coat’s inside pocket. It was half past one in the morning. I pulled my fur hat all the way down over my forehead and stepped out into the howling cold. The sky had a deep navy colour. No, darker even; a dark charcoal. But not black, not dark enough, I thought to myself. I heard Max’s footsteps as I took a deep puff on the cigarette, flushing my insides with the fleeting warmth. He stood, with his arms tucked under his armpits, shivering, a few steps away. ‘Nothing?’ He asked tentatively. ‘Nothing’ I answered. ‘It’s not dark enough, and it’s already past one.’ He nodded, but didn’t move. I exhaled slowly, and suddenly it occurred to me that I didn’t mind it. I had allowed myself to believe that I was destined to see the lights that night. It is going to make for a great story, I had thought to myself. But just then, with the wisps of clouds sweeping across the expanse of sky, like the curtain falling at the end of a show, it occurred to me that the ending for my story had to change.
I left Iceland eight day later. On the way back to the airport, I went over the list of answers people had given me to describe Iceland. Surprisingly, not a single local had mentioned the Northern Lights. I looked out the window, remembering the thunderous waterfalls, the towering fjords and the moon-like landscapes where imagination ran wild.
I felt grateful to have seen it all. And I was ready to return to the tamer lands I had come from; where they knew neither of long days which were colder than night, nor of night skies, ablaze with light. About the author: Navid is not so much a traveller as a visual learner. And as such, if he wants to understand how the world works, he must see it in action.
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