Lost And Found

After an incredible summer with record hours of sunshine, autumn arrived quite abruptly last week with markedly colder temperatures and rain—lots and lots of rain. While I typically find this kind of weather cosy, I was grateful for the let-up in the downpour on Sunday. A friend was in town for the weekend and after spending a rather lazy Saturday mostly indoors, we had decided to go Landmannalaugar.

We got into the car and plugged our destination into the navigation system. “Turn left on Ring Brot,” it said, as we pulled out of the parking spot. Yikes, I thought. This was almost worse than listening to the person sitting next to me read Icelandic. My mind drifted to Hooked on Phonics and I wondered how many tourists returned home indoctrinated by Garmins with crazy notions of how to pronounce words like “Hringbraut.”

Before turning off for Land Man Of Logger, we passed a sign for Eldgjá where a tourist reported lost last week took part in the search for herself. It turns out that getting lost in Iceland is sometimes as simple as changing clothes, which led a busload of tourists to believe that this woman, described as “Asian, about 160cm, in dark clothing,” was no longer with the group, even though she had been with them the whole time. All the while, she of course had no idea that she was lost.

But it’s also very possible to find yourself in Iceland, as variations of the headline “Tourist Takes Part In Search For Self,” cunningly suggest. And not far from where this incident took place, I managed to find some peace of mind last Sunday in the mountains of Landmannalaugar before returning to Reykjavík and buckling down to bring you another issue chock full of material to read.

Now, if you’re reading this at a café on a typical rainy day in Reykjavík, turn to page 20 to read the feature story, “Erró At 80: Still Not Wearing A Tie,” and then skip over to Reykjavík Art Museum’s Hafnarhús to see the newly opened retrospective of his work.
At least to me that doesn’t sound like a horrible way to spend a rainy day.