by Paul Heiney
I doubt we would have felt the cold so much if the views had been more inspiring, but even they failed to warm the soul. This is not the mountainous part of Iceland with which I’d become familiar. No fjords here, none of those geometrically perfect volcanic cones to gaze and marvel at. This was tundra; a bleak landscape of minimal growth, undulating but never rising far, and wind-blown. It is a landscape that has been shaved of all obvious life. Trees don’t grow here because it’s either too cold or there’s not enough daylight or the wind blows them away. Any sparse vegetation you might come across is short-leafed grasses, moss, and anything else that has the courage to cling to this landscape for dear life. The average temperature here at the height of summer is a mere 8ºC.
The shore at the northern tip of this peninsula looked sandy black, presumably crumbled lava, and strewn with driftwood, although I couldn’t figure where this might have come from, given that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t remember seeing a decent-sized tree anywhere in Iceland. We passed two of the most desolate and lonely lighthouses I have ever set eyes on. It began to rain, falling as a chilling downpour, which did nothing to add cheer. Frustrated at the lack of heat, I tackled the stove once again, but not so much as a meagre therm did it throw out.
I reckoned that once we were round the northernmost tip of Iceland, one more of its four ‘Cape Horns’, we could then turn away from the wind and head south for a while, doing a 180-degree turn to bring us into the harbour. In failing light, we headed behind the breakwater. We found it stuffed with two-man fishing boats, of which there are many in every harbour. There was just one berth that was free, an empty parking space but a tricky one in a freshening wind. With angry bursts of power ahead followed by ever more intensive thrusts of astern, I managed to get the bow of the boat through the wind. I was so cold I was past caring about anything and I shouted to Crispin, ‘Take a line ashore and tie it to any bloody thing.’ And so we came to rest in possibly the coldest, bleakest and fast becoming wettest harbour I had ever sailed into.
I had on board a blower heater, which had kept the boat frost-free during the winter lay-up, and all it needed was a little electricity and then we would be snug within minutes. I went to the stern locker to get out the long extension lead, but because of the cold it was stiff and difficult to untangle. Crispin went off with the far end of it in search of a socket. When he came back, the plug still in his hand, from the look on his face I knew it wasn’t going to be good news. He reported that all the sockets were padlocked except for one, but it was further away than the lead could reach.
In desperation now, I removed from the cavernous cockpit locker every bit of rope and string that I owned till I found, at the bottom, a little-used extension lead. I could have kissed it.
The heater was humming away, bubbling hot food was on the cooker, and spirits lifted no end. The flow of warm air was like a life-giving transfusion and we felt human again. It brought home to me, for the first time if I am honest, that this was not just another cruise that happened to be in an occasionally chilly place; we were in a place where carelessness could very quickly cost you your life. We had got ourselves deeply cold and we hadn’t realised just how much. This is when mistakes are made.
Crispin, by the way, was still wearing his shorts.
I spent a night with feet as cold as blocks of ice. The Icelandic writer Roni Horn calls the weather ‘Iceland’s cold blood’ and adds, ‘… there is the weather. Immoral and boisterous, murderous if you don’t pay enough attention to it, if you don’t respect its scale’. We raised a toast to that sentiment.
By morning the wind had dropped, the sky had cleared and although it didn’t feel any warmer, at least the rain had stopped. We stepped ashore and made for the town. Few people were in evidence, no cars moved. Tourists flock here in midsummer to see the sun at midnight, but that was now several weeks behind us and the car park used by motorhomes was empty. Paint was peeling from most of the buildings, nagged by wind and rain, but as we walked further the houses looked in better trim and repair so perhaps there is a posh end of town, even in as remote a spot as this. Their publicity calls it the Paradise of the North, which might be the most optimistic piece of copywriting I have ever come across. To support the boast, they have built a tourist attraction here, which they call Arctic Henge – a tribute to both its position and a homage to our site of prehistoric mystery back home. It was built by a local hotelier, which may explain why that ancient mystery is somewhat lacking.
In this population of only 200, there remains an abiding belief in the mythology of the Poetic Edda, a collection of Norse poems. There is one poem in particular – The Wise-Woman’s Prophecy. It tells of the creation of the world and its ultimate end, and needless to say, like all Norse stories, it has no happy ending. It must be gloomy stuff to ponder on winter nights when the snow-laden storms blow, the roof rattles, and Ragnarök, described in Norse mythology, reminds you of the apocalyptic drowning of the world in water, among other grisly things.
***
There is always one more hurdle to jump when you are coastal sailing. The next headland was yet another of Iceland’s ‘Cape Horns’ and is called the ‘Long Peninsula’. Twenty-five miles long, 400 metres high in places, and it ends abruptly at Fontur, which is where we must round it. All headlands must be treated with great respect and Crispin remarked on my all too obvious nervousness as we made our way towards it. It is open to winds from every direction, which can produce the most ferocious seas with little prompting. It was once home to a thriving farming community, now all gone, but is still the site of the largest gannet colony on Iceland. It is the place where some of the major flows of the North Atlantic meet; an offshoot of the Gulf Stream (warm) meets the East Greenland Stream (cold), resulting in rich feeding and breeding grounds for a wide variety of fish, which the giant trawlers suck out of the ocean with great ease. This place is now so infrequently visited that motorists are advised to check before travelling to ensure that the road is still open. The villages have gone, deserted since 1965 when the people were reported to simply have walked away leaving their still warm coffee behind, abandoning their houses for the eider ducks to populate. Perhaps Ragnarök came true after all.
As so often happens, the most feared headlands turn out to be the biggest pussycats. I expected at least a bit of popple on the water, if not a few standing waves and rough seas, but we steamed with ease past the Fontur lighthouse, which I was pleased to see was a decent, stout, defiant white structure, with its lantern painted bright red – amid the black-and-white tendency of the place, this was the only splash of colour. We may have been lucky to see it, because fog can be a persistent nuisance round here. The list of ships that have been lost might fill many pages, but near the lighthouse is a gap in the sheer cliffs, known as ‘The English Gorge’, where the crew of a mid-20th-century wrecked ship from England were said to have climbed the cliffs to seek refuge, only the captain making it. The grave of the men who perished can be seen bearing the stark inscription ‘Here lie eleven Englishmen’.
It is difficult to explain to anyone who has not been to sea how one bit of it can be unlike any other when they are all part of the same lump of water. Such was the case as we rounded Langanes, sailing into a world that felt easier and in which we felt distinctly more at home. Distant snow-capped mountains came into view, visible as beacons for much of the night. We gazed longingly down the dark depths of fjords that we had no time to explore. As we headed south, turning our backs thankfully to the north wind, there was now an overwhelming feeling of being on our way home.
But Iceland was not going to let us go easily.
21
One hell of a storm
There is a major fjord on the east coast of Iceland that forms as important a port to the nation as Dover is to home. It is where the ferry arrives from Denmark, having made a brief stop in the Faroe Islands. It carries tourists, trade and an overwhelming stench of fish, which often makes up the load for the return journ
ey. It is possibly the last of the old colonial links from the days when the Danes were the rulers here, which is not so long ago. Iceland only got independence in 1944, having lost it in 1262 to the Norwegians, and then in 1380 to the Danes. Independence Day is still marked on 17 June, when it’s party time, and at the head of a parade that passes through Reykjavík is the ‘Lady of the Mountain’, a woman who serves as the female incarnation of Iceland. Ever keen to improve its woke credentials, in 2018, instead of choosing a woman, usually a well-known actress, they picked a drag queen. There’s also candyfloss and bouncy castles, which are less controversial.
At the head of the fjord sits the town of Seyðisfjörður, cowering behind a small lagoon to give the impression of a lakeside resort. Around it are high mountains to complete a perfect picture. Crispin became rhapsodic and open-mouthed at the gigantic scale of it all, till I shoved two fried eggs on his plate and that seemed to keep him quiet. We spotted a wooden staging and a Dutch yacht already tied alongside. This was enough invitation for us to do the same. Looking over our shoulders we saw the rust-streaked Smyril Line ferry Norröna powering into the fjord, heading at full throttle for the ferry terminal. It was the end of a three-day sail for her. Much to our surprise, after what seemed like no time at all, she was off again as if someone had offended her. Hardly a rest for the poor ship, no time to catch a breath. There again, there’s not a lot to detain anyone in Seyðisfjörður.
I was now on a mission. A friend of mine comes from a family that once owned a shipping line, and one of their vessels, an oil tanker called El Grillo, came to grief hereabouts. It happened during an air attack by the Germans in 1944. At the time, Iceland had been occupied by Britain in 1940 and then by the US in 1941, so although the country remained neutral and did not fight, the Germans, or at least three bombers from their air force, saw this as a legitimate target. She was badly damaged but still floating when the skipper decided to scuttle her. She now lies at the bottom of the fjord, more or less upright, and keeps recreational divers very happy. A local bar owner decided to brew a beer to celebrate the lost ship and, entirely out of duty, I promised my friend I would raise a glass to her. This was sufficient excuse for us to loiter in the pub and observe the souls who had recently been disgorged from the ferry and were staring wide-eyed at the place, wondering what kind of alien territory they had landed in.
***
Then I undertook another compulsory act and bought a sweater; which is properly called a lopapeysa. This is not as enigmatic a word as it sounds. In Icelandic, lopa means wool and peysa means sweater. It is therefore, literally, a wool sweater. It is instantly recognisable as being from Nordic parts by the wide circular pattern that rings the neck, or yoke, all in sharply contrasting colours knitted zigzag fashion. It is perfectly symmetrical too, so it is impossible to tell the back from the front and feels exactly the same whichever way you put it on. They are regularly worn by lorry drivers, fishermen and builders and are considered working garments and not fashion items, at least by the locals. But they are not entirely traditional, and historians of wool sweaters will tell you that they were an invention of the mid 20th century, rather like the Alpine cheese and ham dish called tartiflette, which is happy to portray itself as ancient food of the mountains but was, in fact, a creation of a marketing company keen to promote Reblochon cheese.
What makes the lopapeysa different from a regular rough wool sweater is that the wool comes only from Icelandic sheep and has not been spun, so it contains more air than yarn. I noticed when I first picked up my sweater that it was very light to the touch. The clever thing about this wool is that over centuries of exposure to subarctic conditions, the cunning sheep have created a fleece that consists of both long, tough fibres and shorter, more insulating ones. This makes the knitting trickier but the sweater lighter and warmer. If it kept sheep alive through an Icelandic winter, it was probably going to be good enough for me, and the moment I put it on it felt not unlike slipping beneath a warm blanket. The evolutionary efforts of those hardy sheep had not been wasted.
It is almost compulsory for tourists to buy one of these garments, and I would have done so much sooner had it not been for the eye-watering prices in the Reykjavík tourist shops – £400 for a sweater is not only beyond my budget but far removed from my idea of common sense. Here it was different. In a small shop that was, in fact, the front room of a small wooden house, sweaters were on display at half the prices in the greedy capital city. What’s more, a kindly faced if somewhat shy woman who had actually knitted my sweater was taking the money. Cruelly, she spoke no English. If you want to dress like an Icelandic sheep farmer just down from the hills, she’s the woman for you. I had bought more than just a sweater; it was going to be my best winter friend, oblivious to anything any winter could ever throw at me. It came with a little cardboard label inscribed with the name of the woman who knitted it, and I have kept it.
Crispin had been having a good time, too, having found a filling station, complete with cafe as is quite common, that was serving a ‘full English’ breakfast: bacon, sausages, eggs, beans and toast. How we feasted! The half sheep’s head, no doubt, has its place in one’s diet, but nothing can replace the ‘full English’ when it’s the middle of the morning and you’ve been sailing all night and your insides are aching for fatty, replenishing food. Then time for another El Grillo beer. I asked for two pints and explained to the girl behind the bar that I actually knew someone who owned the shipping line that once owned El Grillo. She was not in the slightest bit interested and asked if we wanted peanuts with it?
***
My nose for dodgy weather was beginning to twitch.
By looking at weather maps and forecasts on a regular basis, like every five minutes, you learn to spot when summat’s up. It usually reveals itself four or five days ahead, when it might be considered to be still in the realms of speculation. But you don’t entirely ignore it. It is when the forecasts from the various sources start to disagree that you start to pay closer attention. This is because divergence occurs when computer modelling throws up a wide variety of solutions with substantial differences between them. It is a sharp signal that the computer digits don’t know what’s going to happen for certain. All bets are off.
It would soon be time to be heading south and homeward, and I had been watching the forecasts keenly for a few days. I needed three clear days of weather for the first hop back to the Faroe Islands. What nagged was that one forecast spoke of reasonably settled weather, while another offered ferocious gales from the north-east. I merely noted it, deciding to check more closely the next day.
We seemed to be in such a peaceful spot, secured to a stout wooden wharf in the shadow of rusty and ageing industrial buildings within an easy walk to bars, a decent shop, and the filling station breakfasts. Even so, I didn’t feel comfortable. Although we were well within the shelter of the fjord, the stretch of water was broad and there was a high mountain on the far side. Any strong winds coming from that direction could easily sweep over the tops, accelerate down the side, whip up the water into a frenzy and we’d be sitting in breaking waves, pounding against the wooden staging and not able to move.
I don’t know why but I told Crispin we were leaving. Now!
He didn’t quite understand why, on a calm and sunny day, there might be any hint of danger in the air, and I couldn’t explain. It was a sudden decision born as much out of instinct as anything else.
It was difficult to believe there was any bad temper in the air as we sailed down the fjord in the lightest of breezes. The air was crystal clear, the skyline so sharp you could cut yourself on it. Norðfjörður was the next fjord south and offered more protection, particularly from the north-east where the strong winds were likely to come from. It took a mere couple of hours to sail round the corner; we came to rest alongside yet another wooden staging, and Crispin went ashore to explore.
I stayed with the boat, and I did so because the old instinct was nagging once again – this w
asn’t a proper place to sit out a blow. It’s difficult to make others, who have no knowledge of the weather and the safety of small craft, aware of how quickly things can turn against you and small problems grow into major ones. I felt there was a big one on the way.
A growing swell was now creeping round the headland and the wind was starting to freshen from the north-east, as expected. The boat was beginning to rise and fall to the waves, scraping against the quay, despite the fenders. I bellowed at Crispin the moment I saw his figure, still clad in shorts, shuffling round the corner. He looked bewildered when I told him we had to get away from here as fast as we could, but to his credit he never so much as blinked.
At the far end of the jetty was a filling station with a diesel pump with a pipe that stretched far enough for boats to fill up, providing the tide was high. Needless to say, the tide was very low, so I crept carefully up towards it hoping not to go aground, but when the echo sounder showed zero metres beneath the keel I took fright and backed off. If there’s anything worse than being caught in a storm, it’s being aground in a storm. When the tide comes back and you start to float again, every wave picks up the boat, then drops it hard on whatever lies beneath – in this case, rocks. So no diesel.
At the head of the fjord, a couple of miles distant, was a large fishing harbour. It had no advertised facilities for yachts, but on the basis of experience so far I guessed we would not be turned away. I also noted that it had a substantial breakwater, which was exactly what was needed. By the time we arrived the wind had freshened further, and in the crowded small-boat harbour there was no room for me to turn in safety in such a strong wind. There was only one space where we might fit, and only one chance to grab it – ‘shit or bust’ is the expression. Such was the power of the wind by now that everything had to be conducted at full throttle to keep the boat moving through the water and give us steerage, otherwise the wind would have simply taken charge of us and blown us wherever it wished. Crispin did the leap of a lifetime, got a line round a cleat faster than he had ever done in his life, and we were secure. Given the choice, I would have had the boat pointing into the wind rather than with the wind coming up the stern, for that way any rain would not be driven into the boat; but we had been so lucky to even get lines ashore that there was not the slightest chance we were going to let go of anything. We settled down for some hot food, now able to examine the diesel heater properly in the comparative calm. I could see down into the combustion pan, only visible by shining a torch into the stove’s belly and squinting through a spyhole. It was flooded with unburnt fuel. Once drained, the heater lit quite easily and I cursed its bloody-mindedness of the days before. It chuntered away for the next three days solid without interruption.
