It’s Friday night, and I’m sitting in the laundry room, watching my denim and fleece spin lazily in the dryer. I’m trying to distill three challenging, crazy, heartwarming, brilliant weeks into one overarching narrative, but my mind is preoccupied with the thrill of success at having finally decoded the correct settings on the machine’s Icelandic dial. Then I realize that it has been the little things, like operating heavy machinery in a foreign tongue, that have defined my time in Iceland thus far. And so, in the spirit of Buzzfeed and its myriad clones, I give you a listicle of objects and moments that, each in its own tiny way, have defined my journey thus far.
Ice cleats. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “Iceland is green, Greenland is icy.” This may be true in July, but in February, Iceland is no misnomer; Solheimar truly is a land of ice. Even the main road through town is coated in ice—thus the hiking-boot equivalent of studded tire chains needed for the simple walk up the hill to class in Sesseljuhus.
Removing shoes at the door. This unexpected custom seems universal outside of cities—and has much less to do with cultural norms than with the aforementioned ice cleats. The resulting sock-footed familiarity leads to amusing floor-sliding (and sometimes slipperiness more treacherous than the ice outside), moments of “where are my shoes?” shock, and a sort of casual equality among people that seems to embody the Icelandic spirit: cafeteria or classroom, hydroelectric dam or biodynamic farm, at morning meeting and at church, everyone in their woolen socks is equal.
Sulfuric hot water. Ready for a hot shower after all that ice? Then get ready to step into a volcano! Straddling the North American and European continental plate, Iceland sits atop one of the most geologically active areas in the world, and it is from this crack in the Earth itself that Iceland gets one of its most precious natural resources: geothermally-heated water, steaming-hot without the energy needed to heat it. In some of the more populated areas, heat-exchange systems transfer the warmth to separately-obtained cold water, but here in Solheimar the goodness comes straight from the ground to our tap—which means that the hot water is HOT, and reeks of sulfur. We wash dishes in volcanic steam. We shower in rotten eggs. You get used to it after a while—and hey, it’s great for the environment.
The rapidly-changing weather. Almost every place I know has the same “unique” saying: “if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and try again!” Only in Iceland has this phrase been utterly accurate. One day, on our first trip to Selfoss (a half-hour’s drive away, and the nearest city at 4000 inhabitants), the weather changed from sun to blizzard in under ten minutes—then back to clouds, then sun, then rain, then hail, then clouds, then darkness and sleet. We’ve been told that Icelandic has dozens of words for snow. We thought this excessive until we witnessed six unique kinds of precipitation in one day.
Coffee EVERYWHERE. Perhaps in response to this, Iceland has a distinctive and proud coffee culture. In Reykjavik, you can’t swing your arms without hitting a quaint café; even tiny Solheimar has Graena Kannan, which serves cakes fresh from the Solheimar bakery—and great conversation with the home people—alongside its java. As if that weren’t enough caffeine, I’ve found that nearly every building I’ve entered, from our own Sesseljuhus to a research center in Reykjavik to a secondhand store in Selfoss, has a coffee machine offering cheap (or free!) and tasty coffee.
Night hikes, the sound of the wind, and the vastness of the landscape. But what’s left the greatest impact on me of all is the land itself, this land of fire and ice, and the way that we tiny humans unite into a cohesive whole—the community, the family of Solheimar—to enter into it. I’ve gone on at least a hike a day in my time here, most short and solo, some a long-haul group effort towards a distant river or mountain. There was one hike, though, that stands alone, the memory of which sends shivers down my spine. It was the first clear night of our time here, and the Milky Way and its million stars shone brightly as our group of ten—without an assignment from our instructors; just for fun—ascended the steep slope to the top of the valley in which Solheimar is nestled. We rejoiced at the top, jumping and laughing and dancing to invoke the aurora (it didn’t work, at least not that night)—then laid down, cradled by the soft snow and the springy moss below, and grew silent and still, each of us roaming our own inner universe. I gazed at the stars—more than I’d ever see at home in Chicago, more in fact than I’d ever seen in my life—then sat up, moved toward the edge of the cliff, and looked down upon the village. From above, all the lights in the valley seemed to converge into a single point: the brilliant beating heart of Solheimar. With no sound but the howling, ever-present wind, and nothing present but the moors and distant mountains, I took solace in the presence of the twinkling lights, and the warm hearths and hearts of the people they illuminate—and in that moment, I realized that I was seeing home.
–Charlotte Kuliak