Reykjavík

View of downtown Reykjavík from Hallgrímskirkja
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My first day in Iceland, 7 June, I visited the downtown Reykjavík area. For ISK 1200 ($20), you can get a 24-hour pass to visit many of the city's museums, galleries and thermal pools and ride all buses for free.

The downtown area looks and feels pretty small, but there are many shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and other places to see and visit.

The Iceland National Museum was one of the most interesting places I visited in Reykjavíc. Iceland has a very rich and interesting history and it's been very well preserved with artifacts and literature available from around 800 – 1000 AD when Iceland was first settled. Since Iceland has been (and relatively still is) rather isolated from the rest of Europe and the rest of the world, it has been able to preserve its rich Viking roots. There are a number of examples of this. A few notable ones are:

• the language - pretty much straight Viking. There are no dialects. There is a national organization that creates new Icelandic vocabulary for new things that are invented/discovered. For example, in Norway or Sweden, a computer will be called, “computer”, maybe with a special accent. In Iceland, however, the national language board will create a new word in Icelandic for computer that fits in better with the Icelandic language. When Icelanders first started to read and write around 1000 AD, they were taught Latin, but wrote in Icelandic instead. Iceland has had its own literature for far longer than any other nation in Europe.

• elves - eight out of ten Icelanders believe in elves. Elves and other, “hidden people,” are believed to live all over Iceland, primarily in large rocks. I read about this before arriving to Iceland and was looking forward to meeting some elves. As we were driving out to Geysir and Gullfoss, our tour guide remarked about an area to the north of the highway where there was a large hill from which large rocks often fell. It was not wise to build anything in the area between the hill and the highway as it would be destroyed by the falling boulders. There is, however, one house in this area and it has been there for many years, unscathed by any a boulder. The tour guide also remarked on the curvy nature of the road, when it could have definitely been made straight. As we drove through the curve, nearby the house, he told us that the farmer who built the house made a deal with the elves that live in the rocks next to the hill. The elves were very fond of a particular patch of grass that was slated to be turned into road. If the farmer could convince the construction team to build the road around the patch of grass, the elves would allow him to build a house at the foot of the hill and protect it from falling rocks. The farmer had no trouble convincing the construction team to route the road around the patch of grass as they did not want to upset the elves (upsetting the elves results in extremely bad luck – accidents, disorientation, sickness, memory loss). This road and the house are not very old at all... maybe ten years at most. The tour guide assured us that he was not kidding and that the elves are among us.