{"id":837,"date":"2014-10-06T10:58:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T10:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oliverberry.com\/?p=837"},"modified":"2016-05-31T12:17:48","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T12:17:48","slug":"iceland-ring-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oliverberry.com\/writing\/iceland-ring-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland’s Ring Road"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This feature for Lonely Planet Traveller<\/em> covered a 10-day trip around Iceland’s spectacular Route 1, or the Ring Road as it’s known to Icelanders. In 2014 the road celebrates its 40th anniversary, so it seemed an ideal time for an Arctic road trip.<\/h3>\n

It’s an amazing road, travelling from the suburbs of Reykjavik all the way to the isolated east coast and back again. Along the way we visited volcanoes, glaciers, fjords and hot springs – and even tried some rotten shark.<\/h3>\n

An edited version of the article appeared in the August 2014 edition of Lonely Planet Traveller.<\/h3>\n

Road Trip at the End of the World: A Journey around Iceland’s Ring Road<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s mid-morning on Iceland\u2019s east coast, but it might as well be midnight.\u00a0For the last three hours, a wall of fog has squatted over the road like a cotton-wool cloak, blending land, sea and sky into a spectral grey. Now and then, black peaks materialize from the gloom, their slopes disappearing into the mist. Slashes in the cloud reveal sudden glimpses of coastline: rocky cliffs, grassy dunes, wild beaches crusted in boulders and black sand. Gulls bank and wheel in the wind. It\u2019s like driving into a whiteout. Or at least it would be, if it weren\u2019t for the fact that it\u2019s still midsummer, and the first snows are still months away.<\/p>\n

Wild weather is par for the course on Iceland\u2019s Ring Road – or Route 1, as it\u2019s designated on highway maps. Circling round the island\u2019s coastline for 832 miles, the Ring Road is an engineering marvel and a national emblem, and in 2014 celebrates four decades of service. Since its completion in 1974, it\u2019s also earned a reputation as one of Europe\u2019s great driving adventures.<\/p>\n

Skimming the edge of the Arctic Circle at a latitude of 65\u02daN – roughly the same as Siberia – Iceland\u2019s Ring Road is about as close to wilderness driving as Europe gets, traversing volcanic deserts, mountain passes, plunging valleys and barren plains. Gas stations are few and far between, separated by hundreds of miles. Often, the only signs of habitation are remote farms and weather stations. It\u2019s not unusual to go for hours without passing another car \u2013 unsurprising given Iceland\u2019s population density, with just 300,000 people scattered across an island five times the size of Wales.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an old Icelandic proverb,\u201d explains cyclist Bjorn Gunnarsson, who recently completed a lifelong ambition to circumnavigate the island by bike. \u201cEnginn er verri \u00fe\u00f3tt hann v\u00f6kni<\/em> – no-one is worse the wear for getting wet. That tells you all you need to know about an Icelandic road-trip,\u201d he says, grinning wryly through his salt-and-pepper beard.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most surprising fact about the Ring Road is the fact that it exists at all.\u00a0Prior to World War II, paved roads were still a rarity in Iceland, with most of the country relying on rough backcountry tracks that became impassable in winter, or were completely swept away during floods and storms.<\/p>\n

The modern Ring Road owes its origins, ironically, to an invasion. In 1940, British forces occupied the island during Operation Fork, ignoring Iceland\u2019s neutrality to take advantage of its strategic position in the northern Atlantic; it was an ideal staging post for Allied convoys braving the U-Boat infested waters between America and Britain. Finding tarmac in short supply, troops built paved roads to facilitate the movement of materiel and supplies, unwittingly laying the foundations for Iceland\u2019s flagship national highway.<\/p>\n

In the post-war era, the Icelandic government embarked on an ambitious programme to upgrade the nation\u2019s infrastructure, financed by the boom in deep-sea fishing that made Iceland rich during the 1960s and 70s. The completion of the 832-mile road around the island was seen as a symbolic project, evidence of Iceland\u2019s emergence as a modern nation – but it was a formidable undertaking, requiring both ingenious planning and ground-breaking engineering to overcome the island\u2019s impossibly challenging terrain.<\/p>\n

During its thirty-year construction, the road\u2019s builders endured the worst the weather could throw at them: rock-falls, floods, blizzards, eruptions, avalanches. Along the way, they built Iceland\u2019s longest bridge and deepest tunnel. In all, the road took three decades to complete, opening in 1974 to commemorate 1100 years of settlement \u2013 an average of just 27 miles a year.<\/p>\n

Driving the Ring Road today, it\u2019s easy to forget the labour and ingenuity that went into its construction – not to mention the effort required to keep it open. Even today, several stretches remain unpaved; Iceland’s winter storms are so frequent and ferocious, it’s simply uneconomical to keep replacing the lost tarmac.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Naturally enough, all distances along Route 1 are measured from Iceland\u2019s capital. A century ago, Reykjavik was still a remote fishing station, surviving on cod and herring fished from the icy waters of the North Atlantic. It\u2019s now Iceland\u2019s main city, and many of the old fish-stores and dockside warehouses have been converted to twenty-first century uses: coffee shops, design consultancies, art galleries, loft apartments. Though more than two-thirds of Iceland\u2019s people live in Reykjavik, it still feels more like a provincial town than a capital, with a neighbourly grid of streets lined by brightly-coloured houses, all overlooked by the rocket-shaped spire of the Hallgr\u00edmskirkja, the city\u2019s futuristic cathedral.<\/p>\n

But even here, amongst the craft shops and cosy pubs of Reykjavik\u2019s old town, hints of Iceland\u2019s wilder side aren\u2019t hard to find. Looking north across the bay of Faxafl\u00f3i, a craggy finger of land extends along the horizon, terminating in the snow-capped summit of Sn\u00e6fellsj\u00f6kull – used by Jules Verne as the setting for his classic adventure tale, Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Now part of the Sn\u00e6fellsnes National Park, the 1446m-high peak is actually a semi-dormant volcano, capped by a sheet of ice. It remains a brooding presence as the Ring Road heads north from Reykjavik\u2019s suburbs and weaves out along the fjord-lined coast \u2013 a reminder that even here, in Iceland\u2019s most civilised corner, the forces of nature are never far away.<\/p>\n

Jules Verne wasn\u2019t the first writer to find inspiration amongst the fj\u00f6rds and valleys of Iceland\u2019s west. To many Icelanders, this area is synonymous with the sagas, the sprawling pantheon of tales which have served as a cornerstone of Icelandic culture for eight centuries. First written down by medieval historians during the 12th and 13th centuries, but rooted in a much older tradition of oral storytelling, these ancient tales of family feuds, doomed heroes, warrior-kings and tragic romances are part genealogy, part history, part medieval drama. Many Icelanders can still read the sagas in the original Old Norse, and some can recite passages by heart, just as their ancestors would have done centuries ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sagas are still very much part of Icelandic culture,\u201d says Sigri\u00f0ur Gu\u00f0mundsd\u00f3ttir, an ex-theatre director who now runs the Settlement Centre, a historical museum in the coastal village of Borgarnes, 45 miles north of Reykjavik. \u201cThey\u2019re Iceland\u2019s first novels,\u201d she explains. \u201cThey record our history, but they also remind us who we are as people. They\u2019re about self-reliance, fortitude, honour and stoicism. These are very Icelandic qualities.\u201d<\/p>\n

She leads the way around the museum\u2019s winding corridors, lined by dioramas and maps detailing the journeys of Iceland\u2019s early settlers: Viking adventurers such as Gar\u00f0ar Svavarsson and Floki Vilger\u00f0arson, who crossed the Atlantic from Scandinavia during the mid-9th century, and Leif Ericsson, the globetrotting seafarer who discovered an unknown continent he called Vinland, now known as Newfoundland.<\/p>\n

She pauses beside one of the museum\u2019s windows, looking out over a vista of grey fjords and green fells. \u201cI like to imagine what it must have been like to hear these stories in the olden days, in the depths of winter by a roaring fire, with the wind and snow howling outside. That\u2019s the way they should be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Ring Road swerves inland across the humpbacked hills northwest of Borgarnes, it passes many locations from the sagas: a farmstead that features in Egil\u2019s Saga, a hot spring where the hero of Grettir’s Saga soothed his battle-weary bones. It also passes through the tiny town of Reykholt, where Iceland\u2019s most celebrated medieval historian, a tribal chieftain called Snorri Sturluson, wrote down several of the most important sagas for the first time.<\/p>\n

While most of the sagas are rooted in fact, many have a powerfully fantastical streak that stems from a different form of Icelandic tale-telling. According to legend, Iceland\u2019s landscape is inhabited by a huge menagerie of mythical creatures – including trolls, giants, ghosts and dragons, as well as the hulduf\u00f3lk, the hidden folk, of gnomes, dwarves, fairies, lovelings and elves. Though they\u2019re reluctant to admit it, many Icelanders still believe in their existence, and there are countless stories about bad luck befalling people who unwittingly disturb the hulduf\u00f3lk’s homes. Major construction projects have even been disrupted by elven activity, including a notorious case in 2011, when a tunnelling project near Bolungarvik was beset by accidents and malfunctioning machinery, causing the project to be delayed until the workers apologised and the mountain folk were appeased.<\/p>\n

\u201cIcelanders are very practical in many ways,\u201d says Stefan Boulter, an artist who lives and works in Akureyri, Iceland\u2019s second-largest town, 240 miles north of Reykjavik. \u201cBut we have a very dreamlike side too. Perhaps it\u2019s not surprising we have such active imaginations. So would you, if you spent half of the winter in the dark!\u201d he says with a smile.<\/p>\n

Iceland\u2019s legends were also an important inspiration for JRR Tolkien, a lifelong scholar of Old Norse and the Sagas, who learned many of the country\u2019s folk stories from an Icelandic au pair named Adda who came to work for him in 1930.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lord of the Rings may have been filmed in New Zealand, but really they should have been made in Iceland,\u201d explains Fj\u00f3la Gudmundsdottir, who works as a guide at the Glaumb\u00e6r turf houses near Skagafj\u00f6r\u00f0ur, a coastal fjord between Borgarnes and Akureyri. Built from peat bricks topped by grass roofs, with little chimneys and brightly-painted doors set into the walls, many Tolkien enthusiasts believe Iceland’s turf houses may have given Tolkien the idea for Bilbo Baggins\u2019 underground home, Bag End. They certainly bear an uncanny resemblance to a hobbit house, but they were actually a typically pragmatic solution to one of Iceland\u2019s enduring problems \u2013 a chronic shortage of timber. Conveniently, the turf bricks also provided natural insulation against the island\u2019s winters.<\/p>\n

She steps through one of the cottage doorways, ducking her head to avoid the heavy wooden lintel. Inside, rooms line either side of a low-ceilinged corridor, and the air is rich with the smell of damp earth and wood-smoke. \u201cIceland was a tough place to survive, and people had to work together. Several families would have lived in each house, sharing skills and resources. There wouldn\u2019t have been much privacy, but you would never have been lonely, either!\u201d<\/p>\n

She brews a pot of coffee on the house\u2019s stove, dressed in her traditional costume of bonnet, jerkin and skirt, embroidered with rune-like patterns. Outside, rays of light race across the fields, and dark clouds mass above a chain of mountains, their peaks freshly dusted with snow. It\u2019s a scene that could have tumbled straight from Tolkien\u2019s own sketchbook.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a saying in Iceland: you can\u2019t walk anywhere without stepping on a story,\u201d she says. \u201cWe grow up on the old fairy tales, so to us they seem very familiar. Telling stories is part of who we are. I am sure that will never change.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to see how Iceland\u2019s otherworldly landscape inspired such tales. Sculpted and scarred by thousands of years of geological activity, it\u2019s a place that often appears not altogether of this world.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is this more obvious than around Lake Myv\u00e1tn and Krafla, Iceland\u2019s most volcanically active area. Here, as the Ring Road drops from the uplands, it loops past the deafening cascade of Godafoss, the Gods’ Waterfall, a mass of foaming white-water that seems to emanate from a ragged crack in the earth’s crust. It’s an otherworldly place, considered sacred by Iceland’s ancient tribes: it’s said that when they converted to Christianity, the local chieftain cast his pagan idols into the waterfall to symbolise the death of the old gods and the birth of the new.<\/p>\n

It’s the prelude of an even stranger landscape to come. As the Ring Road nears Lake Myvatn’s shoreline, shattered boulders and volcanic pillars known as klasar begin to litter the sides of the highway, the geological remnants of ancient eruptions. Geysers gush and mud pools bubble. Fissures in the earth spew out columns of superheated steam – a reminder that this part of Iceland sits directly on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the unstable meeting point between the European and North American tectonic plates. Barren and treeless, it feels eerily close to driving across the surface of another planet. Even the colours of the earth seem extra-terrestrial, scorched with mineral tints: sulphur yellows, copper oranges, chlorine greens.<\/p>\n

Krafla\u2019s scalded landscape makes it inhospitable to all but the hardiest forms of life, but it has its uses. Thanks to the thinness of the earth\u2019s crust here, the underlying rock reaches temperatures between 200\u02daC and 300\u02daC, fuelling one of Iceland\u2019s fastest-growing industries: geothermal energy. Hundreds of geodesic domes litter the hilltops around Krafla, capping geothermal wells which provide a cheap, carbon-free energy resource. Astonishingly, Krafla\u2019s power station generates around 30% of Iceland\u2019s energy, with another 40% coming from other renewable energy sources such as hydropower and solar. Per capita, Iceland uses more energy than the United States, but generates two-thirds less carbon dioxide. There are even plans for Iceland to start exporting its energy to help the rest of the world combat climate change.<\/p>\n

At Vogafj\u00f3s, a little caf\u00e9 near the shores of Lake Myvatn, chef Eva Ing\u00f3lfsdottir has found an even more ingenious use for Iceland\u2019s geothermal heat. Dressed in chef\u2019s whites and sturdy boots, she treks across one of Myvatn\u2019s lava-fields, through columns of white vapour swirling from the ground, like a kettle releasing steam. Wherever she walks, the stench of rotten eggs is overpowering. \u201cLiving in Myvatn, you realise how much energy there is right under our feet,\u201d she says. \u201cThere can\u2019t be many places in the world where you can bake bread without an oven – as long as you can stand the smell, of course!\u201d<\/p>\n

She stops at a pile of black rocks, removing them one by one to reveal a hole hollowed from the earth. Inside are several plastic containers, each containing a freshly-baked geysir loaf – a traditional Icelandic bread made with rye and wholemeal flour. She peels off a lid and tips out one of the chocolate-brown loaves, cutting it into thick slices on a wooden board. The bread has a dense, sticky texture, somewhere between a steamed pudding and an unleavened loaf. It tastes yeasty and bitter, like an Icelandic version of sourdough.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt must always be eaten with lots of butter,\u201d Eva says, as she carries the loaves back to her car, a journey she makes twice a day. \u201cIcelandic butter, of course. The creaminess goes perfectly with the bitterness of the bread.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iceland\u2019s hot rocks fuel another of the country\u2019s obsessions: alfresco bathing. Known to locals as hot-pots, there are hundreds of geothermally-heated pools dotted across the Icelandic landscape. The most famous is the Blue Lagoon, just outside Reykjavik, but Myvatn has its own version: the Myvatn Nature Baths, a complex of mica-blue pools fed by deep underground springs, where the water bubbles up at a constant temperature of between 36 and 40\u02daC. Rich in minerals and micro-organisms, the alkaline water is said to be good for skin conditions and respiratory illnesses, and its chemical composition means there\u2019s no need for chlorine or disinfectant \u2013 although it also has an unfortunate habit of turning metal black, a fact which bathers who forget to remove their jewellery soon discover to their cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cSitting in a hot pool on a freezing cold day is about as Icelandic as you can get,\u201d says J\u00f3na Fr\u00edmansd\u00f3ttir, who\u2019s been bathing regularly at Myvatn for more than twenty years. \u201cIt warms the soul as much as the body. People think we\u2019re mad, but we just know how to enjoy ourselves – whatever the weather brings.\u201d<\/p>\n

She slips beneath the water’s steamy surface. Along the horizon, white plumes billow from Myvatn\u2019s geothermal wells, and the cone-shaped summits of Viti and Krafla vent smoke into the evening sky.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

As the Ring Road circles round the island\u2019s eastern coast, the landscape becomes ever wilder and emptier. Isolated villages hunker at the bottom of glacial fjords. Abandoned shepherds’ cabins line the roadsides. Waterfalls cascade down the hills, carving canyons through the rock \u2013 including the thunderous maelstrom of Dettifoss, Europe\u2019s most voluminous waterfall, which memorably featured in the opening scenes of Ridley Scott\u2019s Prometheus.<\/p>\n

Iceland\u2019s east coast has always been isolated, cut off by distance and geography. Historically, these remote regions eked a living from fishing and farming, relying on close-knit communities to survive the brutal winters. Prior to the arrival of the Ring Road in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many villages could only be reached via mountain passes which became snowbound in winter, forcing the delivery of emergency supplies by air or sea. Reaching these distant valleys represented one of the biggest challenges for the Ring Road\u2019s engineers, and required a huge array of tunnels, embankments and bridges to overcome the terrain.<\/p>\n

As a deep-sea fisherman, and a native of Iceland\u2019s east coast, Siggi \u00d3lafsson is used to isolation. Like his father and grandfather before him, he spends several months a year at sea, trawling the North Atlantic for langoustines, prawns, herring and cod. With his stocky frame, bushy beard and Viking T-shirt, he lives up to his sea-captain’s image.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy nature, Icelanders have always been an outdoor people,\u201d he says, strolling along the wharf in H\u00f6fn, a small port in one of Iceland\u2019s southeastern fjords. \u201cEven though most of us live in cities these days, we feel at home amongst the hills and the waterfalls. It\u2019s in our blood,\u201d he says,<\/p>\n

He climbs into the trawler\u2019s cabin, where bleeping fish-finders and radar screens are squeezed in beside the helm. Beyond the prow, mist drifts over Hofn’s clapboard houses, and the pinprick point of a lighthouse flashes at the end of a distant headland. \u201cWe\u2019re as far as you can get from Reykjavik here. Some people don\u2019t like the isolation, but we\u2019re used to it. Personally, I don\u2019t like towns much. For me, there\u2019s no sound as Icelandic as silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siggi\u2019s not alone in his view. Though two-thirds of the population are city-dwellers, Icelanders share a peculiar sense of closeness with their landscape. Exploring the outdoors remains one of the country\u2019s most popular pastimes, and every weekend thousands of people exchange their urbanised lives for the opportunity to rock-climb, hike, ride and camp amongst the fjords and hills.<\/p>\n

80 miles west of H\u00f6fn lies Iceland\u2019s most epic playground: the vast Vatnaj\u00f6kull ice-sheet, which covers 3000 square miles and 9% of the island\u2019s land-mass, making it the largest volume of ice in Europe. Driving west along the Ring Road from H\u00f6fn, the glacier looms constantly along the skyline, a frozen white sea slicing through a jawbone of dog\u2019s-tooth peaks. Now a national park, it\u2019s visited by more than 170,000 people every year.<\/p>\n

\u201cVatnaj\u00f6kull is the place that puts the ice in Iceland,\u201d says \u00ccvar Finnbogason, as he picks his way along an ar\u00eate on the glacier\u2019s southern side, kicking his crampons into the ice for grip. High above, snowdrifts swirl over the glacier’s upper levels, and the ice sparkles in the sun, like shards of shattered glass. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s also our most precious landscape, and because of climate change, it\u2019s changing faster than ever. So we must do everything we can to protect it.”<\/p>\n

A professional ice-climber and mountaineer, \u00ccvar now leads a team of sixteen guides working on the glacier near Skaftafell. \u201cEvery day is different,\u201d he says. \u201cNew crevasses form all the time, and the weather changes fast. But, actually, the ice is our friend.\u201d He points to a patch of ice, deep turquoise in colour. \u201cThe bluer the colour, the denser the ice is. That means it\u2019s harder, and better to walk on.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looks back down towards the lagoon of Jokulsarl\u00f3n, where icebergs drift off the face of the glacier and are pummelled by the Atlantic waves, breaking up on a beach of coal-black sand. Flocks of great skuas, Iceland\u2019s largest sea-bird, circle over the icebergs, scanning the shallows for fish, occasionally dive-bombing tourists who unwittingly stray too close to their nests. \u201cGlaciers are like time machines,\u201d \u00ccvar says, leaning back on his ice-axe. \u201cThey\u2019re made of snow that fell thousands of years ago. Every step is a step back into the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The section of the Ring Road along Vatnaj\u00f6kull\u2019s southern edge was the last to be completed. In 1974, Iceland\u2019s longest bridge was built over the Skei\u00f0ara River. It was a landmark, physically and metaphorically – marking not just the completion of the Ring Road, but also the first link between Reykjavik and Iceland\u2019s most isolated corner. Prior to the bridge\u2019s completion, travelling east involved an arduous journey across the forbidding Skei\u00f0arasandar, a plain of black gravel and sand that stretches for thirty miles between N\u00fapssta\u00f0ur and \u00d6raefi.<\/p>\n

True to form for Iceland, the bridge didn’t last long. In 1996, it was swept away in a devastating flood known as a j\u00f6kulhlaup, caused by the eruption of the Gr\u00edmsv\u00f6tn volcano beneath the Vatnaj\u00f6kull ice-cap. A wave of ice and melt-water swept down from the glacier, four metres high and half-a mile wide, destroying everything in its path. Though the road link was re-established just 22 days later, it took several years for the Skei\u00f0ara and G\u00fdgja crossings to be permanently replaced. A section of the old crossing now stands beside the Ring Road, twisted and mangled by the unimaginable force of the floodwaters.<\/p>\n

Icelanders have almost become blas\u00e9 about such disasters. People have had no choice but to learn to live alongside the forces of nature and, where possible, to use them to their advantage. The eruption of the Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull volcano in 2010, which spewed out vast ash-clouds and played havoc with the world’s air traffic, actually presented locals with an unexpected opportunity. There\u2019s now an official Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull visitor centre, and 4x4s regularly shudder up the scree-strewn slopes to allow sightseers to snap pictures next to the infamous mountain. Astonishingly, Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull isn’t even the area’s most active volcano – that honour belongs to Hekla, the Hooded One, which has witnessed more than 15 major eruptions over the last 1000 years.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

As the Ring Road cuts west, it enters the flat pastureland of \u00deingvallavatn, and passes two more spectacular waterfalls – Sk\u00f3gafoss, one of the Iceland’s highest, with a sheer drop of 200 feet, and Seljalandsfoss, where a rocky path leads behind the cascade and the spray refracts the sunlight like a prism, conjuring rainbows from thin air.<\/p>\n

Gradually, countryside gives way to civilisation. Towns and villages become more frequent, and poly-tunnels and greenhouses appear along the roadside, where farmers use the island’s geothermal heat to nourish crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, chillis, even bananas. This is also equine country, home to numerous farms which raise Iceland’s pure-bred horses, descended from animals brought over by Scandinavian settlers a millennium ago. Small and stocky, with a unique gait known as the t\u00f6lt that smooths out rough terrain, these hardy horses were once Iceland\u2019s main mode of transport; though the Ring Road ended their days as beasts of burden, horses are still often used by shepherds and cattle-herders in the island’s roadless interior.<\/p>\n

A thousand years ago, \u00deingvallavatn was also the home of the Al\u00deing, Iceland\u2019s first parliament. Here, in a ravine beside the shores of \u00deingvellir Lake, tribal chieftains would meet once a year to discuss events, dispense justice and enact new laws, which would be committed to memory by the L\u00f6gma\u00f0ur, or Law-Speaker. First convened in 930, the Al\u00deing has a legitimate claim as the world\u2019s oldest form of democratic government, and the site of the parliament holds a special significance for Icelanders \u2013 a symbol both of their modern political culture and their Viking past.<\/p>\n

Appropriately enough, the beginning of Iceland’s recorded history also marks journey\u2019s end for the Ring Road. As it snakes across the magma fields of the Reykjanesf\u00f3lkvangur nature reserve, it drops down into Reykjavik\u2019s suburbs, bathed under sodium-orange street-lights that seem strange after a week of clear skies and starlight. Far ahead across the bay of Faxafl\u00f3i, the Sn\u00e6fellsnes ice-cap flashes in the evening sunlight, and the Ring Road begins its circular journey north again – a neverending thread unspooling beneath a silver sky.<\/p>\n

\u201cComely and fair is the country, crested with snow-covered glaciers,\u201d wrote the Icelandic poet and polymath J\u00f3nas Hallgr\u00edmson in 1835. \u201cAzure and empty the sky, ocean resplendently bright.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems a fitting coda for the journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This feature for Lonely Planet Traveller covered a 10-day trip around Iceland’s spectacular Route 1, or the Ring Road as it’s known to Icelanders. In 2014 the road celebrates its 40th anniversary, so it seemed an ideal time for an Arctic road trip. 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