Ísland er svo lítið ... (Iceland is so small): Friends in the South

Gauti and I spent two days „in the South“ (it is called „travelling South“ when you drive towards Reykjavík or go to the Golden Circle area and the little town Selfoss). We had brought the car with the punctured tire to a work shop which did not have the ideal tire size for it and now the little car drives on four tires of three different sizes ... But it seems to work well. We went to Laugarvatn in the South West where my parents did rent a summer cottage. We also managed to pick up my Italian friends on the way and dropped them off on a camp site in Laugarvatn. Laugarvatn is a small village characterized by a lake with hot water springs in it and an old school building. The school was built here because of the easy access to hot water to heat up the class rooms. It is beautiful there on the Golden Circle, in the South lies a big open valley which is very green due to its rich soil. In the North are grey mountain slopes and creeks have cut interesting patterns into the soft rocks. Forests are crawling up the mountain slopes, and there are some summer house areas in the forests. The summer cottage my parents did rent is at the margin of one of those beautiful hills and its terrasse points towards the wide green valley and allows a beautiful view on volcano Hekla („the gate to hell“).

View on volcano Hekla (I stole it from my mom, and she said it might be possible to tell people they had went to Africa and this is a picture of Mt. Kilimanjaro).

 

Our days in the South were unusally warm and calm and my dad decided to go fishing in the nearest lakes and streams. We had found a little stream on the map with a fishing symbol and went to a farm close-by to ask for fishing permittance. It turned out that we had ended up on the farm where Gauti‘s dad had been working for a couple of summers many years ago and they recognized Gauti‘s face immediately. Iceland is so small, meaning that you meet people you know everywhere and everyone knows everyone. We got a very warm welcome from Gauti's friends in the South, and a warm welcome in Iceland means that you are invited for coffee and spend hours in the kitchen exchanging news and gossip. My dad was immediately seen as „a part of the family who doesn‘t have to pay for fishing“ and he went happy to the stream and caught a beautiful Arctic char. It‘s interesting how easy it is to get talking to Icelandic foreigners, how common it is just to get invited to the farms and how stunning it is that almost every farm has beautiful paintings of the nature around them on the walls which „I, my husband or farmer x/y was painting one winter evening he was bored“ and it just turned out to be a master piece. But it seems to be normal on this island to use some winter evenings to go and create some master painting, a beautiful song or a great book. I love this kind of „normal“.