Iceland: Recommendations for the Returning Vacationer
or for the Armchair Traveler
When I recently posted my Icelandic music playlist to Substack, I recognized two disadvantages, besides my utter lack of familiarity with Icelandic music at that time:
I’d never been to Iceland before
My playlist had no traditional Icelandic folk music
Now that I’m back from Iceland, I’ve rectified disadvantage #1. Better yet, our traveling Team Iceland heard three different traditional tunes during our travels, which I’ll share below, along with some reading recommendations which surfaced during the trip. I’ll close with a side trip to Scotland, the reason for which will become clear in time.
Interspersed with music and books, I’ll include a favorite photo of mine from each of the nine days of our adventure, plus an extra photo, since I tend to gravitate to Top 10’s. While they only scratch the surface of the wonder that is Iceland, even a small taste is edifying.
Music:
Krummavisur (The Raven Song)
One highlight of our trip was when Eyja, our guide, sang for us a song which she heard as a child about a raven and the challenges of searching for food amidst the cold and ice. We helped her along with the raven’s “krunk, krunk” (caw, caw”), which Eyja leaned into more evocatively than any recorded version I could find. Click here for lyrics and translation, or just enjoy the song:
Iceland is Your Country
One of many memorable experiences was a short demonstration of the five gaits of the Icelandic horse (pictured later below): walk, trot, canter, tolt (a lateral four-beat gait), and flying pace. Like most of our days in Iceland, the weather was beautiful, which added to the moment, as two horses went through their paces, accompanied by this stirring song on CD:
Island Ogrum Skorid (Iceland Deeply Carved) - Sigvaldi Kaldalons
Midway through our trip, we got to spend two nights at Lamb Inn Ongulsstadir, outside of the lovely town of Akureyri,where we not only enjoyed a buffet dinner teeming with traditional Icelandic fare, but also were serenaded by the owner/farmer/innkeeper with two songs. Eyja was familiar with this song, which has the feel of a traditional folk tune, although it was composed by an early 20th century Icelandic composer. I’ve shared a choral version of the tune, in celebration of Iceland’s strong tradition of choral singing:
Books:
How Iceland Changed the World: The Big History of a Small Island (Egill Bjarnason)
I’m enjoying reading right now this short history of Iceland, which journalist Bjarnason delivers with plenty of wit. The overall tone and anecdotal nature of this history brings to mind some of the many stories guide Eyja shared with us as we motored through scenery dotted with mountains, waterfalls, lava pits, geysers, glaciers, volcanoes, geysers, and sheep.
Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths (Nancy Marie Brown)
This book was one of four recommendations (the other three to follow) from a lecturer we listened to at Snorrastofa, a research institute located at one of the sites where poet, politician, and historian Snorri Sturluson made his home in the early 13th century. I’ve read and recommend this book, which recounts Snorri’s life and works, interspersed with Norse myths and commentary on medieval Icelandic poetry.
The Sagas of Icelanders: A Selection (Penguin Classics)
Our trip actually included homework: Egil’s Saga, presumably written by Snorri as a history of a time in Iceland’s Viking past that preceded his own time by three centuries. The book we read from is almost 1,000 pages long, and includes less than 25% of the sagas that remain available today. It’s worth it for those who can’t get enough of good old-fashioned Viking violence.
Edda (Snorri Sturluson)
Here’s the book that is Snorri’s main claim to fame I suspect. It’s in three sections, two of which only a poetry nerd like myself can fully embrace. But the third section is by reputation our only source for the stories of Odin, Thor, Freya, and other figures from Norse mythology. The Edda is available in many editions, some sumptuously illustrated; I went for the plain old Everyman’s Library edition.
Heimskringla (Snorri Sturluson)
In preparing for my Iceland journey, I visited our city library for books on Snorri. On the very same day, I found in a local Little Free Library the Dover edition of this book, Snorri’s comprehensive history of three centuries or so of Norse kings. The Dover book was on sale at his institute for something like 11,000 krona (not as much as you might guess, but still a tad expensive). I’m happy to have acquired it for free, thank you very much.
Iceland: Land of the Sagas (David Roberts and Jon Krakauer)
I just got my hands on this book, which combines much discussion of the sagas with beautiful photographs of the Icelandic locations of the stories. I know Krakauer from books of his like Into Thin Air, and was surprised to see that he is not the author of the text of this book (David Roberts is), but the photographer.
Scotland the Brave
What is this song doing in my post about an Icelandic vacation? Well, one of the great joys of this type of vacation is traveling together with two dozen or so folks who don’t know each other at first and become fast friends by the end. I learned from one of my new friends that he is not only a long time bagpipe player. but that one of his groups, the Boston Pipers Society, recorded with the Boston Pops and Keith Lockhart. I told him that now I had a mission: to search out the CD at the various used records stores around Boston that I sometimes like to visit. Lo and behold, the very day after returning from Iceland, I visited our library, checked out their extremely modest used CD rack, and found it. I’ll close this post with the tune on the CD featuring the Boston Pipers Society, and my new friend: