independent people. So he called the most important book of Icelandic literature, one hundred years of solitude by a farmer whose only goal and 'to gain independence from bosses, politicians, banks and perhaps also by the inexorable transformation of a world that no longer belongs to the old Norse sagas. Writing it, Halldor Laxness (Nobel Prize in 1955) has ably summarized the essence of a people, always out of the world but never enough to do without. And today, reclusive and self-employed, but cold hard-working, Icelanders seem to have finally emancipated from everything, except by their own Iceland.
A 'Iceland ice and fire, land of contrasts geological and lunar landscapes, where the extreme becomes so widespread as to be almost predictable. An 'island that does not allow those who live to underestimate it, which, with its whims and its capricious climate exhibitionism plasma Icelanders as a tyrant forge his subjects.
Since the last report and the Arctic 'Just over a week, and yet this country has revealed that a variety' of fronts that we were left stunned, we are passed by the stacks on the black sand beach of Vik the glacier 'extended Europe (Vatnajokull, as wide as the Umbria, as well as' the third ice sheet in the world after Antarctica and Greenland), the glacial lagoon, on which huge icebergs floating Jokulsarlon known as (among whom we scooted to the edge a strange amphibious meta 'boat meta' pick up) to the expanses of rubble and lava souvenir of some eruption covering the south east coast, called Sandur.
And we remain astonished in front of such blatant evidence of the power of Mother Nature, in front of an Earth System and of which 'part in the same way as all other living beings, without infamy and without praise. But Iceland does not leave you time to enjoy its majesty ', and' eager to be surprised again, so you find yourself walking on an active volcano (the Krafla, including solfataras that tarnish the landscape with their smoke, boiling mud pools of a bright yellow and a brisk smell of sulfur), or bike along the 40 km of Lake Myvatn (where you can admire the imposing bizarre dark rocks that emerge from the center of the lake, pseudo craters created by boiling water under the lava exploded and cathedrals lava before the refresh fresh milk of a farm on the road), or still entranced by the beauty of extreme Svartifoss, framed by a cascade of black basalt prisms that appears suddenly in the green valley of Skaftafell.
Iceland But although this is a spectacularly beautiful country, his city 'is unforgettable: urban areas without grace, whose main center and' often the bus station, often located in some dingy parking area .
We had almost lost hope, when we were also surprised about this: e 'appeared Seydisfjordur, a charming secret of Iceland.
A town not yet invaded by the tourist masses of brightly colored wooden houses, which lies downstream of a fjord surrounded by tongues of ice from which hundreds of waterfalls poetically down to the sea.
Paddling a kayak through the fjord, on fresh water ice and sulfur bitter, I realized the truth 'about this country is not a compromise: an island of ice and fire is not can 'be friends, but only love - a passionate and exaggerated, as she looks - and for what'.
Big hugs lava
Tommy and Julie
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