The Iceman Cometh
by Paul W. Neville
The ice
was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled,
and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
- Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Hitchhiking in
Iceland is reputed to be the best in the world. It’s easy, it’s an
excellent opportunity to meet the locals, and – my favorite part –
it’s free. It’s supposedly safe, but they do say, especially as
winter weather approaches, that a tent and a warm sleeping bag are
necessities in case of getting stranded in the middle of nowhere.
I had neither, but it was still August. How cold could it get?
I rode a Reykjavik city bus as far as it would take me, which was
surprisingly well out of town. I set my pack down and watched the
bus turn around and fade away. This was Iceland’s main highway?
Where were the cars? It was a bit chillier than I had expected. I
listened to the silence and wondered what mess I had put myself
into this time. Suddenly, I doubted my decision to avoid the
US$150 for either a plane or a bus to reach my destination,
Akureyri, Iceland’s second largest city (town, really of 15,000
people) on the northern end of the island.
I wasn’t even sure of the proper signal for hitchhiking in
Iceland. In the States you stick your thumb up, but in some
cultures that is considered an offensive gesture that means “up
yours!” In Tonga, where I had been a Peace Corps Volunteer for two
years, you slice the air with your hand outstretched and your
fingers together like a judo chop. I compromised by combining the
American and Tongan signals. I exposed a flat palm with my fingers
curled in and my thumb lazily extended while I wagged my hand like
I was trying to bring back feeling after it had fallen asleep. It
looked ridiculous. I thought if anything, someone would pull over
and ask me if there was something wrong with my hand.
But no one
passed. Aside from the road itself, there wasn’t a sign of human
existence in sight. It was just me and my sagging backpack. I was
alone, in Iceland, shivering, alongside the edge of a forlorn road
that stretched to the horizon. Low-hanging clouds swirled
ominously overhead. I was a pathetic corpuscle lost in a vast
landscape of bleak and treeless rolling hills. If someone were to
paint the image of solitude, this would be it.
I felt the
first drop on the tip of my nose. It was an insulting presage of
the bitter misery that was to come. I reached into my backpack and
withdrew every item of clothing I had with me. I donned three
t-shirts, a thin sweatshirt, my New Zealand possum-fur vest, a
rain jacket, and a poncho. Still my teeth chattered. My body,
accustomed to three years of sultry tropical weather, went into
shock.
 Once
the clouds could be restrained no longer, they burst and the sky
released its fury, dropping an unrelenting torrent of cold rain. I
stood hunched over, trembling in frigid discomfort, feeling the
wetness seep through seven layers of clothing. My limbs seized up
as ligaments solidified to bone. I imagined my feet frozen to the
ground, each toe crackling as it converted to ice. The nearby
hilltops received the season’s first dusting of snowfall.
Suddenly, a stiff gale whipped off the flimsy nylon hood on my
poncho, fully exposing my head to the liquid arctic chill. I could
not remember ever being so cold.
An indeterminate period of time passed. My mind began to flutter.
I momentarily forgot where I was and what I was doing there. In an
attempt to fight ensuing delirium, I sang ABBA songs. In
retrospect, I realize that this in itself was an indication of
hypothermic confusion. I thought about my friends in Akureyri and
imagined them in the warm communal area of the hostel. I recalled
the fun we had, the steam baths we soaked in, the igloos we built,
the penguins we raced, the polar bears we slew, the… wait, polar
bears? Hello? Come in Paul, stay with us. My mind had become a
factory of nonsensical drivel.
Yeah, I’m a super traveler now, aren’t I? I’m a real hard-core
backpacker. I’m an intrepid adventurer, yep. I’m an idiot.
A car stopped. Once I was certain that it was real, I walked over
and got in the passenger seat. I was dripping and shaking and
didn’t even bother to ask the driver where he was headed. He
shrugged and pulled back onto the road. My lips were too numb to
function properly. Finally I uttered “dank ya.” He must of thought
I was German.
The heater was on full blast. I began to thaw. Eventually, I was
fully revived to my previous human form. The driver, a
gruff-voiced man by the name of Viðar (pronounced “Vithar”) and
his giggling three-year old daughter in the backseat were
returning to Reykjavik after a feast with his sister in Akureyri.
He explained to me that their meal had included, among other
typical Icelandic cuisine, sheered sheep head and roasted sheep
testicles.
Moments earlier I had been a veritable Popsicle alongside a lonely
strip of highway in Iceland, and now I was being entertained by
stories about the consumption of unusual ovine body parts and
listening to a jovial toddler howl excitedly every time she
burped. I love travel.
© Paul W. Neville, 2004
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