Swanson School of Engineering

Velkomin aftur!! (Welcome Back!!!)

After a gloriously needed night’s sleep, I’m back to give you a Day 2 recap and a bit more about last night.

For our first night in Iceland, we stayed in a pretty sweet setup of Viking cabins. Now imagine the jump scare when you realize that the shower water is pulled from a body of water with sulfur in it. We all smelled like rotten eggs. (Not really! It wears off, but it’s still there.) Supposedly, it’s good for your skin, though, so we’ll all have flawless complexions despite the infamous odor. Additionally, because it’s pulled from geothermal heat pockets, it means the water is girl-shower hot. I mean 110 to 120 degrees boiling hot. Magnificent, I tell you. Perfection.

Following our check-in, we had a wonderful group dinner at a Viking restaurant. (Keep a straight face, readers—we are tourists too.) This meant a Viking singer and actor asking us where we were from and then proceeding to tell every girl at the table that we were brave Viking souls for being American girls. To make us feel welcome, he sang us a song in Icelandic and then in English. It was a warrior’s song, he claimed. In a way, he was correct, because he then proceeded to sing “Country Roads,” which is associated with Pitt’s rival, WVU. Honest mistake.

But all was forgiven when two of our group members were recruited to become the 175,000th Vikings to be initiated at this establishment—and we got a good plate of lamb.

Today, we explored what it truly meant to be a “Viking” and how the early establishment of Iceland began. First lesson of the day: apparently, declaring “I am a Viking” or “I’m descended from Vikings” is a great way to make an Icelander sigh deeply and question your education.

Here’s the reality before any of us embarrass ourselves further: being a Viking wasn’t an identity—it was more like a job. Think less of “ancestral personality trait”. Essentially, Viking was the medieval version of taking a risky startup job so that one day you can get the job and the respect you have dreamed of.

I also learned that Viking society had a surprisingly unusual version of gender equality. Women and men could both claim land and be Vikings. Men would claim land by walking the boundaries with fire, while women claimed land by pulling livestock along the boundaries. Are they equal in effort? No! But hey, land is land.

Speaking of Vikings gaining land and power, Iceland created a semi-democratic government with chieftains in charge, but they only remained in power if they maintained the support of their followers. The assembly met in a place where the Atlantic and Eurasian tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart.

We started our day by driving the bus through the highlands. I have to say, our bus driver must have made the land spirits very happy. The fact that our bus stayed on the road with almost no visibility due to the blizzard, while other cars were ending up in ditches, felt like a miracle.

Eventually, we got out and walked to Öxarárfoss, the very important pagan-blessed waterfall. This entire journey, we walked through a blizzard and up icy stairs, which showed me two things:

1. Blizzards only really bother me when I have to go to class.
   
2. My so-called waterproof coat is not so waterproof.

But this is Iceland, Baby! Snow builds character and memories. Now, for the rest of the day, I am going to do a rapid-fire account of what happened. Hold on!

After the waterfall, we traveled to a geothermal bread-baking site. This is where dough is placed in a metal pot, buried in the hot ground near geothermal springs, and left to bake slowly in the earth. It was very cool to see how a historical process worked and how Icelanders have learned to use the natural environment. However, the system they use to organize the bread is… questionable. Each buried pot is marked by a rock with a name on it. So essentially, we are trusting Mertha the Rock to determine where our bread is baking.

After eating some amazing bread with butter and smoked salmon, we headed to our next destination: ice cream. At the ice cream shop, we got to eat our dessert while looking at cows. We couldn’t quite tell if the cows were judging us for eating the results of their hard work or if they were just completely unbothered.

The last destination of the day was a volcanic crater formed by magma flows. It was the first moment all day when the sun was shining, and it felt just a little less cold. The rocks around this crater are red due to iron. Many of us wanted to take a memento rock, but Erin reminded us that it is bad luck to take from the land spirits. Without their protection, trolls and other spirits can curse us. We left the pretty rocks where they were. ( Believe what you want, but gaining a rock does not equal troll in my books.)

Lastly, we checked into our hotel, grabbed some food, and made our way to the pool and hot tub. One thing is for sure: Icelanders are not joking when they talk about their hot water. 

Fewwwwhh! All done! It has been such an eventful day! Tomorrow we are going to check out the greenhouses, so I will keep you updated. For now, Bless! (Bye!)