Summer of Sun

Basking in the glow of 20-hour days, summer in Iceland is reason to celebrate.

By Lisa Moore

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The curtains must be coated with lead, like the aprons that X-ray technicians wear, because absolutely no light gets through. But there’s a crack where the two panels of fabric don’t quite meet. A burning orange line of light falls across the glossy hardwood floor. It hits the mirror of the wardrobe door, forming a star on the glass.

This is Iceland. The sun has been shining for days and days. It’s 4 a.m. and I’m wide awake. I am not even a little bit tired. I’m convinced that the light is supernatural.

Now I’m up and I’ve opened the curtains. I realize that the light isn’t orange. It’s the pale pink of new copper. Light slices between the plain, modest buildings of Reykjavík. Gold flashes against the windows.

In a few hours, I’m going to the annual Independence Day parade. It’s Iceland’s most important holiday, I’ve heard. Everyone brings their children. They don’t have a Santa Claus parade here. Instead, they have brass bands, waving flags, girls with pompoms, face painters, jugglers and performers on stilts and unicycles. It’s serious fun; later there will be serious carousing.

Since arriving here, I’ve swam in the milky blue hot springs of the Blue Lagoon. I’ve watched veils of steam shroud the black glittering lava rock that surrounds the pool. I’ve travelled on snowmobiles up a glacier, confident that the guide would avoid the snowy crevasses.

The Snæfellsjökull glacier is cupped over a volcano that has been dormant for 1,800 years. Jules Verne made it famous in Journey to the Center of the Earth . Supposedly, the glacier radiates energy that is good for meditation. At the very top, the ice is so white it makes my eyes sting. It’s easy to see how this kind of sensation could be taken for a spiritual effect – a mystical top-of-the-world emptiness, except for large white candles stuck in a nearby drift. “Oh, my friends got married up here two days ago. They had those candles,” the guide explains. She gazes across the landscape. “And the moon,” she adds.

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