It’s nearly 11 a.m. in Reykjavik, Iceland, and it appears the sun has fled to Florida for the winter: The sky is ink black, the streets are dimly lit by the glow of storefronts open for business, and the family walking along Fischersund Street ahead of me is picking their way through the darkness with flashlights.
This is Iceland at its darkest; the winter solstice is about a week off, at which point the days will become incrementally longer to the point where, six months from now, night will never, ever, truly fall. That’s when most people visit this volcanic island, whose northern tip brushes against the Arctic Circle. But I’m particularly taken with the Icelandic winter, when near-perpetual darkness wraps itself around you, as if at any second some new mystery will emerge from the shadows.
And that is, in fact, precisely what happens when you walk the winter streets of Reykjavik, as tidy and tiny a world capital as you’ll find. As I step out the revolving front door of the Center Hotel Plaza – a comfy, modern establishment that is, at seven stories, one of the taller buildings in town – I’m thrown a bit by the midday darkness, but clearly no one else is. Ice skaters pirouette on the small rink directly across the street, warmly illuminated by thousands of strung light bulbs. Briefcase-toting bureaucrats stride by on their way to meetings. Merchants, arms folded, lean against the entrances to their shops, doors wide open, welcoming customers in from the night of day.
As the sky shifts from black to dull blue, the outlines of Reykjavik’s buildings come into view. At the end of a shop-lined street called Skolavordustigur – proudly painted in rainbow colors for much of its length – the spire of Hallgrimskirkja, Iceland’s largest church, thrusts skyward. I follow its beckoning silhouette and slip through the doors, discovering a soaring poured concrete interior that marries the arched elevation of medieval Gothic style with the solid severity of mid-20th century brutalism.
Settling down in a pew, facing the altar, I notice a neat bit of Icelandic practicality: The pew backs are hinged to shift from one side to another, so instead of sitting with their backs to the church’s 5,275-pipe organ during concerts, audience members can simply flip their pews in the right direction.
Hallgrimskirkja (Video by Bill Newcott)
I step back into the dim, cloudy daylight. The temperature is 42 degrees. At home in Delaware, right now it’s 10 degrees colder: Thanks to the Gulf Stream, Iceland remains bearable year-round, even though it’s about as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska.
I tuck my wool cap into my coat pocket and stroll down the hill for a bite at Reykjavik’s oldest bakery, Sandholt, owned by third-generation baker Ásgeir Sandholt. He smiles knowingly as I bite into a traditional Icelandic Kleinur, a twisted, deep-fried-to-golden-perfection pastry that cannot possibly be any good for me and yet my body pleads, “Moooore!”
He sees my eyes widen. All he can do is nod.
“Yes?” he laughs. “Yesssss?”
Yes, indeed.
Pretending that additional walking will undo the effects of the Kleinur, I drop in at the Sundhöll Reykjavíkur public swimming pool – opened in 1937 – which even in December is crowded with Icelanders. There are lap lanes in the open-air pool, but no one is using them; instead, the bathers hang out at the edges, chatting, laughing, and absorbing the comfort of Iceland’s volcanically heated water supply.
It’s said that Icelanders spend more time in the water than just about any other culture. Small wonder: It’s the one place that’s always warm. I’m tempted to spend the $10 it would cost to join them here. But I’ve got another watery destination in mind.
When you think about Iceland, you probably imagine something like what I’m experiencing right now: Submerged to my neck, comfortably embraced by 101-degree water pumped here directly from a volcano-heated spring. Muted conversations filter through the gently rising mist that swirls about me, and through the shifting cloud I can make out the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean, gray and freezing. If I stay here long enough, propping my arms on the rim of the lagoon, I am told, chances are I’ll eventually glimpse a passing whale.
This is the idyllic image that just about every Icelandic tourism commercial projects, and I’m here to tell you this is not a case of false advertising. This is Sky Lagoon, a short drive from the middle of Reykjavik, a day spa destination that fulfills every luxury Arctic fantasy you’ve ever harbored, and then some. For less than half of what they would pay for a ticket to Walt Disney World, Sky Lagoon visitors can spend a day literally immersed in the traditions of Icelandic water culture, surrounded by grass-topped cliffs, sipping crowberry gimlets served at the swim-up bar (sorry, just three drinks per person per day, for safety reasons).
Video tour of Sky Lagoon (Video by Bill Newcott)
I entered this lagoon directly from the locker room (for an extra fee, you can get a private cubicle with a shower), stepping down into a narrow, dimly lit rocky grotto that, after a few steps in the warm water, opens to the vast expanse of the main pool. The steep, rocky terrain surrounding the 3-to-4-foot-deep lagoon is man made, but locals swear to me it faithfully recreates the island’s fjord landscape.
Here, though, the water is much, much warmer.
The lagoon is endlessly inviting, and guests are free to stay there as long as they like, but the more adventurous of us are drawn to a sequence of invigorating alternate activities that the people at Sky Lagoon call, quite simply, The Ritual.
Step one of The Ritual is “Laug,” a comfortably warm soak in that lagoon, a geothermal heat therapy session. Next, however, comes the rude awakening of “Kuldi,” a quick plunge into what looks like a circular hot tub but which is filled with bone-numbingly cold water.
This is the sort of thing you need to do without actually thinking about it, so in I go. I am aware of a line of numbness progressing up my legs and torso, followed by a full-body shock of instantaneous deep-freeze. I am a polar popsicle. Sky Lagoon literature suggests I stay in the cold plunge for at least 10 seconds. I count to “three Mississippi.” Good enough.
I don’t believe I have ever run faster than this moment as I make for the wooden door into the low, moss-roofed building where the rest of The Ritual unfolds. I dash past the small wall of lockers and hurl myself into the next step, “Ylur,” which I am infinitely relieved to discover means “sauna.”
And not just one of those cramped cedar affairs you find at health clubs: this sauna stretches for 30 feet or so with undulating wooden benches that face what is, I’m told, the largest window in Iceland. The frigid sea laps at the shore just outside, but in here the memory of all things frigid – even that recent unpleasantness – evaporates.
I want to live in here. But The Ritual awaits.
I exit the sauna and enter “Suld,” a simulated rainstorm enclosed in a rectangular, wood-paneled, open courtyard. The steady mist falls, seemingly, from an enormous boulder that is precariously suspended above. For all I know, the water that’s swirling around me may well be as cold as the cryogenic bath I experienced outside – but in here, engulfed by the soft patter of droplets, the overwhelming sense is one of supreme tranquility.
“Sometimes, people step out here and they just start to cry,” a repeat visitor tells me. “They’re just overwhelmed.”
Pushing through a set of doors, I arrive at The Ritual’s “Mykt,” an arched stone-and-wood room, resembling a barn, where I am handed a small bowl containing a white paste.
“Spread it over your body,” says the young man behind a table. “But not your eyes.”
A solid piece of advice: The paste is composed almost entirely sea salt. Instead of feeling gritty, though, the paste creates a smooth, almost slippery sheen. It virtually melts away after just a few moments in the next Ritual step: “Gufa,” the steam room.
The final Ritual step is a cold shot of “Saft,” a traditional Icelandic drink made from crowberries, which grow in Iceland’s Westfjords region. The berry can be pretty bitter, but as I share a drink with Liljar Þorbjörnsson – a local distiller whose company, Íslensk Hollusta makes Sky Lagoon’s Saft – I comment on how smoothly it goes down.
“It wasn’t easy coming up with this version,” says Þorbjörnsson, who, like so many Icelandic guys, has a face and physique that suggests he should be playing Jack Reacher. “I finally found a way to squeeze them without crushing the seeds, which is where the bad taste is.”
Þorbjörnsson also helps run Og natura, a family-owned distillery, and he mixes some mean crowberry-and-gin cocktails. As a side business, he dries seaweed snacks for kids, which had me considering calling Icelandic Child Services until I saw some youngsters actually digging into a bag downtown, and seeming to enjoy it.
Night has fallen in Reykjavik, but that was seven hours ago. One thing I’ve noticed about the people here: For them, the notion of “day” is pretty fungible. Dinner can be at 5; it can be at 10:30. I slip into an inviting, green-painted establishment called the Drunk Rabbit, an Irish Pub that seems incongruous until you realize Ireland is just about the closest outpost of civilization near Iceland.
As a fiddler scratches out a one-man version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” I catch a word with my server, a 20-something Icelander.
“It’s funny,” she says, “In the middle of the winter like this, everyone thinks, ‘I’ve got to get out of Iceland.’”
She picks up my extinguished Guinness glass.
“But even then,” she adds, “they know they’ll be coming back.”
It’s 1 a.m. and the Drunk Rabbit is showing signs of shutting down on this Thursday morning. In the blackness above the storefronts, I catch the dim illumination of the Northern Lights. I fast walk the few blocks to Reykjavik’s harbor to watch the show.
Green with a fringe of red, a curtain of solar storm-powered aurora dances above the fishing boats and warehouses with varying levels of brightness. I become aware of car horns honking, both behind me and across the harbor. They seem to be alerting everyone, sleeping and not, to the free sky show in progress. I know for a fact this spectacle happens here almost every clear night during the winter, yet here is the city celebrating as if Iceland has just won the World Cup.
I remember the words of the young woman at the Drunk Rabbit. And I understand. Who would not want to come back for this?
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