The Thoroddsens have a sense of adventure--Bjorn flies in his airplane, Margret races around on her Icelandic horses--so they seemed completely unfazed when two Americans they had just met ordered a moving crew to empty their house in the dead of winter. "You have to take chances in life," Bjorn told me, and they did with us.
It was Margret's birthday, and she seemed quite content to share coffee, gifts, and birthday wishes with her friend as the mayhem erupted around her. Complicating matters considerably was the fact that Iceland has only four hours of sunlight a day in December. At 10:00 a.m. it was still dark, and when we finished the Big Picture at 3:30 p.m. it was dark again. Fortunately, the horses were willing to stand patiently throughout the entire episode (I'd never heard of Icelandic horses before--they're a chunky, shaggy breed with an unusual gait called the tolt that is kind of a super-smooth trot).
Because there is no wood to burn, houses in Iceland rarely have fireplaces. Instead, the heat comes from the volcanic activity underground--natural energy, straight from the earth. The geothermal heat creates hot springs, and we saw platoons of people swimming outside in December with two feet of snow on the ground. Looking at the glaciers and tundra not far from where these people were contentedly swimming, I couldn't help thinking of the marvelous human ability to adapt.
Life on this small, cold, sparsely settled island is pleasant indeed--except (in my opinion) for the fish-liver oil that people here swallow to obtain vitamin D, and which no amount of tooth brushing would remove.
