Reykjavik

Reykjavik- With a population of 293,577 (according to figures calculated December 2004) Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik, bears around 60% of the county’s population, 200,000 or so people. This is certainly noticeable when you are outside of the city on your tour bus, loving it, just totally chilled out, relaxed, taking it in, watching the passing landscape, talking to people, feeling the bounce of the bus seat, the clean, mechanical breeze of the air condish blowing softly on your face. Just,.. you know, doing it.

When you look out your bus window, there is nobody out there. I was really surprised by this. If you go for a hike in the Immigrant Wilderness in the Sierra Nevadas in California, though you feel you are way out in the middle of nowhere, you are bound to run into someone. There is a special kind of desolation in the interior of Iceland that I have never found in the small towns or nature areas I have been in inside the U.S. I know that has much to do with the fact that I have not been in very many in the U.S., but still.

So yes, Reykjavik is by all means a city. The thing is, even with 60% of the nations population, it is still a small, somewhat quaint, city. It would compare to Portland, Oregon in some distant ways with regards to feel and visual attractiveness, but to Eugene, Oregon, when considering size. Strangely, I am not just using Oregon cities for comparison because I have been living there for the last two years, but also because Oregon has a strangely Scandinavian (Nordic if including Iceland and Finland) quality to it, both in its philosophies and somehow, its feel. I wouldn’t carry the comparison very far past there though.

Reykjavik is more novel, of course, because the people are speaking Icelandic, the closest language to (or really, The language) that the Vikings spoke. Well, I guess it is novel also because I don’t live there. Still, the city is clean, colorful, well designed, certainly aesthetically pleasing and interesting.

One thing I noticed after a short while of being there, was an unusually high number of young mothers pushing strollers around the city. It was not that there were tons of 16 year-old mothers carting dirty babies through the city (though that would have been creepy and kind of cool, somehow), but the average age seemed 18-27. I guess Iceland, and therefore Reykjavik, has been experiencing a population boom.

In fact, while busing around the city (on a city bus, not the plush comfort chariots that tourists ride in) I passed through surprisingly large areas where whole neighborhoods were in mid-construction. Now, there is logic to a high amount of construction being done in summer because there is such a long and cold winter to make it impossible then, but this is not just roadwork and some buildings being put up. This is large neighborhoods, suburbs; Rows and rows of newly built apartments, houses, etc. being quickly constructed. It was eerie, really. I was amazed.

In speaking about this population boom, and Iceland’s economy, I heard two overall different perspectives. What has happened in Iceland is that a few sickeningly wealthy people (bank owners) have begun purchasing banks and industries all over Norden, and particularly in Denmark. This is somewhat funny ironic, or just purely intentional, because Iceland was under Denmark’s imperial net for years (until around the 2nd world war). I heard that they don’t think so much of this in Denmark. Anyhow, the thing is, some people are waiting for a crack and a crash in this booming economic frenzy. There are signs of boom everywhere, rampant spending and debt galore, but can it continue?

So I spoke with a few people who said they were just waiting for the crash, which makes sense to me, while on the other side I heard the argument that this was the beginning of Iceland’s ultimate placement on the map; The new beginning. Progress, presence, development, refinement, all of those creepy words that people like George Bush say when they are talking about tearing huge holes in delicately functioning systems in the hopes of something outrageous. I certainly hope that Iceland just continues to prosper, but I think it would take some slow, patient, well-planned path to do so. Hopefully the growth will slow down and then stabilize, rather than hit a rut.

Regardless of all of this uninformed musing and meandering, Reykjavik is a fantastic city, and I would put it in the “100 Places You Should See Before You Die” category.
I hope these photographs capture some of the city’s beauty and charm.