For a few years, I had a partner who lived in Akranes, a small port town about a forty-minute drive from Reykjavík. The construction of the Hvalfjörður Tunnel (at 70 million USD, this 5.770-kilometre subsea tunnel cost less than Kristi Noem’s ad campaign) reduced travel time by a hefty forty-five minutes when it was completed in 1998.
The road which we’d travel, sometimes multiple times a day, passes mountain ranges so epic, so worthy of worship, that I felt I was betraying the landscape itself by not summiting the peaks.
My favourite time to see the mountains was on misty days. ‘THE MOUNTAINS, THE MOUNTAINS! LOOK AT THE MIST IN THE MOUNTAINS!’ I’d yell at my partner, head whipping from the window to my partner back to the window again, aghast. ‘I can’t look, I’m driving,’ he’d patiently remind me. Abandoned by rationality, I’d forget he couldn’t appreciate the views like I, the fortunate passenger princess, could.
Northern Fever 