I Haven't Slept Much in 36-Hours

I had hoped to write more about my summer vacation [part one] during the actual trip to Iceland and Scotland while on the scene, so to speak, but this experience in the far north taught me, among other things, that I am not a kid anymore. It takes me longer to digest one intriguing experience after another, and I go to bed earlier. Age wise, I am just behind President Trump who turned 80 yesterday. I have no idea what he feels about ageing, though The New York Times has an interesting piece suggesting that talk of age and death makes him uncomfortable. Tucker Carlson opines that the proposed victory arch for Washington is the President’s battle against dying and being forgotten. I have watched enough HGTV restoration stories to know that no one will want my detritus when I die, including the cap I bought twenty-four hours ago in the Amsterdam Airport.
 
We spent two days in Amsterdam before launching forth on the Celebrity Eclipse for points north, very north, and returning to Amsterdam to fly home through Boston yesterday [Sunday]. I have a certificate from our ship’s captain awarding me for crossing the Arctic Circle. [I don’t think I’ll leave that to my posterity, either.] Our destinations were Scotland and Iceland. As a kid, I had a globe of the world, and I imagined Iceland as a snowy landscape with polar bears. In fact, Iceland has no large mammals. Its weather makes tree survival minimal, and its weather and geography—mountainous in places, with rivers and thermal bubbling pools—is not conducive for large mammals to survive in the wild. Cows and sheep are herded and cultivated. Our tour guide on one trip also worked as a school bus driver and rancher, no easy routine when one considers that daylight lasts two to four hours per day through the winter at best.
 
We, on the other hand, visited Iceland when the sun was up for all but 90 minutes of a twenty-four-hour day. I should reword that to say there is continuous daylight, not continuous sunshine. You are more likely to get windburned than sunburned. At certain of the country’s national parks the lasting tourist memory is of an olfactory nature: intense bubbling pits of sulfur. You probably know what that smells like…particularly if you went to an all-boys’ high school. I quietly remarked to our guide that I was going to need a lot of Old Spice before presenting myself in the ship’s dining room that night.
 
The capital of Iceland is Reykjavik, a city about the size of Pittsburgh at 425,000 when counting its expanding suburbs. The entire country’s population is under 700,000. Reykjavik is a modern city surrounding an old, quaint neighborhood. It possesses universities and cultivates the arts. Our time was somewhat limited by the ship’s schedule; we spent an entire day exploring natural wonders within two hours of the city. The next day we completed a walking tour of the city itself, climaxed by a visit to the country’s most famous church, the Lutheran Cathedral Hallgrímskirkja, completed in 1986. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is Christ the King; the Diocese of Reykjavik encompasses the entire country. Catholics number 3% of the country’s population. We did not have an opportunity to visit any Catholic church in Iceland, there being only seven. The web page of the Diocese is quite interesting; it includes a map of all seven churches spread around the country.
 
I was curious about immigration and the country’s policies and sentiments. Evidently the government is concerned with a falloff in applications: 3,000 in 2024, 1,500 in 2025. Apparently, there are efforts underway to assist immigrants in adjusting to Iceland’s life and community services. Most applications come from Ukraine, Venezuela, Palestine, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
 
After we left Iceland, I learned that the United States is remembered fondly in Icelandic history. Given its vulnerable location, Iceland declared itself neutral during World War II. In 1940 a combined force of British and American armies “invaded” Iceland, which was delighted to see them and assisted in their settlement. The presence of these allied soldiers provided a boost to the nation’s economy, helping Iceland recover from the Depression and enter the postwar Western economy. The United States built what would become the nation’s hub for regional and international air traffic, Keflavík International Airport.