The city is officially closed today, and it took me a moment to understand why the streets felt so generously empty. It is Commerce Day, Frídagur verslunarmanna, the first Monday of August, and it seems nearly everyone with a job has taken the long weekend and left. I walked down Laugavegur this morning and the only other people out were families with strollers and visitors like me, all of us moving at the same unhurried pace, as if the whole capital had agreed to exhale at once. I stopped for a coffee at Reykjavik Roasters, one of the small roasteries on the main street, and paid about seven hundred kronur for a cappuccino, which is roughly five dollars. Worth it, I thought, for the warmth of the room and the view of the empty street. The barista told me the city fills up again tomorrow, when Pride week properly begins, but today belongs to no one in particular.
I have been in Reykjavík for three days now, and the practicalities of arrival are mostly behind me. The kennitala is sorted, the bank account is open at Landsbankinn, my phone has a working Icelandic number. What remains is the softer work of orientation, and the small decisions that shape the next month. I spent a good part of the afternoon in a café near the Old Harbour, Reykjavík Röst, with a notebook open and a bowl of tomato soup cooling in front of me. I was trying to decide about the car. The plan, for anyone who has been following along, is to drive the Ring Road clockwise over the coming weeks, and I have been weighing the options: rent, or buy. The rental agencies are easy, but for a month on the road the costs add up quickly. A reasonable mid-range rental runs about ten to twelve thousand kronur a day, which is close to eighty dollars. For thirty days, that is real money. A used car, on the other hand, can be had for maybe a million and a half kronur, and if it survives the trip, I might sell it at the end and recover a good portion of that. The risk is the car itself. I am still weighing it. The soup was about two thousand five hundred kronur, and the coffee another seven hundred, and I sat there long enough that I felt I should apologise. But the room was quiet and the woman behind the counter seemed content to let me stay.
After lunch I walked west, toward the old harbour district of Grandi. The former warehouse quarter has transformed over the last decade into a foodie enclave, and on a holiday afternoon it felt almost sleepy. A few tourists were gathered outside the Omnom chocolate factory, and a handful of boats were heading out from the whale-watching pier, though I suspect the animals were not cooperating. The air smelled of salt and diesel and, faintly, of bread from one of the bakeries. I passed the Aurora Reykjavík museum, which I am told is worth a visit in the winter for its displays of the norðurljós, though in August the sun barely sets and the northern lights are a distant promise. I did not go in. Instead I sat on a bench by the water and watched the gulls work the shoreline, and I thought about how different this city must feel in the deep winter, when the light drains away by early afternoon. Today, the sun was still high at six in the evening, and the bay shimmered in a way that made me forget, for a moment, where I was.
The search for housing has been a quieter thread running through these first days, and I have learned to approach it with patience. The rental market here is tight, and the prices reflect it. A modest one-bedroom flat in the city runs about two hundred and thirty thousand kronur a month, which is roughly sixteen hundred dollars. That is a serious amount of money, but it is also the reality of a capital where tourism has squeezed the supply. I have looked at a few listings online, I have made a couple of calls, and I have learned that the best flats never even reach the public market. They are passed between friends and relatives, or filled by word of mouth before the posting goes live. The woman at the café, whose name turned out to be Hildur, told me I should not worry. She said the city has a way of working things out, that the right place appears when it is meant to. I am not sure I share her fatalism, but I thanked her and paid and stepped back into the late-afternoon light.
The evening found me walking again, this time up the hill toward Hallgrímskirkja. The church is impossible to miss, its concrete facade rising above the rooftops like a frozen organ, and on a clear day the tower gives you the whole city laid out below. I did not go up today. The light was too good to spend indoors. Instead I circled the building and watched the crowds of visitors taking their photographs, and I listened to the faint sound of the church bells marking the hour. From the top of the hill, the view stretches across the rooftops to the bay and beyond, toward the mountains of the Snæfellsnes peninsula on the horizon. I stood there for a long while, just looking. A man next to me was telling his friend about the basalt columns that inspired the church's design, how the volcanic geology of the island has shaped everything from its architecture to its poetry. I smiled at that, because it seems true. The whole country is built on rock and fire, and the city itself is a kind of lava field, its streets and houses arranged in the crooked patterns of cooled magma.
As the evening wore on, I found myself in Vesturbær, the quiet residential district west of the centre. The streets here are lined with low wooden houses painted in soft colours, and the gardens are full of lupins and rowan trees heavy with berries. I walked past the local pool, Vesturbæjarlaug, and saw steam rising from the geothermal water into the cool air. A few swimmers were doing slow laps in the outdoor lane, and I could hear the soft splash of their strokes. I have been told that the public pools are the heart of Icelandic social life, that people come here to talk and soak and unwind, and I could see why. The water is heated by the earth itself, by the same geothermal energy that warms the city's homes and melts the snow from its streets. There is something deeply reassuring about that, about a city that literally sits on top of its own warmth. I did not swim. I was too tired, and the day was already long. But I made a note to come back before I leave, to spend an afternoon in the hot water like a local.
I had dinner at Íslenski Barinn, a small place near the centre that serves traditional Icelandic food with a modern touch. I ordered the lamb soup, which was rich and hearty, and a local beer that cost about twelve hundred kronur. The room was warm and full of conversation, and I sat at the bar and watched the cook work his small kitchen with practiced efficiency. The soup was good, better than the one I had at lunch, and I ate it slowly, savouring the taste of the lamb and the root vegetables. I thought about the sheep that roam the highlands in summer, grazing on wild herbs and berries, and how their meat carries the flavour of the landscape. Iceland is like that. Everything tastes of the place it came from. The waiter asked if I was here for Pride, and I told him I was here for the road, but I planned to stay for the festival. He laughed and said the city would be a different place by Saturday, when the parade fills the streets. I paid my bill, about eight thousand kronur in total, and stepped outside.
The sun was finally beginning to think about setting, though at this latitude in August it never fully commits. The sky was a pale gold over the bay, and the streets were still light. I walked down toward the water, past the Harpa concert hall, its glass facade glowing faintly in the evening light. A small crowd had gathered on the steps, watching the sun dip toward the horizon, and I joined them for a moment. A woman was playing a guitar nearby, something soft and slow, and the music floated out over the water. I thought about the week ahead, about Pride and the parade and the thousands of visitors who would fill these streets, and I felt a small surge of gratitude that I had caught the city in its quiet before the storm. Tomorrow the crowds arrive. Tomorrow the festival begins. But tonight, Reykjavík is mine.
I walked back to my room slowly, through the streets that were still empty, and I felt the strange lightness of a summer evening in a city close to the Arctic Circle. The light does not so much end as fade, and fade, and leave a long pale twilight in its place. I unlocked the door and sat by the window for a while, watching the sky darken by degrees. I have a long road ahead of me, and a car still to choose, and a home to find. But for now, that can wait. Tonight, I am here, in this light, and that is enough.
Halló, until tomorrow.