The steam rises from the ground in Hveragerði like the town itself is breathing, slow and warm, and this morning, on my second day here, I woke to that soft hiss outside my window. It is not the rain of Reykjavík, not the wind of the coast; it is something older, something the earth is doing on its own. I pulled on my boots and walked the short distance to Hveragarðurinn, the Geothermal Park, before the day got going, and I stood there watching the mud pools bubble and the fumaroles vent their white breath into the cool August air.
The park is right in the middle of town, a fenced-off patch of bare, steaming ground that feels like a glimpse of the planet's insides. There is a path that winds through it, and signs warn you to stay on the boards, and you understand why when you see the thin crust around the vents, pale and crumbling, and the water in the pools shimmering at a rolling boil. I was the only one there at that hour, apart from a man who came with a small basket of eggs, wrapped in a cloth, and lowered them carefully into one of the hot springs, then sat on a bench nearby, waiting. I watched him for a while, and he nodded at me, and I thought about how this is not a tourist attraction for him; it is just the way things are done here.
At the edge of the park, where the steam thins, there is a little wooden shelter, and inside, buried in the ground, is the hverabrauð — the geothermal rye bread. The people here dig a hole, lower in a pot of dough, and let the earth bake it for twenty-four hours, and when they pull it out, it is dense and dark and faintly sweet. I bought a small loaf from the café nearby — Almar Bakari, which is the local institution, the place where everyone seems to get their morning bread — and I sat on the bench beside the steaming vents and ate a thick slice with butter. It cost about 800 krónur, six dollars or so, which feels like a small price for something the ground itself made.
I also tried an egg, boiled in the spring the way the man had done, and it came out with a soft, slightly salty yolk, the white just set, and I ate it standing there, the steam curling around my face. There is something ceremonial about eating food that the earth has cooked, and I felt a kind of gratitude I have not felt in a long time. After that, I walked through the town, past the greenhouses that line the streets, their glass roofs glittering in the low sun, and I stopped at the LÁ Art Museum, the Listasafn Árnesinga, which is free to enter and currently showing an exhibition called 'The Field in Between'. It is on until the end of August, I believe, so I was lucky to catch it, and I stood in the quiet rooms among paintings that seemed to be about the grey-green landscape we had just walked through, but also about something else, something between the visible and the imagined.
After the museum, I wandered into the Sunnumörk shopping centre, which is a modest, practical place, and found the Skjálftinn 2008 exhibition, the Quake 2008 show. It is a small exhibition, tucked into the corner, but it tells the story of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that hit this town in May 2008. I knew the dates from the information boards, but standing there, seeing the photographs of the cracked streets and the collapsed greenhouses, I felt the weight of it. The town was rebuilt, of course, and the people who live here treat the small tremors as a fact of life, but the exhibition makes you remember that this is not just a place of steam and flowers; it is a place that has been tested.
I had lunch at Gróðurhúsið, the Greenhouse, which is a food hall with several stalls, and I chose a lamb soup from one of them, about 3,000 krónur, which is maybe twenty-two dollars. The hall was busy with a mix of locals and visitors, and the smell of roasted meat and fresh bread filled the air. There is also a brewery here, Ölverk, which is said to be the only one in Europe that uses geothermal heat for brewing, and their pizzas looked good, but I was saving myself for the afternoon hike. I took my soup to a table by the window and watched the Varmá river run past, clear and fast, and I thought about how this town, so small on the map, holds so much.
In the afternoon, I drove the short distance to the Reykjadalur trailhead, the valley that gives this town its name. The path starts at the edge of town and climbs gently through birch scrub and open moorland, and the air, which had been cool, grew warmer as I walked, carrying the smell of sulfur. After about three kilometers, the valley opens up, and there it is: a river running hot, the water a milky blue-green, and steam rising from it in long curtains. There were a few people already in the water, their heads bobbing above the surface, their faces relaxed. I found a spot downstream, where the water was warm but not scalding, and I slipped in, the heat soaking into my legs and back, and I floated there, looking up at the grey sky, feeling the strange comfort of being held by a river the earth itself heated.
I stayed in the water longer than I meant to, the way you do in a hot spring, and when I finally got out, the sun had begun to dip toward the hills, even though it would not set for hours yet. I walked back along the path, my skin still tingling, and stopped at the Reykjadalur Café near the trailhead, a simple wooden building with a terrace overlooking the valley. I ordered a coffee, which cost about 600 krónur, roughly four and a half dollars, and sat watching the steam continue to rise, indifferent to the hour.
As I drove back into town, I noticed the flags along the main street, and the shop windows decorated with paper flowers. I remembered that the town's festival, Blómstrandi Dagar, Blooming Days, is coming up in a few days — the middle of August, I think — and the whole place is getting ready. There will be concerts and markets and a hill singing, they say, and fireworks, and the streets will be full of people. And there is something else, too: the solar eclipse. On the twelfth of August, the moon will pass in front of the sun, and Hveragerði will see almost all of it — close to totality, they say, though not quite. The town is buzzing with it, in a quiet, Icelandic way.
That evening, I went back to the Geothermal Park, just as the light began to soften. The steam was more visible now, pink in the low sun, and the air smelled of sulfur and wildflowers. I stood at the fence for a long time, watching the earth breathe, and I thought about how this town, built on a furnace, has learned to live with it — baking bread, heating homes, growing bananas of all things in greenhouses, the world's northernmost, they say. There is a resilience here, and a patience, and I felt it in my own body, still warm from the river.
I stopped at the little shop by the park and bought a small piece of lava rock, the kind you are not supposed to take, but everyone does, and I put it in my pocket. Then I walked back toward my guesthouse, past the church, Hveragerðiskirkja, its modern lines pale against the sky, and the Sandhólshver hot spring steaming right beside it, as if the earth and the spirit were agreeing on something. I felt very far from home, and very close to something I could not name. Tomorrow, I will think about the road ahead, but tonight, Hveragerði is enough.
I am learning that this country does not ask you to hurry. It asks you to stand still, to let the steam settle on your skin, to taste the bread the earth has made. And I am learning, slowly, to answer.
This is Katrín, in Hveragerði, and I will speak to you again soon. Halló.