This dire prognostication inspires Ingolfsson to take me for a drive up Hekla, a volcano we hadn’t explored on my last visit to Iceland. Awake before dawn for a proper Viking breakfast— two slugs of cod liver oil washed down with a big bowl of skyr, a sour yogurt— Ingolfsson checks the weather on his computer. “Fog, then a bit of righteous sun, then cold wind, maybe some real snow,” he says cheerfully, rolling his Rs, his accent sounding a little Scottish. “Iceland has four seasons: morning, day, evening and night.” As we drive east from Reykjavik, the world’s northernmost capital, home to more than 200,000 people, two-thirds of all Icelanders, Ingolfsson says that his country has only two endemic species, the field mouse and the Arctic fox. “<strong>The</strong> landscape is too severe to support large ungulates like elk or deer,” he says. “We have just three geographic zones: inhabitable lowlands where humans live, uninhabitable highlands where almost nothing grows and glaciers, where nothing lives.” Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe, covering 3,100 square miles with an average thickness of 1,600 feet, fills much of southeastern Iceland. Vatnajökull is actually an ice cap composed of dozens of glaciers and paves over two large volcano systems, Grimsvotn and Bárdarbunga. Iceland is also home to the most powerful waterfall in Europe, Dettifoss, which, engorged with glacial meltwater, can pour at 21,000 cubic feet per second, about a quarter that of Niagara Falls. We stop at a roadside diner for a classic Viking lunch: mutton soup—large chunks of lamb with potatoes and carrots—and a hunk of dense bread. <strong>The</strong> wind is cuttingly cold, but Ingolfsson is inured. I’m in mountain boots and a wind parka. He is wearing a holey wool sweater and sandals. “Sandals and ski boots are all you need in Iceland,” he insists. Fortified, we set out in our superjeep, winding through high, barren, rust-colored hills up into the snow. Ingolfsson drops the double transmission into “crawler gear” and we begin to ascend. Superjeeps are unique to Iceland, although a few have now been exported to Antarctica. Outwardly they appear similar to a customized, big-wheeled off-road vehicle, but in this environmentally sensitive country, ORV travel is prohibited. Superjeeps are designed exclusively for travel over snow and selfhealing glaciers, not redneck mud-hogging. For flotation, the tires are exceedingly wide and soft. Halfway up the vast white cone of Hekla, we start to bog down in deep snow. “Drop the tire pressure to 7 psi,” says Ingolfsson, adjusting his wraparound glacier glasses on his shaved head. At my left knee, in the passenger seat, is a vertical metal rack with six switches on the front and pressure hoses extending out the back. <strong>The</strong> hoses weave through the vehicle, plugging into each tire and the air pump. <strong>The</strong>re is a deflation switch, an inflation switch and a switch for each individual tire. I flip the deflation switch and open the gauges for all four tires. As the tires deflate, they begin to grip the snow and the superjeep lurches uphill. As we traverse an eyesearingly white side slope, the superjeep, keeled over like a sailboat in a strong wind, begins to lose traction on the uphill side. Ingolfsson orders me to drop the rightside tire pressure to 3 psi. I hang out the window and watch as the huge tires go basically flat, the rubber 72
<strong>The</strong> Bárdarbunga eruption began in <strong>August</strong> 2014 and lasted six months.
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BEYOND THE ORDINARY THE RED BULLETI
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