Iceland is so close to the Arctic Circle that in midsummer you get, if not white nights, then certainly very pale ones. It was after midnight, and yet the sun had barely dipped below the horizon. The taxi ride from the airport to the city takes about forty minutes, through a twilight that is not especially eerie until you realize that unlike a usual sunset, the quality of the light hasn't changed in all that time. The sea is a dark and glimmering turquoise, and the rocky moonscape of the Reykjanes peninsula is clearly visible in the crepuscular light.
Soon we are within the orbit of the city, the swooping steeple of Hallgrímmskirkja instantly recognizable against the glowing sky. It is Friday night but the streets are quiet, with few signs yet of the infamous weekend "runtúr" -- when young Icelanders religiously pub-crawl and cruise their way through the city in the wee small hours, leaving a high-tide mark of smashed glass and good cheer the next morning -- except for a tiny car jammed full of teenagers, thudding with music and high spirits, that draws level with us at one point. They peel off in another direction; we're headed for the old harbour, obviously the more sedate end of Reykjavík.
When we pull up outside the Three Sisters Guesthouse, our host – a gentle chap in his sixties, named Thor -- is waiting up to let us in. Thor greets a sleepy Toby with courteous formality, as if he were a grown-up (the general absence of cooing sentimentalism towards children was refreshing, an Icelandic signature that we came to like). Then he looks James in the eye, shakes him gravely by the hand, and escorts him across the road to the studio apartment that will be home for the next ten days.
Richard and I wrestle the toddler, the two suitcases, the stroller, and the scooter out of the taxi. It's now only just bedtime by East Coast time, but between the drive to
Boston and the flight, we’ve been traveling all day. We’ll need to break
out the Benadryl for the kids and Bailey’s for the grown-ups if we are
to close our eyes before the sun peeks through our windows in only a
few short hours.
James pops back out of the house, dragging Thor by the hand, to check that we are following and that we have the precious scooter. The town might be sleeping, but our big boy is buzzing with the thrill of arrival in his first really foreign land.
“I love this place!” he bursts out, grinning up at us and at his new protector. Does he mean the house of Thor, the slumbering city, or the laid-back country that let him glide across its threshold on two speedy little wheels? I don’t know, but it looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.