Here we are, at the most intense part of the narrative. Some of you have already heard snippets of our stories about this day, full of the most powerful and genuine emotions. Now readers will have a chance to piece the whole picture together into a single canvas in brown and gray tones.
In the last part, I left off when we departed the hospitable hydroelectric power station following a storm warning. The girls also mentioned that we'd come across a hotel or hostel on the way up the mountain, and we could wait out the bad weather there. The Germans, with whom we rode in one of the previous parts, did just that, because Marcus had fallen ill.
But, as the saying goes, what's good for the Russian is death for the German. I'm no Russian, nor am I a European, but rather a mutant breed of a bunch of nationalities unknown to science. That's probably why I can never find peace, always being pulled in different directions. In this case, I was pulled to ride against a strong wind up a mountain, and the thought of waiting didn't even cross my mind.
Of course, anyone who has pulled a stunt like this will understand me, and the rest can try throwing a 40 kg sack over their shoulders and taking a walk around Sventa (or Sigulda, if that's closer to you).
When, after twenty kilometers of battling nature, we spotted a sluice on the river that significantly shielded us from the piercing wind, we jumped for joy like a kid seeing presents under the Christmas tree. We didn't bother cooking porridge; we had no strength, and it was a bit too early for lunch anyway, so we snacked on some peppered nuts that I had randomly grabbed at Maxima before the flight. This was one of those rare cases where my impulsiveness actually did some good, because without this fuel, it's completely unclear how we would have kept moving.
If you look closely at the track in the previous issue, you'll see that we needed to reach a bridge to cross the longest and one of the most turbulent rivers in Iceland – Þjórsá.
This would have extended our route by about 30 kilometers, as we would then have to ride all the way back along the opposite bank. And then another miracle happened, though it's not even clear whether for better or worse.
This is what a miracle looks like
The miracle consisted of a small sluice bridge, where passage is actually forbidden. But we were on bicycles, so the law doesn't apply to us!
I was far from certain that we would continue to cross the river after the bridge, but everything worked out. Turbulent waters raged all around, a dark blue sky hung over us across the entire horizon, except where the snow-spotted mountains soared upward, stones and sand crunched under our wheels, but we stubbornly rolled forward.
And so we shaved off a fair number of kilometers, landing right on the dirt road we needed. Less than an hour passed before we reached a sign reading: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” aka “HELL begins here.”
If you need a translation into human language, let me clarify. The info board sternly warned that things were going to get rough ahead, and therefore ordinary cars, even crossovers, were barred from entering — only reinforced four-wheel-drive jeeps with high clearance, and ideally engine water protection. Ahead lay fords, a rocky volcanic road, and absolutely no civilization except for the rare campsites. We shot the breeze with a few tourist types in simpler cars who were debating whether their clunkers would make it through the fords, and got the green light from travelers who had already been inside — saying they'd make it to Landmannalaugar somehow. This gave us some hope too, since we didn't have any experience storming fords yet, and had no idea what to expect.
From here on out, my story is bound to get tangled and incoherent, because what we went through can't be put into words, and if it can, only with the kind that aren't used on this blog.
What on earth happened, you might ask in bewilderment? Did you really not know what you were getting into? Didn't you bring provisions and spare parts? Was your clothing unsuitable for the Icelandic climate? Didn't have the muscle to pedal?
No, no, and no. We were completely fine on all those fronts, but we clearly underestimated the terrifying and dreadful sheer power of an Icelandic storm. By the time we entered the interior of Iceland (the Interior), we had already ridden 20 km against the wind and were pretty exhausted. And here the road turned to sand and went uphill. The wind, meanwhile, wasn't weakening at all; quite the opposite, it was picking up in every possible way. Sand flew into our eyes, scratched our glasses, and made moving difficult, but for now we were holding on. Jeeps zoomed past us fairly often — we were moving along a busy route leading to Landmannalaugar, a very popular spot among tourists.
All this was a serious test of endurance, and pretty soon we weren't riding at all anymore, but walking, dragging our bikes behind us. And the wind, meanwhile, kept getting stronger and stronger. Andrey soon began to think that a stronger wind simply couldn't exist in nature. I, however, am not so naive, and when I saw that the stream of cars had completely dried up, I began to expect the worst.
This is that very same famous Hekla volcano from the last part
Even with a signpost
All around us, as you can see, are joyless fields of lava gravel
The worst didn't take long to arrive: huge vortexes carried kilograms of dust, pebbles, and volcanic sand right at us, and all this was accompanied by wind gusts of insane pressure. As it turned out later, the speed of the latter reached 25 meters per second, which, by the way, is 90 km/h.
After some time battling the raging elements, I realized that we wouldn't last long like this; we needed to rest and grab a bite. Andrey already looked like a zombie by then and reacted weakly to my call. What he was thinking at that moment remains unknown, but it's a fact that I had to persuade him to get the stove out. He usually thinks we're just a stone's throw away from the finish line. It's hard to understand where this incurable optimism of his comes from, considering how many times he's stepped on the same rake: ”We don't have far to go, we'll make it as is.”
Fortunately, while I was thinking all this, rock formations a bit taller than usual rose up in front of us. That's where we nestled down. We had to shove the stove into a hole, digging out a bit of dirt from it for volume.
Our lunch was cheerless. We still had about 20 kilometers uphill ahead of us, and the wind only knew one direction of development — getting stronger. With such a bleak picture, there was little chance of raising our spirits with porridge and canned food.
I informed Andrey that our prospects were pretty lousy, as were our options. Option one - keep walking to the campsite, breathing dust, fighting monstrous fatigue, and feeling the sharpness of the local pebbles on our skin, or pitch the tent right here, listening with our whole bodies to the trembling of its walls, the howling of the storm, and the rustling of sand all around until tomorrow.
The punk chose to walk. I don't need much convincing — I'm always confident in my physical strength, unlike my mental strength. After this trek, however, the thought crossed my mind that maybe it was a mistake.
Perhaps you're wondering what a person actually thinks about while pushing through such a horrendous experience? I won't speak for Andrey, but I can share my own thoughts with you.
I was reflecting on the fact that a human can endure a lot, if not everything, that's just how he's built. A person doesn't have a choice: whatever falls on you, you live through it. There's only one alternative, as we know, and there's even less sense in it than in enduring and hoping.
Thoughts also came that all physical trials are nothing compared to moral ones. At least, that's my experience. Both all my hospital stints and this storm — it all pales in comparison to the dark thoughts that sometimes overcome all people, and me quite often at that. There's even a song about it, I like Johnny Cash's version better. See The Darkness.
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Bjartur's whole body ached, although he didn't want to admit it to himself, and his wet clothes would have offered little protection against the frost had he decided to burrow into the snow. As the snowflakes grew sharper and more prickly, the frost strengthened. The snow piled up higher and higher. His outerwear grew so stiff that the cold couldn't reach his underwear as long as he kept moving. His eyelashes and beard were frosted over. All he had left in his bundle was a ring and a half of blood sausage, completely frozen. He had lost his stick. You couldn't see a thing. The darkness had thickened so much it felt like you could cut it with a knife. The wind blew from the east, right into his face. Time and time again, Bjartur stumbled over tussocks, falling into ditches where the snow had drifted almost waist-deep. The snowflakes swirled around Bjartur like ash in the wind. He had one advantage: he couldn't lose his way anymore, because to his left he heard the heavy, sullen roar of the rushing river.
The worse he felt, the harder he cursed, constantly recalling the famous battles sung of in the rímur of ancient poets. He endlessly muttered the most powerful stanzas through clenched teeth, especially emphasizing the descriptions of such demonic heroes as Grímur and Andri. For a long time it seemed to him that he was fighting Grímur; he hallucinated that he had long been at war with this damned devil from Tröllheim. But now the battle would be decisive. In his mind he traced the entire vile life path of Grímur, starting from the moment the fortune-teller Groa caught him on the shore. Pale with anger, he plotted his treacherous schemes.
Bjartur described him with the words of the skalds — this malicious demon, this sorcerer. Here he roars, sunk waist-deep into the earth, flames billowing from his mouth. No mortal man could defeat him.
Bjartur had not the slightest pity for this devil. Every time Bjartur fell into a ditch, he didn't surrender, but clambered out with redoubled energy and marched on, gritting his teeth and raining curses upon Grímur, his fire-spewing maw. He firmly resolved not to rest until he had driven Grímur into the most distant corner of hell, until he pierced him with his sword, until he began to writhe in his death throes to the dance of earth and sea.
Time and time again it seemed to him that he had finished off Grímur, sent him to hell, and bid him farewell with the immortal words of the poet. And yet at the next halt the blizzard would beat against Bjartur's face again with unabated force; it sank its claws into his eyes and face, howled maliciously into his ears, and tried to knock him to the ground. The struggle continued; he fought one-on-one with a monster that raged so fiercely the earth shook.
No, no, these devils wouldn't escape their well-deserved punishment. Who had ever heard of Garek, or Hrolf the Walker, or Bernout suffering defeat in a decisive battle? Just the same, no one would dare say that Bjartur of Summerhouses was bested by monsters, no matter how many times he tumbled from a cliff and rolled into a ditch. "I will fight to my last breath, no matter how the wind rages!" Finally he stopped and leaned against the wind as one leans against a wall, but neither the wind nor he could budge each other. Then Bjartur decided to lie down in the snow and rest; he began looking for a sheltered spot in a deep ravine. He dug a hollow in a snowdrift with his hands, sat huddled inside it, and began gathering snow to close the opening. But the snow wasn't packed tightly enough, it just wouldn't hold, and Bjartur had nothing at hand. It made for a poor shelter; the snow immediately collapsed. Bjartur couldn't stay in the snowdrift for long — the cold pierced him, he began to freeze, his whole body grew stiff, and, even worse, a drowsiness he couldn't overcome was taking hold of him — that tempting sleep in the snow that makes death during a blizzard so easy. The main thing was not to give in to the temptation that beckons us to a land of warmth and peace. Usually, to keep from yielding to temptation and dozing off in the snow, Bjartur would recite or sing at the top of his lungs all the obscene verses he had memorized since childhood, but the situation didn't lend itself to singing, and his voice kept breaking, while drowsiness continued to shroud his senses and consciousness in a hazy fog. Before Bjartur's mind's eye passed images of people, things he had experienced himself and read about in ancient poems, steaming horsemeat on a large platter, bleating sheep in a fold, the disguised hero Bernout, frivolous parson's daughters in silk stockings. And finally, without noticing it himself, he dissolved into another person and turned into Grímur the Proud, brother of Ulvar the Strong. The king, the father of these brothers, had married a young princess as an old man. The woman, bored in bed at night, began to pine. But then one day she cast her gaze upon Prince Grímur the Proud, who eclipsed all the men in the kingdom with his beauty, strength, and courage. The young queen was seized by such a love for this remarkable youth that she could neither eat nor sleep. Finally, she decided to visit Grímur in his bedchamber at night. She spoke to him of the old king, Grímur's father, with malice and mockery:
What use is the kingdom to me! — the king has doomed me to virginity, the powerless old man barely tosses and turns in bed.
— Damn you to hell! — shouted Bjartur. He was now standing upright in the snowdrift, having pushed the depraved queen away, despite all her artful wiles. Had anyone ever heard of the heroes of poems committing fornication, committing adultery. After all, it always ends with them playing the coward in battle. All these fine fellows feel like great heroes in the arms of a woman, but in battle they are the ultimate cowards. No one will ever hear that Bjartur of Summerhouses turned his back on his enemies on the battlefield to amuse himself with some trashy queen. Bjartur grew angry. He floundered desperately in the snow and slapped his arms with all his might; he didn't calm down until he had overcome that treacherous languor when the body begs for blissful rest, calls to surrender, to lay down arms.
For a while Bjartur kept moving to warm up, and finally shoved a ring of frozen blood sausage under his clothes. He warmed it against his body and, clutching it in his fist, began to eat in the gloom of the merciless winter night, with snow for seasoning.
It was an endlessly long night. Rarely had he recited so many verses in a single night. He recited all his father's verses, all the ancient poems known to him, all the skillfully composed songs of his own — those that could be read backwards and forwards, in forty-eight different ways — a whole series of obscene couplets, one psalm his mother had taught him, and all the humorous poems that had been known in those parts since time immemorial — about headmen, merchants, and judges. From time to time he crawled out of the snowdrift and slapped his chest and shoulders until he began to gasp for breath.
He was so afraid of freezing to death that he decided to leave his snowdrift. Morning must have been approaching by now, and there was little joy in spending a whole day in the snow, without food, far from human habitation. He set off again. At first he strode along with his head held high, leaning against the wind, but having climbed to the pass above the ravine, he could no longer stay on his feet and began to advance by crawling on all fours, tumbling down the rocky slopes into ravines and gullies. He no longer wore mittens, and his fingers were completely numb.