Off the Shelf, a Stroll through Sandgerði

Today I thought I would debut the other two of the main segments that I plan to have here on Delves and Shelves. The first of them is this one. It’s called Off the Shelf, and it's pretty much what you'd expect from a blog on any old subject, a purr stream-of-consciousness rant about something-or-other which is probably doesn't matter, but maybe you can find some sort of meaning in it, and maybe that meaning can be of use to you in your RPG playing, writing, or general hobbyism.

Today's segment concerns a trip I took back in college during the summer after my junior year. A friend and I made a trek across the Atlantic to attend that year's Sonisphere, a big rock festival, with emphasis on harder rock and metal in England. Though that was full of many fun experiences and excellent performances, this story is not about that. This story is about the three-day stopover that we did, for free thanks to an airline promotion, in Iceland. While there, we stayed, similarly for free, at my friend's grandmother's house, enjoying the peace and quiet of the Icelandic countryside (even though we were only about twenty minutes drive from the airport), caught a couple games of the 2014 World Cup, made full use of blackout shades to sleep at all given that it was light for 19 hours a day, and ate more milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and ice cream than I previously thought was humanly possible.

Our story today concerns one afternoon while we were there, with nothing much to do, and we ended up deciding to walk to a nearby lighthouse just to see what was up. The form this trip took was largely that of a point-to-point march, with us starting in his grandmother's back yard, and walking straight out into the field behind it, all the while discussing Primus bass riffs and formulating our plan of attack for seeing the most bands as efficiently as possible in a few days time.

A field much like the one I walked through that day, as well as the lighthouse that was my destination.  Wikipedia says it's in Garður, so if anyone Icelandic happens to see this, I'd certainly like to hear where exactly the line between there and Sandgerði is.  Is it sort of like a city within a county?

For those who are from or have been to Iceland, I'm sure you'll agree that the scenery is quite something to behold. For those of you who have been out in the countryside, away from any major cities, you'll know what I was experiencing at this moment. The flat fields of rocky ground covered only with low grasses, moss, and lichens stretched out as far as the eye could see behind me, and in front of me only ended in the cold grey waters of Reykjanesbær, the inlet of the Atlantic which forms the bay that shelters Reykjavík from the north sea. Above, the sky was grey, but clear, empty. All around, the atmosphere was as the kind of still quiet that you can only find in the middle of nowhere.

And then, the terns came…

In our efforts to go from one physical point to another, my friend and I hadn't realized until we were already in it, that this particular part of the field was the nesting ground for a flock of terns, who were less than happy at us trespassing on their land.

The whole encounter only lasted perhaps a minute or two before we passed through the area where they were gathered, but in that time, we were angrily squawked at, occasionally dive-bombed, and I was altogether rather thankful that my friend is about 6-foot-three, and thus a closer, easier target. It was only after the fact that we noticed the small white splotch on his dark blue knit hat, that we realized that he had, in fact, been shat upon.

It was in that moment, and again for the rest of that day, and ever since, that I've had what I'm fairly certain is a slightly better idea of what a random encounter with a randomly determined group of small animals would be like, kind of a nuisance for a short time, but untimely not too harmful for either of the parties involved.

After that brief brush with a bevy of somewhat belligerent birds (bonus points to anyone who can make that sentence any more obnoxiously alliterative), the rest of the walk was pretty uneventful. The lighthouse and its visitor's center turned out to be closed for the day, we got lightly rained on as we walked back to the house along the actual road, and as we passed some local club fields I can officially say that I've seen people playing soccer in the most northerly and the most southerly places I've ever been. After that, the rest of the day was, much as the ending of the the others that I spent in the small seaside town of Sandgerði on the southern coast of Reykjanesbær, a collection of flatbread, smoked lamb, butter, and cheese. I do plan to go back to Iceland someday, and when I do, those kinds of sandwiches will be just about first on my to-do list.

And with that, as always, may your road lead you ever onward to adventure,

-Armstrong