W H Auden & Louis MacNeice from Letters from Iceland Faber & Faber,1937

from Chapter IV: For Tourists

Clothes and Equipment

The most essential article is a pair of stout gumboots, but with smooth soles or they get caught in the stirrups. Riding-boots will be ruined and will not keep you dry. Oilskin trousers in one piece reaching to the waist. A long oilskin coat coming down well below the knees. A cape is useless. An oilskin sou'-wester as well as any other head-gear. A pair of warm but flexible gloves. As far as general clothing is concerned, the danger is of putting on too little rather than too much. On expeditions I always wore flannel trousers and pyjamas under my riding breeches, and two shirts and a golf-jacket and a coat under my oilskin.

For expeditions into the interior, a tent, of course, is required. It is wise perhaps to take a compass, but the mountains are sometimes magnetic and derange them. Finally, whether camping or not, a roll of toilet paper is invaluable.

Reykjavik

There is not much to be said for Reykjavik. The six hotels are The Borg, The Island, The Skjalbreid, the Vik, the Hekla and the Studentgardur. The Borg is called a first-class hotel but is not the kind of thing you like if you like that kind of thing; still it is the only place where you can get a drink.

There is a café in the Ausserstraeti where you can get decent cream cakes. The Borg has a jazz band and dancing every evening. There are two cinemas and two quite decent bookshops.

Board and Lodging, Food

Nearly every farm will put you up, and though the standard of comfort of course varies, they will all do their best to make you comfortable. It is not to be expected that all the farmers will speak English, but a great many do speak a little, and an English-speaking guide can always be found, if you want one.

If you stay in a farm, breakfast will be brought to you in bed. Coffee, bread and cheese, and small cakes. Coffee, which is drunk all through the day - I must have drunk about 1,500 cups in three months - is generally good. There is white bread, brown bread, rock-hard but quite edible, and unleavened rye bread like cake. The ordinary cheese is like a strong Dutch and good. There is also a brown sweet cheese like the Norwegian. I don't like cakes so I never ate any, but other people say they are good.

Soups: Many of these are sweet and unfortunate. I remember three with particular horror, one of sweet milk and hard macaroni, one tasting of hot marzipan, and one of scented hair oil.

Fish and meat: Dried fish is a staple food in Iceland. This should be shredded with the fingers and eaten with butter. It varies in toughness. The tougher kind tastes like toe-nails, and the softer kind like the skin off the soles of one's feet. At the poorer farms, for meat, you will only get Hángikyrl, ie smoked mutton. This is comparatively harmless when cold as it only tastes like soot, but it would take a very hungry man indeed to eat it hot.

For the curious there are two Icelandic foods which should certainly be tried. One is Hákarl, which is half-dry, half-rotten shark. This is white inside with a prickly horn rind outside, as tough as an old boot. Owing to the smell it has to be eaten out of doors. It is shaved off with a knife and eaten with brandy. It tastes more like boot polish than anything else I can think of. The other is Reyngi. This is the tail of a whale, which is pickled in sour milk for a year or so. If you intend to try it, do not visit a whaling station first. Incidentally, talking about pickling in sour milk, the Icelanders also do this to sheep's udders, and the result is surprisingly nice.

Hákarl. (You can see the smell.)