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Questions of Travel: On Kurt Caswell’s “Iceland Summer”

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Iceland Summer: Travels Along the Ring Road by Kurt Caswell LATELY, IT SEEMS, everyone is visiting Iceland. Half a million Americans are flying into Reykjavik every year, sometimes for a day or two, sometimes for a week. Maybe it’s the influence of Game of Thrones (2011–19), Vikings (2013–20), or The Northman (2022). More likely, it’s the pervasive presence of Nordic noir in books and TV series. There is even an annual literary festival, “Iceland Noir,” which celebrates “darkness in all its forms” and reassures us that the erupting volcano won’t deter readings and panels. Along with the volcanoes, there are glaciers, geysers, waterfalls, hot springs, mountains, rocky seacoasts, sheer cliffs. Your bus on the Ring Road may have to stop for sheep, your campsite may host a family of Arctic foxes, or a flock of nesting Arctic terns may take time out from their incredible migration flights to dive-bomb you and your party. In Iceland Summer: Travels Along the Ring Road (2023), Kurt Caswell goes farther and deeper than the usual tour of this beautiful place. Like other Nordic countries, Iceland is expensive, and the average tourist can count on spending $100–$200 a day on food, lodging, and travel. Not Caswell, with his lifelong friend Scott Dewing. These two characters backpack their way from Reykjavik to the Westfjords, camping in designated campgrounds and walking, almost exclusively, into the wild lands of the Hornstrandir and beyond. They cook their own meals on a camp stove—oatmeal, pasta, and tuna, seasoned with the friendly flask of vodka, rum, or Brennivín. They visit cafés for coffee or beer, and are happy to indulge in the legendary pylsur (Icelandic hot dogs) or taste the occasional puffin. They get wet, a lot, and often downright drenched. These are grown-ups with real jobs, but they walk for kilometers every day, sleep in the wind and rain, and then dry out in bus stations and on long ferryboat and bus rides. They circumambulate the island along the Ring Road, visiting some celebrated wonders and many lesser-known villages and towns. But this book is not simply a dirtbag […]

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