Making the most of a window of opportunity. Two out at an Icelandic point break. Photo: Scott Wicking.
One could paint a summer scene of idyllic life in Iceland, when the driftwood fire of a beach camp smoulders in the midnight sun, as neoprene-clad figures saunter in through the foam, driven from the waves by hunger and the promise of a cool beer. Tomorrow, they will ride up to the glacier, build a kicker, enjoy the snow park. However, life here is a double-edged sword. Winters can be brutal, the surf capricious and the winds punishing. Just getting around is a serious undertaking. Ice sheets lay a deadly sheen across the blacktop. The main roads through the heartlands are raised strips of tarmac edged by sharp drop-offs into the unforgiving clutches of the lava fields. Here, huge, jagged boulders the size of family sedans litter the landscape. The crumpled carcass of a nearly new Opel is mounted on a plinth in a lay-by like a giant moose head, the mangled remains of the hatchback offered up as a warning to the unwary driver.
“The roads are pretty unforgiving,” says local surfer Ingolfur Olsen. “They are narrow, slippery, and the wind is a big issue, especially with a big truck. Surfing in Iceland means many of the spots are inaccessible. It’s not so bad down south, because many of the breaks are near the roads.” This doesn’t help, if you are against the clock on a short winter’s day, racing the falling sun. “Window surfing,” as Ingo describes it. When conditions combine you have to be able to go. “You get plenty of swell, maybe for three days, but the conditions are actually only good for maybe four hours,” he explains. “If you want to be an Icelandic surfer, you need a job where you can bail out when you need to.” Even if conditions look like coming together, getting to the breaks can be a mission. “Iceland is not as small as everyone likes to think,” explains Jon Teitur Sigmundsson, one of Iceland’s original gang of four surf pioneers. “The nearest place to surf is about forty minutes from the capital. Some places much further. You don’t just pop out of the capital for a six-hour drive for maybe/maybe surf. Sometimes I get a call from Georg and he says “It’s going off!”, so we drive through the mountains, and the sun is setting, and we drive down to this beach, and it’s breaking, and we get maybe an hour, and you share a beer and you drive back; it’s a full day.”
For Jon, this is one of the reasons surfing in the country hasn’t expanded like in other places. Here, on Iceland, you take the difficulties of surfing elsewhere and multiply them to the nth degree. The essence of surfing in Iceland is that it possesses a purity of spirit that harks back to an era long gone, one where the hassles of crowds and competition are absent, one completely devoid of the pressures of commercialism. It is all about the experience. For Jon it’s more than a sport, more than just the physical act of riding a wave. “Sitting in the water here, with your hood on, a six-millimeter suit, your nose running, and it’s a beautiful day: the sky is clear, the light is very dynamic, especially if you are surfing in the fall. Surfing is about the fact that there’s a pulse of energy traveling across the whole Atlantic and it breaks beautifully on this rock in the ocean; it’s not just about getting some three-sixty or some trick. If you’re surfing that barrel, you were actually there when it broke at the end of its journey – that’s a beautiful experience.”
Today all the US surf magazines have carried their Iceland stories, the European media, too. Top pros have flown in and sampled the waves on offer. Castles in the Sky, with Dan Malloy, Timmy Curren and Dane Reynolds, showed the harsh potential of this land. Tropical searcher turned northern light, Timmy Turner, has been here for his Cold Thoughts film, camping on the edge of the glacier, brewing up with melted ice. But the locals are yet to see many visitors. These brutal conditions have produced a very social crew where crowds are still an alien concept. “We never had this in the surf scene,” explains Jon. “We never worried that it’s becoming too crowded.” In the expanding global surf market, where we trade in a limited resource, perhaps more visitors or crowded Icelandic peaks are inevitable. This is despite the harsh realities that no photo can capture: the shocking jolt that comes with that first duck-dive in subzero temperatures, which even the most modern neoprene cannot ward off, or the chill that cuts through the huddled pack when an icy wind blows off the highlands. Visitors would do well to remember that this is a Viking land, one forged in the fires of the earth’s fury. And while the environment and the locals may currently be hospitable, it would be unwise to take advantage, cross the line, ignore the rules or breach the boundaries. It is but a thin crust separating cool times from hell fires.
Extract from the Iceland chapter of ‘Cold Water Souls: In Search of Surfing’s Cold Water Pioneers’
