There’s one thing I’ve wanted to do in Iceland for years but somehow it’s never fitted into my itinerary. Well, thanks to my Summer in the North trip turning into Impromptu Whistlestop Tour of the Ring Road, suddenly it did fit: I went kayaking on the glacial lagoon, Jökulsárlón.
We all know Jökulsárlón, Iceland’s famous glacial lagoon. Bright blue water, floating icebergs in stripes of blue, white and black (winter ice, summer ice, volcanic ash). You can go out on the slow duckboats, the ones you board on land and which trundle into the water. You can go out on the Zodiacs, the little RIBS that zoom around. Or you can book a kayaking tour and see Jökulsárlón from water level.
Everyone goes to Jökulsárlón. Of course they do. But when you see it on Instagram or on YouTube, it’s always either from a drone or it’s from the duck boats. The only time you ever see anyone kayaking is on proper licenceholder-funded TV. I have no idea why. Do people think kayaking is too scary or too much effort or just not aesthetic enough? Because I promise you, this was the most beautiful thing I’ve done since my night kayak in 2021.
I knew they’d dress me warmly. I wasn’t expecting waterproof trousers that covered half my torso (almost cutting me in half!) and had some kind of waterproof sock-things built in. I had to go up four boot sizes to squeeze them into the cut-off wellies Iceguides provided. To be fair, the trousers were sized for someone who might be expected to be of greater shoe size than me, who might not have quite so much sock flapping, and who might be able to bend a bit to pull said wellies on.
The outfit was finished with a sailing cagoule and a buoyancy aid and then we waddled down to the water to be shown the basics of kayaking and take to the water. Most of the group were in double kayaks but by virtue of being a solo traveller – or possibly just because it was an odd-numbered group – I got picked to be the one person in a single kayak. Might be the way I edged towards them and looked covetously at them as Bjorn went through the safety talk from the moment he mentioned the plan. Anyway, we boarded on dry land and Bjorn pushed us backwards into the water, which isn’t a method I’ve ever used before but it stops any water sloshing into the cut-off wellies.
My kayak was an Islander Strike, which is a discontinued sit-on-top model actually designed for fishing. I mention this only because I paddle an Islander at boat club, although in that case it’s a closed-cockpit Jive in bright blue. Both kind of in the style of a floating sofa, wide and stable and comfortable.
Kayaking amongst icebergs is magical. Oh, we didn’t go near the big ones. They’re too unstable, too liable to flip. Even the big boats don’t go too near the big ones and you definitely don’t want to be around them in something as small and vulnerable as a sit-on-top kayak. Even if the iceberg itself missed you, the wave it produced would flip you over, easy-peasy. But we picked our way among the smaller ones. Bjorn said these fragments weren’t there yesterday and clearly something had happened overnight, maybe an iceberg exploding. I know icebergs get up to all sorts but do they spontaneously explode? There’s no end to the risk these icebergs pose! These small ones, ranging from hand-sized up to about half the length of our kayaks, were quite safe to run into, though. Honestly, the “oops, I hit an iceberg!” Titanic jokes didn’t get old. Plastic kayaks are great – they’re cheap, they’re easy and they’re pretty bombproof. At boat club, the kids are always running into each other and now we learned that they can ram icebergs just as happily.
Bjorn picked a route among the floating debris and we followed, paddling in a line behind him like overgrown ducklings, albeit ducklings that occasionally went out of line as we tried to take photos. That’s easier in a double kayak – one can take photos while the other continues paddling. I had to stop every time I wanted my camera out. On the other hand, they had phones and I had a GoPro on a floating handle which stuck perfectly down my buoyancy aid. I could take a hand off for half a second to press the shutter button without having to let go of the paddle altogether. Because it’s on a permanent three-second timer (easier to get selfies without my hand in shot), I could even take photos of myself paddling, if only from POV angle.
Fortunately, Bjorn is aware that he’s a guide in an extremely Instagrammable place and he found us a good photo spot with icebergs behind and the sun in front and we lined up for him to take photos. Mostly he took them on his own phone, since it was easier and safer than trusting to pass other people’s phones between boats. Mine is a GoPro on a floaty handle so I was perfectly happy to throw it over – you should have seen his face when I demonstrated that it floats by casually tossing it into the water. But the other reason is that I’ve come to distrust “I’ll take photos and email them to you” this year – I’m still waiting for pictures of the blacksmithing day and the sea kayak award day in April. No, if at all possible, I wanted full control of any pictures taken of me.
I’d rather have been in a closed kayak – I used to hate them, not two years ago, and now I find sit-on-tops feel very exposed and vulnerable – but otherwise it was everything I dreamed it would be, except without Alexander Armstrong producing crystal glasses and fine whisky to pop fragments of ancient ice into. Oh yeah, ancient ice.
The ice in the lagoon comes from Breiðamerkurjökull, which is a tongue of the colossal Vatnajökull. I don’t know the exact numbers but I’d guess the glacier is 500m deep in places. Some of that ice has been sitting there for a very long time. Maybe a thousand years or more. Some of that ice might have fallen as rain or snow in the Settlement era. Maybe some of that ice snowed down on people like Ingólfur Arnarson or Gizur the White or Þangbrand the Fiery. Then it sat in the glacier for centuries, gradually falling off the big hill, to calve into the glacier and to be picked up or rammed by me in 2023.
Oh, highly recommended! Yes, I enjoyed kayaking for its own sake but it’s also such a special way to see Jökulsárlón, just the splish-splash of your paddles instead of the noise of an engine and stranger packed in next to you on both sides. Seals that don’t flee at your very approach. Trailing your hands in the water. Picking your way through crystal-clear icebergs. Definitely something worth doing.
