As Far As I Can Tell

July 26, 2026July 26, 2026

Faroe Islands: Week 2

After an unusually sunny first week in the Faroe Islands, my remaining time exhibited the more typical Faroese pattern of unpredictable rain, fog, and wind. This wasn’t nearly as bad as it seems though, since the weather is rarely the same everywhere and the country is small enough to drive across (and back) in a single day. I had a rental car starting Monday, so I could adapt my plans and chase the sun by checking webcams distributed around the country.

Being able to drive also meant I could check out Eysturoyartunnilin, the last subsea tunnel I hadn’t seen, with the world’s only subsea roundabout. The Faroese are incredibly prolific at building tunnels, and not only the subsea variety. When I was there in 2018, the tunnels in the Northern Isles were single-lane and unlit. But in 2024, they replaced them with modern two-lane tunnels that allow larger vehicles to pass. They even opened a new tunnel while I was visiting! On Sandoy — coincidentally on the same day that I visited, but on the other side of the island — the tunnel connecting Dalur and Húsavík was opened, letting residents avoid the narrow cliff-side route that has a history of landslides.

On Monday, my initial plan was to hike the old postman route between Bøur and Gásadalur on the island of Vágar. Gásadalur is most well known for the Múlafossur waterfall, whose water falls from the cliff edge into the ocean. But I’ve long been interested in the history of the village itself, which was very isolated before the tunnel was built twenty years ago. There is a fascinating documentary called 1700 Meters from the Future, which I’ve written about (and you can watch) on my Looking North blog, that was filmed in the time period just before the tunnel. It shows what life was like there, and touches upon the hopes and fears that the impending tunnel raised for the 17 residents at the time.

The mountain path I wanted to hike is the one the village’s postman would historically walk every day, and continued to walk three times a week even after helicopter service started in 1983. The film features the second-generation mail carrier, whose father before him walked the route for 56 years. It’s stories like these that fascinate me about remote places like Gásadalur, and I was excited to experience for myself what that route was like. Unfortunately, on Monday morning, the top of the mountain sat in a cloud of fog. Buoyed by my experience on Stóra Dímun the previous week, where the fog ended up clearing just in time, I began the route undeterred. But after a mile and a half of very vertical walking, the fog was thick enough to soak my hair, and the wet grass underneath my feet was slippery. I was alone, the views of Tindhólmur and Drangarnir were lost to the fog, and I concluded that I should turn around.

I had planned for other hikes on Vágar, but the fog seemed intent on hovering, so I decided to visit the village of Tjørnuvík on Streymoy, which had clearer skies. The road to Tjørnuvík reminded me of traveling in the Westfjords, or the north of Iceland. The end of the road gets progressively narrower, eventually dropping to a single lane serving two directions of traffic. This isn’t necessarily unusual in the Faroe Islands; cars simply negotiate their turn, using pullouts placed at regular intervals. But the final stretch, where the road descends along the cliff edge into the village, is gated by a traffic light that alternates for each direction at five-minute intervals. There are many signs along that way, forbidding cars from stopping, which is understandable because the view as you round the corner of the mountain is incredibly photo-worthy.

Tjørnuvík is home to the best surfing beach in the Faroe Islands, the best view of the sea stacks known as “the Giant and the Witch,” and, relevant to my unique interests, is also the landing site for the CANTAT-3 subsea fiber-optic cable. That cable is pretty old and slow now, largely used as a backup connection, but it marked the first time the Faroes were directly connected to North America when it went live in 1994. Not surprisingly, this was not an attraction for anyone else, but the cable connection box is right there on the beach itself, ready for a prominent plaque to mark this milestone of telecommunication history, if someone were so inclined.

I *believe* that this is the cable connection point for the CANTAT-3 subsea fiber-optic cable. I couldn’t find any other evidence, and I know that it is located in Tjørnuvík.

Tuesday, I drove to the Northern Isles, one of the most dramatic areas in the Faroes, to catch a morning ferry to Kalsoy. This island is long and skinny, earning it the nickname of “the flute” for the combination of its shape and the series of tunnels that make up the single road along the east side of the island. These are old-school mountain tunnels, the kind that have been mostly upgraded on the other islands, just barely big enough for the bus to fit through.

I was headed to the northern tip of the island to hike to the Kallur Lighthouse. That hike has gotten more popular recently, since it was used as a filming location in the James Bond film No Time to Die. On this day, the island exhibited the kind of micro-climates that the dramatic topography of the Northern Isles is particularly known for. Most of the fog was moving fast, hiding and showing views of Kunoy, which runs parallel to the island, in the span of a minute or less.

There was no view from the lighthouse, and the wind picked up enough that people were sheltering in the sheep dugouts.

Wednesday, I was back in the Northern Isles, for a day of somewhat extreme logistical complexity with the goal of traveling to the island of Fugloy and taking a helicopter ride. The helicopters operate as public transit, serving outlying islands. Non-residents can use them, but at an increased cost, and you can only book a one-way ticket. My day involved driving to Klaksvík, then taking a bus to Hvannasund to catch the ferry to Hattarvík on Fugloy. From there, I walked over the mountain road to Kirkja, the other village, where I took a helicopter back to Klaksvík. I could have stopped there, but I didn’t. Instead, I waited for the helicopter to refuel and flew to Tórshavn, where I walked to the terminal and caught a bus back to Klaksvík, then drove back to Tórshavn. Yes, it was worth it.

Fugloy is a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. Back in 2019, I wrote about a documentary made about Hattarvík in 2001 that talks about life there at that time. It questions what will become of the village, but also points towards the potential for mobile phones and the Internet to revive the remote community. Hattarvík, the easternmost settlement in the country, still has a very small population. Yet because of the Internet, I actually know someone who lives there. She contacted me because of that blog post, to tell me that she was marrying one of the men in the film and moving to Fugloy to live with him. She posts about her life there now as @FugloyFarm on Instagram, and while she wasn’t there when I visited, she was kind enough to take a phone call when I was planning my trip and encouraged me to take the helicopter.

Similar to my other hikes during the week, the walk between villages was through the fog, so I missed out on views of Svínoy, Borðoy, and Viðoy from the top. But as I descended to Kirkja, I was happy to see that the fog was clear enough at that level for the helicopter to fly in, and I would soon be seeing those islands from above.

As the helicopter arrived, it seemed to draw the entire population of the village to the landing pad, both passengers and onlookers. The loading process was very informal, typical for the Faroe Islands, and while nearly every seat was filled, I was lucky to get a window seat for each flight. In the air, the reaction of the locals was muted, treating it like the public transport it was, but I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. It was stunning to see a swath of the country from the air, particularly the Northern Isles. You can watch videos from the flight on Instagram.

All the Atlantic Airways planes and helicopters are named after artists. This helicopter is named Ruth Smith after the painter.

My love for the Faroe Islands is fully reaffirmed after this trip. Studying it the way I have over the last eight years has made me appreciate it even more on this second trip, and I’m certain there will be additional visits at some point. There are 18 islands in the archipelago, one of which is uninhabited. I have now been to 14 of them, including six new islands on this trip: Stóra Dímun, Nólsoy, Sandoy, Skúvoy, Kalsoy, and Fugloy. It seems reasonable to think I could make it to the remaining four someday.

There will be more for me to unpack, from both the explorations on the islands and the time spent working at Williamshús. But it was an excellent trip, with some moments of both luck and inspiration, that feels like it was the right way to wrap up my year in the North Atlantic.

July 19, 2026July 26, 2026

Faroe Islands: Week 1

I’ve been in Tórshavn for a week, long enough to settle into a routine of sorts. I’ve been writing at Williamshús in the morning, then out exploring the city and nearby islands by bus and boat in the afternoon. I’ve made progress thinking through some upcoming projects, but have also been drawn to capture what I’m experiencing. Travel and nature writing are already intertwined interests, and the Faroe Islands continue to be a source of inspiration.

Being based in the capital has given me a chance to get to know it better, beyond the tiny turf-roofed houses of the old city and the charming government buildings of Tinganes. I’ve seen art from a cross-section of Faroese painters at Listasavn Føroya, visited The Nordic House, a sibling of the one in Reykjavík, and stopped by Oy Brewing, which is as cavernous as Mikkeller is cozy. My flexible schedule allowed me to meet up with Joel Cole, a Minnesota-born artist who has lived in the Faroe Islands for decades. We corresponded briefly back in 2020, after I wrote about his work being featured on Faroese stamps, and he was kind enough to give me a tour of his studio. It’s located in an old NATO base, high in the mountains, and is improbably shared with the prison.

But I’ve also gotten off of Streymoy, most notably to spend the whole day on Stóra Dímun, the smallest of the inhabited islands and a place that has loomed large in my imagination. Only two people live there, and it’s difficult to visit, with no harbor to dock a boat and requiring a climb up the cliffs to reach the single farmhouse. It encapsulates many of my fascinations: remoteness, dramatic topography, extreme weather. I feel fortunate that I found a way to visit. I’m working on two different pieces about Stóra Dímun that I’ll share soon — one about my experience there, and a review for an upcoming book about the island.

Walking down the cliff edge, the only way to arrive or depart Stóra Dímun by sea.

Yesterday, I spent a bright sunny day on Skúvoy. Located just northwest of Stóra Dímun, this larger island forms a trio with Lítla Dímun that together resemble decreasing ripples of a giant skipping stone thrown across the North Atlantic. Until recently, getting there was a complicated multi-step affair: first a ferry from Streymoy to Sandoy, and then a drive across to catch another ferry to Skúvoy. That changed in 2023 when the Sandoy subsea tunnel opened, a 6.7-mile fixed link that brings the island into commuting distance from Tórshavn. Coordinating the ferry and bus schedules gave me nearly five hours on Skúvoy, enough to walk to the bird cliffs on the northwest tip, an idyllic area with views as far as Mykines, given the cloudless sky.

Skúvoy in the foreground, Stóra Dímun and Lítla Dímun in the distance.

I also travelled to Nólsoy, the easiest of the islands to visit, just across the water from the harbor in Tórshavn and a visible presence through my window as I write this. It’s only a twenty-minute ferry ride, although timing of the return trip for the length of stay you want can be tricky. Being there, in the quiet that even a short ferry ride can provide, you can understand how people think of Tórshavn as the “big city,” despite its status as the smallest of European capitals.

It is that smallness that has always impressed me about the Faroe Islands. In many places, a small town can stay on the periphery, leaving governance and culture to the bigger populations in the center. But here, the whole country’s population is only ¾ the size of Kalamazoo, Michigan — and yet, within that group of people, every role needs to be filled: from prime minister to football star, ambassador to Michelin chef. I’ve heard before, and my conversation with Joel Cole confirmed, that to pull that off, people wear many hats here. Another thing he shared, which I’ve noticed myself in even the limited interactions I’ve had, is that the Faroese people are very straightforward and practical. It makes sense when you consider human adaptation, both nature and nurture, in an environment where survival has been historically very difficult and far from guaranteed.

From tomorrow morning, I’ll have a rental car for the rest of my time here, which will let me explore more broadly. I have some hikes I’m looking forward to, and at least one more island I haven’t been to before. The remarkable weather we’ve been having here may not last, but I can’t complain. The wind and fog more typical of the Faroe Islands have led them to be known as the Land of Maybe, and back in Reykjavík it’s the wettest July on record.

July 14, 2026July 14, 2026

Williamshús

This morning, I woke up at 5am to the sound of crows and kittiwakes, the July sun already fully risen but still bathing Tórshavn in a pink haze that flattened the outline of Nólsoy, visible from my kitchen window. The shape of the island in shadow is like a cartoon snake that has swallowed something many times its size. A tiny village acts as the head, sitting in a flat, low spot on the northern end. The mountainous belly of the snake rises rapidly to the south, betraying its too-large prey inside, before tapering off to the southern tip, where a lighthouse marks the tail like a rattle.

The view of Nólsoy from my kitchen window

I’m in the Faroe Islands, staying at Williamshús, the former home and studio of William Heinesen, one of the country’s most celebrated writers. My quarters are on the second floor, with the first floor and basement preserved as a museum. From up on a hill, the view contains not just Nólsoy but most of the old town center, including the turf-covered roofs of Tinganes, one of the oldest parliaments in the world.

When I arrived yesterday, I was delighted to discover that I was surrounded by trees, in a country that is famous for lacking them. The city park next door is a lush oasis, filled with ducks and shaded walking paths, covered in pine needles and moss. A river wends its way through the greenery, and the National Gallery sits on its northern edge. Way-finding signs throughout the park point towards Williamshús, and given that the museum is only open for two hours each Sunday, these felt like a personalized set of directions, just for me.

I’m here for a writing residency, but not to complete a work in progress or to chip away at an existing project. Instead, I find myself at the start of something, or, more accurately, the pregnant pause before the start of something, when the intention and goals are still a snarl of feelings, before the painstaking process of untying all the knots and straightening out the strings.

I am not a morning person, but when I wrestle myself awake before I’m naturally inclined, I find that it offers something I can’t get elsewhere. Years ago, when I was writing my book about core principles of design, I would program my coffee pot to brew at an hour when I was incapable of working it myself. I would sit in my office, fully shrouded under a wool blanket, half asleep and non-verbal, writing for an hour or two before my morning commute. This wasn’t only a technique to steal time from an otherwise overbooked calendar; the silence of those hours is where the words lived.

I can’t commit to becoming a perpetually early riser, but on a day like today I can be convinced that I should.

This afternoon, I visited the National Gallery, which included paintings from dozens of Faroese artists including Sámal Joensen-Mikines, Ruth Smith, Tróndur Patursson, and Sigrun Gunnarsdóttir. It also had a special exhibition dedicated to Zacharias Heinesen, whose abstracted landscapes include not just paintings but also collages of wooden blocks. These works, hung in the cafe space, were part of a recent event celebrating his 90th birthday. An unanswered thought went through my mind when I heard that: I wonder if he’s still painting?

*The fjord of Nólsoy* by Zacharias Heinesen

Later today, I got an unexpected sort of answer. After walking around Tórshavn, I returned to Williamshús for the evening and found a man on a ladder, putting a fresh coat of red paint on the shed next to the main property. He introduced himself — Zacharias Heinesen. I knew that he was the son of William Heinesen, and had donated the house to the foundation that owns it, but I didn’t expect to meet him, and certainly not like this.

We didn’t talk long. When I started to tell him that I’d seen his paintings earlier today, he claimed he didn’t speak English very well, and it was unclear to me if this was a kind of modesty. Still, I can now say that I’ve seen Zacharias Heinesen completing a painting, even if it was only the siding.

July 12, 2026July 12, 2026

Iceland: Week 49

Tomorrow I fly to the Faroe Islands for my residency at Williamshús, the former home of William Heinesen, a Faroese writer and composer. I’ll be living in an apartment on the second floor, while the first floor and basement act as a museum, preserved as they were when he lived and worked there.

I’ve only been to the Faroes once before, but that week-long trip in 2018 left an impression and a connection far beyond a typical tourist visit. I started reading as much English-language history of the country as I could find, devoured all the episodes of the Faroe Islands Podcast, and started my Looking North blog to document and share what I was learning. It’s hard to explain why that place sank its claws so deeply into my psyche, but it’s easy to trace how that experience inspired subsequent research into northern cultures, which ultimately led to discovering the Arctic studies program and my move to Iceland.

If it resonated with me so strongly, why have I been reluctant to return? By a certain logic, I should have gone back to the Faroe Islands much sooner. But perhaps paradoxically, I felt an aversion to going unless I had a deeper reason to be there. I didn’t want to be just a tourist; I wanted at least slightly more grounding and purpose as to why I was there. I felt similarly about Iceland, also because of my love of the place, and of course my graduate certificate program became the deeper purpose for coming here. The writing residency at Williamshús was just enough of a nudge to overcome this hurdle for the Faroe Islands.

I suppose that this distinction is something like the tension between being a tourist and a traveler, of wanting a way to see a place a level deeper — if not as a local does, then at least at a level of engagement beyond the superficial. I’m not concerned with being on the far end of the tourist spectrum, like the cruise ship passengers in Reykjavík who swarm in for pre-packed experiences with shopping lists to check off. But the question of what “authentic travel” means is thorny. I think it really comes down to the trip’s intention, for which the English language lacks a single word.

Some people associate the word “vacation” with relaxation, although I tend to overload that term to include trips with a lot of physical activity too. Further complicating that is the distinction between Type 1 and Type 2 fun, the latter of which pushes further away from the typical vacation definition. Unsurprisingly, German has a clearer distinction, where the word Bildungsreise translates to “educational trip,” whereas Urlaub means simply “vacation.” I guess I’m hoping that this trip to the Faroe Islands will prove closer to a Bildungsreise, with writing and thinking, hiking and exploring — sitting a little deeper in the culture and present of a place that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about over the last eight years.

Noted & Done

I went to Björk’s exhibition at the National Gallery of Iceland.
I finally switched from Spotify to Apple Music. If you’re thinking about making this move, let me reassure you that it is easy and seamless. Apple provides a tool to import everything and the design of their app is better in every way. I wish I had done it sooner.
Instagram has a new feature that will use your Instagram photos in AI images unless you opt out. Follow the instructions here.
I highly recommend the TV show Star City, the spinoff of For All Mankind that continues the premise of the Soviet Union winning the space race, but from the Soviet perspective. It’s really fantastic and doesn’t require that you’ve seen any episodes of For All Mankind, which FWIW I think has gone downhill since season three. Hopefully Star City will be a limited series and not the first of a multi-season run; it feels complete.

July 5, 2026July 5, 2026

Iceland: Week 48

The numbering of these weekly blog posts doesn’t include the three weeks I spent in the US around the new year, so while typing “48” into the header, it caught me off-guard to realize that this coming week will cap the one-year mark of my arrival in the country. It has been dawning on me in other ways, though, as annual events I’ve attended begin advertising their next iteration and the temperature and tourist levels begin to resemble heights I remember from last July. I’m thankful that I’ve gotten to experience a full cycle of the seasons, to feel the gradual shifting of nature and life throughout the year. In some ways, I think experiencing that slow circular shift in its entirety is a minimum requirement to really know a place.

My friends Jason and Val are here right now, and it’s been fun to hang out with them. Yesterday, Val and I hiked to the top of the Glymur waterfall, on what turned out to be an even nicer day than when I did it three weeks ago. One of the things I love about hiking is that repeat walks on the same trail always feel different. For example, since I was there last, the volume of water has noticeably increased, requiring a full-on wade through the first river crossing instead of the mostly-dry stepping-stone path last time. It also led to considerably more mist floating up through the canyon, creating rainbows for the Northern Fulmars to glide through.

I think this hike is the best trail within roughly an hour of Reykjavík, or maybe it’s a tie with the Reykjadalur Hot Spring Thermal River. It’s easily accessible, but has the kind of elevation that feels more like the highlands. It’s strenuous enough to make you feel accomplished — including unique features like a double river crossing — but not terribly difficult or long. It fits easily into a larger itinerary and doesn’t take the whole day; we didn’t leave until 1pm and were back in time for dinner.

I’ve been writing about Icelandic whale hunting in the last couple of posts, and last week I predicted that the attention from Captain Paul Watson might actually backfire, spurring notoriously independent Icelanders to double down in the face of outside pressure. One sign of that is a news story from this week about the Icelandic national anthem being played as a slain fin whale was dragged into the processing plant. Worse still, in response to media presence on the scene, a worker grabbed the whale’s penis and made lewd gestures towards the cameraman. Taken together, it was a shameful mix of misplaced nationalism and disrespect for the animal, only amplifying the point of the activists. The news article about this is in Icelandic, but the embedded video tells the story clearly without translation.

Like with most things, my viewpoint tends away from the extremes, and I personally have a nuanced view of whale hunting. I’m generally opposed to it, but open to limited and sustainable hunting practices within communities for whom it holds a traditional significance in their culture. This includes various forms of indigenous whaling, including Inuit hunts and the Faroese grindadráp. But while there is evidence of whaling in Iceland’s past, it is not deeply ingrained in their culture or history. The modern whaling they’re doing now is a purely commercial activity, by one company that exports nearly all the meat to Japan.

It feels like an irreconcilable contradiction to have tourists packing whale-watching boats all around the country, while in the same waters whalers use multiple exploding harpoons to kill whales in a process that can leave them in agony for up to two hours before they die. It is not distant or hidden: the fjord that Val and I drove along to reach the Glymur hike yesterday is Hvalfjörður, the “whale fjord,” which is where the whaling station is situated. In some ways, it is good that this tension between two industries is so clear, but it’s unclear how it will be reconciled. It reminds me of the film I saw back in Week 39 about how open net salmon farming is hurting not only the environment but also Icelandic fishing tourism. It may come down less to environmental protection, animal welfare, or international norms than to a crass economic calculation of which industry has greater impact on the economy.

Noted & Done

I went to a concert by Lávre, a Sámi joiker, in the greenhouse at Nordic House.
Inspired by the Faroe Islands, authorities in Shetland have approved initial plans to build subsea tunnels to connect some of their islands.
I launched a new feature on Moped Army to let people hide their email, part of an ongoing effort to help people avoid scammers when using the Buy + Sell Forum. I’ve learned that most scammers send emails instead of using the built-in Personal Messages system, which bypasses the reputational signals that PMs provide. This feature pairs well with my recent PM upgrades.

June 28, 2026June 28, 2026

Iceland: Week 47

Back in Week 4, I hiked the Laugavegur trail, a 55 km path from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk in the Icelandic highlands. The starting point, a series of rhyolite mountains surrounding a massive lava field, was a magical spot that I knew I wanted to go back to before I left Iceland. This week, just three days after the F208 access road opened for the season, I took a long day trip to Landmannalaugar and hiked a different part of the mountains than I did last August.

As it was early in the season, the snow was still present, both on the mountains and covering parts of the trail. But the weather was nearly perfect, warm enough at times to take my coat off and not a drop of rain until I was out of the hot spring and packing up to leave. My general rule-of-thumb for day trips is that hiking time should be at least as long as driving time, but I was willing to accept 9 hours of driving for 5 hours of hiking because I wasn’t the one behind the wheel. I took the bus with Arctic Adventures, which saved me from renting a 4×4 for the F-road and let me doze on the ride from Reykjavík and back. Driving would have been stressful — I saw multiple rental cars that weren’t up to the task abandoned in the middle of a river.

Car at Landmannalaugar that failed to cross the river.

While I was in Landmannalaugar, my brother and his family were in the Westman Islands, midway through their Iceland trip, which concluded with three days in Reykjavík. It was great to spend time with them here, wandering around the city together. One spot we visited was Whales of Iceland, which houses 23 different life-sized models of whales in a single room. That layout provides a pretty unique way to compare different species of whales directly. It was not only informative, but also topical, as the controversy about the recently restarted Icelandic fin whale hunt is ramping up.

Last week, I posted about the anti-whaling protests, but this week the tensions seem to be rising. This is primarily due to Paul Watson, the radical anti-whaling activist who uses direct action to stop whaling campaigns around the world. He’s launched what he calls Operation 86 to stop the fin whale hunt in Iceland, named in reference to actions he took in 1986 that resulted in the sinking of two whaling ships from the same fleet. His ship, the Bandero, was spotted by the Icelandic Coast Guard entering Iceland’s Exclusive Economic Zone without its automatic identification systems (AIS) turned on. The whaling boats have also turned off their AIS, so there is no public tracking of their location either.

Paul Watson is an extremist, and having watched a few seasons of his TV show Whale Wars, I don’t view him in a positive light. He justifies his use of harassment and even violence through the virtue of his cause, but in other countries (like the Faroe Islands) his brash approach has ended up crystallizing the local population against him, even if they are on the fence about whaling. If there’s anything universal about Icelanders, it’s that they don’t like outsiders telling them what to do. Watson’s campaign has the potential to make this less about the whales, and more about a clash between two men, given his focus on Kristján Loftsson, the Icelandic businessman who owns the whaling company. Don’t get me wrong, Kristján deserves to have a light shone on him, given that his political influence is likely what allows whaling to remain legal in Iceland. But I would guess that Watson will end up creating an us-versus-them narrative that leaves Icelanders siding with their countryman instead of looking at the real concerns of political influence and power. That could end up hurting the anti-whaling cause more than it helps.

In a discussion about the whaling controversy, in a private Facebook group for foreigners, someone posted this 2013 documentary on Vimeo that gives a good overview even if it’s a bit dated.

The other big Icelandic controversy this week is that parliament passed a law requiring universities to charge tuition fees for non-EEA students, taking effect for the 2027-28 academic year. Iceland was the only remaining Nordic country that didn’t charge tuition to students outside of the EEA, after Norway changed its law in 2023. The University of Iceland hasn’t set the cost yet, saying that they’re still calculating and it may vary depending on the program. Up until now, non-EEA students have only had to pay a registration fee, and prove they have sufficient funds to cover the cost of living.

This change had long been rumored, even before I applied to my graduate program. The case against it is that Iceland will lose talented students who will opt to study elsewhere, and that the high cost of living in Iceland will contribute to an unmanageable total cost for foreign students. Already, the university saw a decline in non-EEA applications last year as the possibility of the tuition law loomed. Some people believe that this is part of a growing anti-immigrant attitude, or has racist overtones, similar to the restrictions on student residence permits that were instituted for non-EEA students last year after an increase in students from Nigeria, Pakistan, and Ghana.

I guess the meta-theme in this week’s post is that Iceland is a complicated place like any other. As much as we might imagine that perspectives and values get bundled together into a few “packages” that we can put political labels on, reality is messier. Iceland can lead in trans rights, but enact laws that seem to be driven by racism; it can be a leader in renewable energy but allow commercial whaling.

Noted & Done

I really enjoyed the exhibition Big Little City – Reykjavík in View at the Kjarvalsstaðir location of the Reykjavík Art Museum. Having gotten to know the city so well, it’s fun for me to see depictions of it over time.
I highly recommend the free weekly newsletter Perfect Sentences by Ingrid Burrington. As it says on the tin, it’s just some very good sentences.
This week, on the bus to the highlands, I used the Vehicle Motion Cues feature on iPhone. It’s supposed to help reduce motion sickness when using your phone in a vehicle by resolving the sensory conflict between what your eyes see and what your inner ear feels. This is a reminder that iOS is packed with interesting features hiding in the settings, most of which you can bring to the Control Center so they are just a tap away.
I launched another big update to the Manuals feature on Moped Army. Manuals now have their own pages, full OCR text in the HTML page, and a widget for the wiki.

June 21, 2026June 21, 2026

Iceland: Week 46

There are lots of parades in Iceland. This week’s parade was in honor of Icelandic National Day, when the country officially broke ties with Denmark to form an independent republic on June 17, 1944. Not to be confused with Sovereignty Day, when Denmark first recognized Iceland’s autonomy on December 1, 1918. Of course it’s a bit strange that at the time of independence Iceland was still under Allied occupation, but the celebrations this week didn’t dwell on that.

Parade for Icelandic National Day in Reykjavík

There are also lots of protests. Today’s protest was against whaling, a topic that flared up this week since Icelandic whaling ships returned to the sea for the first time after a two-year hiatus. This led environmental activist Hólmsteinn Harðarson to board one of the vessels, which then illegally registered him as a passenger and travelled with him against his will for three hours. Hólmsteinn was at the protest today, which concluded peacefully, but did involve an old man and his wife driving slowly past the crowd and flipping off the organizers. More photos on Instagram.

Hólmsteinn Harðarson, who boarded a whaling boat in protest this week.

On Wednesday, I attended a conference on National Security Dialogue: Democracy in an Era of Information Disorder at the University of Iceland, which focused on how disinformation continues to impact democratic institutions. This is an increasing concern in Iceland. As a small and isolated country, it has natural protection from many physical threats. But disinformation campaigns aren’t contained by oceans, and Iceland is a very digitally connected country. Moreover, I’ve seen firsthand how Icelanders use Facebook for everything, so they are susceptible to the peculiarities of a platform that has abandoned content moderation in the wake of Zuckerberg’s authoritarian contact high under the Trump administration.

The conference did not leave me hopeful. I thought the Icelanders who spoke failed to meaningfully address the challenges and that too many speakers leaned on ideas of education, media literacy, and traditional media funding as solutions. There’s nothing “wrong” with those ideas, but they’re woefully inadequate to address the scale and sophistication of foreign influence operations from actors like Russia, using technology like agentic AI. It reminds me of when I was at the CFPB, and the anti-regulation crowd wanted to focus on financial education instead of supervision and enforcement. Helping people identify fraud is fine, but stopping people who are defrauding them before it happens is better.

The one speaker who I was impressed with was Janis Sarts, Director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Latvia. He was on top of the current technical capabilities and challenges, including data poisoning of foundation models and AI agents simulating human behavior on social media to avoid detection. He also touched upon relationship bots, and how most AI girlfriend/boyfriend apps are from Chinese companies, speculating about the potential for a long-game AI honey trap.

Janis Sarts presenting at the National Security Dialogue: Democracy in an Era of Information Disorder conference in Reykjavík.

In his view, AI will soon be the main force shaping people’s information reality, and it will be much worse than social media because at least there we could see and track the spread of disinformation, whereas the conversations happening on LLMs are hidden from view. On the topic of education, he pointed out how we all want to believe that critical thinking can have an impact, but his studies show that it rarely does. His group has successfully targeted their own soldiers to disobey orders and reveal GPS coordinates, even though those people had been trained in InfoSec two weeks before. The NATO center he runs seems to publish interesting reports. The one I bookmarked, and what he was surely drawing from in his talk, was Beyond Spam Bots: The Rise of AI-Powered Disinformation Machines and the Imperative for Strategic Response.

The conference was also the first time I’d seen Kristrún Frostadóttir, the Prime Minister of Iceland, speak. I honestly don’t know enough about Icelandic politics to say whether or not I agree with her stance on various topics, but as an American, the contrast to my own country is stark. Our country is run by an 80-year-old authoritarian grifter whose ignorance and corruption are a massive source of disinformation, a narcissist who shifts the blame for the fallout of all his idiotic actions. In contrast, Iceland has a 37-year-old woman leading the Social Democratic Alliance who used her 15 minutes at the conference to speak not only about the threat of disinformation due to technical advancements, but also about how politicians have to take responsibility for the fact that citizens who feel marginalized, or in need, are more susceptible to the influence of bad actors. It’s just nice to be around politicians who don’t make me feel like I’m losing my mind.

Kristrún Frostadóttir, the Prime Minister of Iceland, at the National Security Dialogue: Democracy in an Era of Information Disorder conference in Reykjavík.

In other news, my brother’s family arrived in Iceland yesterday. They are vacationing on their own for a handful of days before spending a few nights in Reykjavík. It’ll be great to hang out with them here. When Isaiah visited last December, it was almost as dark as it gets, and yesterday was summer solstice, so he’s getting to experience the extremes of daylight.

Noted & Done

I picked up my official Masters-level Certificate in International Affairs this week, which usefully came with an English-translated copy. I managed to achieve a level of First Class with Distinction!
I caught a set from Lúpína’s release concert marathon, where she performed her new EP six times over the course of the day. I think she’s one of the best new Icelandic pop musicians. She opened Iceland Airwaves last year, but still plays tiny free shows at Kaffibarinn. Listen on all the streaming services or her YouTube.
In Icelandic celebrity sighting news, I’ve now seen actor Björn Hlynur Haraldsson walking around town twice in the last two weeks.
I launched a major overhaul of the Personal Messaging system on Moped Army. The main new feature is the ability to attach photos, but in order to feel comfortable doing that, I had to build a whole new flagging and moderation system that will make it harder to abuse.
Bíó Paradís is showing World Cup matches next door to me, but I haven’t watched any yet. For those of you who are following closely, what’s a good matchup to catch?

June 15, 2026June 15, 2026

Iceland: Week 45

This week brought the kind of summer sun that garners local headlines about an “epic heatwave,” which in Reykjavík means 68° Fahrenheit. On Friday, I took a long walk around the city and the mood was ebullient, with Nauthólsvík beach full of sunbathers midday and most people opting to soak in the sea instead of the geothermal pool. I decided to take advantage of the favorable forecast and rented a car for the weekend, aiming to explore some relatively nearby places that I haven’t been to yet. I didn’t want to book a hotel, so I split the travel into two long day trips: heading north to Vesturland on Saturday and then driving around the “golden circle” area on Sunday.

My first stop was a hike to see Glymur, the second tallest waterfall in Iceland, which is tucked into a narrow canyon at the head of Hvalfjörður. The trail is over a thousand feet of elevation gain, and rises steeply enough to be glad for rope supports along the way. You also have to cross the river twice, once by balancing on a log that is only placed seasonally, and then back again when you reach the top. The second crossing is a very cold wade through a wide stretch of river, still calm before it cascades over the edge. I’m hoping to do this hike again in a couple of weeks with a friend who will be visiting, so it was good to learn about the river crossings ahead of time. I’ll bring a towel and some extra socks next time.

A partial view of Glymur. There is no viewpoint on the trail from which you can see it in its entirety.

I also went to see the Grábrók Crater, which I’ve driven by numerous times but never with the right circumstances to stop. It provides an incredible view of the surrounding lava fields from the top.

In comparison to the road trip with my parents two weeks ago, when the lupine were just beginning to sprout, they are now everywhere! These purple vertical flowers line the sides of nearly every country road, and fill whole valleys along the sea. I know that they’re an invasive species in Iceland, but they’re beautiful.

The bridge across Hvítá River in Borgarfjörður.

Lupine just south of the bridge that connects to Borgarnes.

On Sunday, I headed east, looking to avoid the ring road in favor of smaller routes through areas I hadn’t seen before. Route 435 to 360 took me along the southern edge of Þingvallavatn, the massive lake that is home to Þingvellir National Park. This is a major energy-generating area, and I enjoyed seeing the steam plumes of the Nesjavellir power plant and visiting the exhibition at the Ljósafossstöð hydroelectric plant. One of the displays in the exhibition was a simple chart of energy usage in Iceland versus the rest of the world. Iceland uses 100% renewable energy, with hydropower accounting for nearly 3/4 of the pie and geothermal making up the difference, save a tiny sliver of wind power.

One thing I learned was the difference between hydropower plants like Ljósafossstöð, which can operate fairly consistently based on freshwater lakes and rivers, versus plants that capture power from the highland rivers, which have variable output depending on seasonal snow and glacial melt. Apparently that’s one area where wind power has been useful, letting them maintain higher reservoir heights in those locations if there is wind power to fill in the gaps.

Turbines at the Ljósafossstöð hydroelectric plant

Afterwards I visited Kerið Crater, which is interesting but unfortunately on the bus tour route and thus busier than I’d like. I also find their fee structure annoying. Most everywhere in Iceland there is a parking fee, since most of the sites are privately owned and the landowners need to recoup their cost of providing infrastructure for visitors. Kerið likes to advertise itself as having free parking, but that’s only because they charge an entrance fee. For me, a solo traveler, those are one and the same. But for a family that means the 700 kroner that is typical for parking is now multiplied by the number of people, which starts to feel excessive.

Perhaps the best thing about visiting Kerið was spotting something even more eye catching in the distance, a bright red spot on a mountain to the northeast. Leaving the crater, I drove towards that splash of color, winding up a dirt road towards what I could see upon closer inspection was a rock quarry. The exposed layers of earth were fantastically colorful: bright reds, yellows, and tans. A sole worker in the pit was filling a truck with volcanic debris, his yellow loader dwarfed by the size of the quarry walls.

While driving up to the quarry I saw some people in high-visibility vests in the hills, and assumed they were just walking their dogs. But when I reached the top there were numerous search and rescue vehicles, and I realized that this was a training exercise for rescue dogs. I talked with one of the trainers for a while, who told me about the different classifications the dogs can achieve, such as avalanche or water rescue certifications. They were taking advantage of the unusually warm weather to see how the dogs performed in those conditions. It was basically hide-and-seek, where the trainers would run off to lay in a valley on the other side of the hill and the dogs were given items of theirs to smell and go track them down.

The rest of the day was meandering. I stopped by the Friðheimar greenhouses to try their famous tomato soup. I’ll never pass up a chance to see Gullfoss, and was surprised to see that the top viewing area now extends further than I remember. I also went to Brúarfoss, which I had never seen before, and was blown away by the uncanny bright blue water. On the way back I stopped to see Þórufoss, which is one of those waterfalls that reminds you how incredible Iceland is because if it were anywhere else, it would be the main attraction, but here it’s a lesser-known spot with barely a sign to indicate its presence (although it was a Game of Thrones filming location).

Always amazed that Gullfoss can have this amount of water flowing over it in perpetuity.

June 7, 2026June 7, 2026

Iceland: Week 44

The Reykjavík Arts Festival is going on this week and I filled two more slots on my Icelandic musician bingo card. The first was a performance by Hildur Guðnadóttir and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Hildur is the artist-in-residence at this year’s festival, hosting multiple events throughout the two-week program.

Her concert was the first time I’d been in the main Eldborg hall at Harpa, and I was way up in the third-level cheap seats, which let me take in the full view of the space. Of the various events she was involved in this week, I was particularly interested in this one because it was focused on Hildur’s scoring work, including pieces from the films Joker and Tár, and billed as an event where she would discuss her work and influences. What I hadn’t fully thought through ahead of time was that (of course) that part would be in Icelandic. So, I didn’t get much from that, but the performance was still great and I was happy to experience Eldborg.

The concert was sold out and it was fun to see all the spaces in Harpa packed with people.

I also attended Fischersund: A Night of Scent & Music, a really unique concert combining sound, visuals, and scent. Fischersund is a perfumery and artist collective founded by Jónsi of Sigur Rós. They create scents based upon specific memories or elements of the Icelandic landscape. All the attendees got a small vial of Faux Flora No. 1, which is meant to invoke a plant’s lifecycle, and we were instructed to spray it at a coordinated time. Other scents were diffused into the room throughout the performance, including one moment where someone carrying a giant bouquet of flowers, doused in additional perfumes, wandered through the crowd.

Musically, it felt mostly like a Sigur Rós concert, but in a small venue with high-concept visuals and perfumery mixed in. There were a few production glitches that broke the spell, but if anything that only proved that they have achieved such a high level of immersion for the bulk of the show.

A scent-saturated bouquet wandered through the crowd.

May 31, 2026July 26, 2026

Iceland: Weeks 42 + 43

For most of the last two weeks my parents have been in Iceland. After a couple of days in Reykjavík, we traveled around the country together, driving 1500 miles counter-clockwise on the Ring Road with excursions into Vestmannaeyjar, the Eastfjords, and around various peninsulas. They were on a tour of Iceland in 2021, so there was a little bit of overlap with that, but we did the kind of exploring that a tour would never support: driving down gravel roads deep into mountain passes, roaming the back streets of harbors in tiny fishing villages, tracking down sculptures in the mountains. A couple of years ago there would have been no way they’d be up for some of the hikes we did — up a volcano, on a glacier — but knee replacements do wonders and they have three new knees between them.

There were far too many great sites and moments to chronicle in one post, but I’ll touch on some of the highlights and things that were new to me. I have lots of photosets on Instagram if you want to see more.

On top of the Eldfell volcano in Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands).

Map of my road trip around Iceland with my parents in May 2026.

Our first stop was Vestmannaeyjar, which was the trickiest to plan around because the ferry is operating on a single engine and can’t make it across the strait in bad weather. Luckily the weather was good enough to sail there on schedule, but on advice from an agent at the ferry terminal I swapped our return trip the next day to be the first ferry out at 7am, in order to guarantee that we wouldn’t be trapped.

I love those islands, and was happy for another chance to hike up the Eldfell volcano to get a view of the whole archipelago. It was a lot greener when I was there last August, but this trip offered the chance to see a new site-specific artwork by Ólafur Elíasson that was installed earlier this month. It’s called “The Wanderer’s Perspective” and consists of two parts: a viewing sphere that frames the volcano, and a new walking path up to its summit (still in development). The walking path will follow the route of a giant piece of lava from the 1973 eruption that was nicknamed Flakkarinn (The Wanderer) because of how far it traversed across the landscape.

The viewing sphere is easily accessible, and frames the volcano in a way that the sun aligns with the volcano’s peak at 1:30pm on January 23, the exact date and time of the eruption. Circular holes in the roof trace the sun’s trajectory on July 3, the day the eruption was declared over.

“The Wanderer’s Perspective” by Ólafur Elíasson

Leaving the Westman Islands we visited lots of spots along the south coast, and it turned out that the earlier ferry was a great idea because there’s so much to see along this stretch. We stopped by the Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss waterfalls of course, but also the Sólheimajökull glacier, Reynisdrangar beach, and Hjörleifshöfði cave. The next day we hiked the Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon and walked on the Svínafellsjökull glacier before it started raining heavily. That may have contributed to lack of ice on Diamond Beach, but it was still fun to check out the massive icebergs in Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.

After staying in the night in Höfn, we drove into the Eastfjords the next day, venturing further east than I’d been in Iceland before. It immediately felt different for me, taking in new sites versus driving through ones I’d seen two to four times before. More firsts came fast, as this region is where the wild reindeer live and we added them to our animal sightings along with the pervasive sheep and horses. It was earlier enough in the year that their antlers were still velvety and we even spotted a couple of calves.

A female reindeer and her calf, in the Eastfjords.

Also in the Eastfjords was Petra’s Stone Collection, an absolutely amazing place showcasing a single woman’s collection of rocks and minerals found all around Iceland over her lifetime. It is impossible to convey the size and scope of her collection but it’s like nothing I have ever seen. See my Instagram photoset for more.

I can’t believe how many colors and textures were in this one rock.

We stayed in Seyðisfjörður, which is reached by driving over a mountain pass that was still covered in deep snow. The town is where the Smyril Line ship arrives in Iceland after sailing from Denmark via the Faroe Islands. It’s also one of the two locations that were used in the Icelandic TV series Trapped, the other being Siglufjörður where we also stayed a few days later. I’m looking forward to rewatching the show now that I’ve spent time in both places.

While there, we also hiked up the mountain to see Tvísöngur, a sound sculpture by the German artist Lukas Kühne that consists of a series of interconnected concrete domes. The plaque notes that it can be viewed as a visualization of the Icelandic five-tone harmony tradition, and dubs it “singing concrete.” The experience is that if you stand directly underneath each dome your voice resonates strongly back to you, in an effect that feels as if you have headphones on, piping your amplified words back into your ears. It’s a strikingly simple design but a really fun and powerful effect.

Nearby was another sculpture, squarely aligned with my interest in subsea cables, called “Hvernig gengur?” — How is it going? — and was commissioned by Iceland Telecom to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first telegraph cable laid between Scotland and Iceland in 1906, which came ashore in Seyðisfjörður.

Our next stop in the Eastfjords was Borgarfjörður Eystri, the puffin capital of Iceland, where an islet named Hafnarhólmi is home to thousands of burrows. Stairs and platforms allow visitors to walk around part of the islet, providing an extremely close up view of the puffins from every possible angle. When we arrived, this closeness already made it the best puffin site I’d been to, even surpassing Mykines on the Faroe Islands. But soon after 8pm a majority of the birds that had been out to sea returned, in a seemingly coordinated ritual. At that point the hills were absolutely swarmed, with puffins taking off and landing, going in and out of their burrows, billing their mate, and strutting around.

The crowd gathered to view them all seemed to understand what a special moment this was, adopting library-hushed speaking levels and careful footsteps; it was a quiet and reverent place. These funny little birds have the ability to make everyone smile as they awkwardly fly and waddle around on their bright orange feet.

Puffin at Borgarfjörður Eystri about to take flight.

Puffin at Borgarfjörður Eystri with its mouth open.

As we started heading northwest, our first stop was the hike to Stuðlagil canyon. The water at this time of year isn’t the turquoise color you often see in photos, but the basalt columns along the river’s edge are stunning. If you’re thinking of going, I recommend hiking in on the east side of the canyon. The west side has more infrastructure, and you can drive up to the lookout spot, but there are still hundreds of steps down to the river and you can’t walk down into the canyon. You’ll see some of it, but most of the views will be just out of sight. The eastern side has a new parking lot further along the canyon, so it’s now only a ~3 miles hike instead of what used to be ~6 miles.

As we headed west we started to get back into areas of North Iceland I’d visited in early April. We went to the Hverir geothermal area, visited the cows at Vogafjós Farm Resort, stayed on a farm near Lake Mývatn, and visited Goðafoss. There was a massive cruise ship docked in Akureyri, deploying 20+ full-size buses to the sites in the area. I’m not a fan of that kind of travel, or being around those kinds of crowds, so it was nice to head up the peninsula to Siglufjörður where we spent the last two nights of the trip.

It was rainy, and even snowed, the final two days — but that was okay. We stayed at the excellent Sigló hotel, which has a geothermal hot tub overlooking the harbor and mountains that is great in any weather. We also visited The Herring Era Museum, which has excellent artifacts from the town’s history when it was Iceland’s fish export epicenter.

Hot tub at the Sigló hotel in Siglufjörður.

As we headed back to Reykjavík we detoured to see the sea stack Hvitserkur. We also passed by one of the most interesting sheep roundup pens I’ve seen in Iceland, situated unusually right by the beach.

Sheep roundup pen by the ocean, just north of Hvammstangi on route 711.

The final trip was to the Reykjanes Peninsula, to drop my parents off at the airport but also to explore the area around Grindavík. We saw the fresh lava flows that covered the old road, as well as the magma barrier walls that surround the power plant and town.

Overall, it was a great trip around the country and I’m happy that I was able to do it with my parents. One of the interesting things about traveling with other people is that they notice different things than you do. When my brother visited Iceland he pointed out many aspects of the architecture that I hadn’t seen. My Mom notices artifacts, furniture, and how people construct their homes in ways that I might overlook. She also has an incredible eye for interesting rocks and was always finding good ones as we hiked. My Dad, not surprisingly, sees the farming activity in rural Iceland with a level of depth that most of us would overlook. I see the tractors, sheep, and hay bales but he’s looking at soil type, fertilizer composition, and water management practices. We all have our travel eccentricities — I did track down a monument to a telegraph cable after all — but it was interesting to see Iceland through their eyes.

Posts

Faroe Islands: Week 2

Weekly Email Updates

Faroe Islands: Week 1

Williamshús

Iceland: Week 49

Noted & Done

Iceland: Week 48

Noted & Done

Iceland: Week 47

Noted & Done

Iceland: Week 46

Noted & Done

Iceland: Week 45

Iceland: Week 44

Iceland: Weeks 42 + 43