Grimsey Island's Isolation

This morning we took one more long walk before we caught the ferry back to the mainland, this time taking a coast walk in a different direction. More puffins to make me happy. That was our day: puffin walk, ferry ride, drive to Lake Myvatn. I'll add several more puffin pics -- just because why not.

What do people do for leisure who live on Grimsey Island? Lots of Icelandic towns are isolated, this  island is even more so, being a 3-hour ferry ride from the mainland. There are only 30 year-round residents with another 100 or so there for the summer months. In general, Iceland has a fairly high suicide rate according to one of our Guesthouse owners, in part because of the lengthy darkness for part of the year and then the relative isolation of many parts of the country.

Grimsey Island has an indoor swimming pool, a soccer field, and a frisbee golf course. The island’s people have a long history of being passionate about chess and were known for their skilled playing. There’s an outdoor chess table above the harbor.

The town also has a deep-rooted culture of reading. It established a library in 1901. The contents of that original collection are still housed in the local school. Iceland overall has a serious culture of both reading and writing going back to the Medieval Icelandic sagas. There are lots of monuments to writers around the country and one writer, Halldór Laxness, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.

Our young waitress at lunch told us that she was born on the island, went to high school on the mainland, and then returned. She didn’t explicitly say she loves it, just that she decided to return. There’s not a lot to do here, but even so the place has a strange attraction.