A dear friend offered me the opportunity to join him in Iceland for a few days, while he worked at a hotel. It had been, for a long time, one of my dream destinations. A distant island, with a landscape grown from volcanic wrath and cut into shape by the unforgiving hands of artic winters. In its air, inhabited the power and mysteries of the Norse gods. Everything in it spoke to me of a great adventure.
Despite having never traveled before, the idea that a new land had to be experienced in a special way had grown in me. It couldn’t be done by taking refuge in a nice hotel. Pools and king-sized mattresses are the same anywhere in the world. Nor could it be done by letting yourself be driven around by a friendly tour guide who would alert you to every stone where you could trip, while reminding you of the designated time to look at things. That’s what dogs let their owners do.
No. The limits of us both would have to bleed into each other, until it was clear that a new part of me had become real because of what Iceland gave me. I decided I would immerse myself in its icy waters.
We arrived in Keflavik’s airport at one in the morning. For the following five hours I would drive to Hof with open windows to the sound of my heaviest playlist, guarantying that none of us would fall asleep. The cuts and bites from that wind were Iceland’s first caresses on my body, while night hid hers in darkness and rain. It was a welcome as much as a warning. The warning being that I didn’t know what cold was. But I would find out.
Excitement allowed me very little sleep. When I opened my room’s window for the first time, I saw a great mountain imposing on a smooth green prairie. Every single sharp rock in its face called to me. Determined to know the cold, I went outside with a humble t-shirt. A small stream made its way from the top of the mountain to pass near the hotel. I had my first destination.
Her wind grabbed me and never left me during my first walk. It seemed determined to grab my hands. So much so, that, by the time I arrived at the stream, I didn’t have enough mobility in my fingers to untie my shoes. Even so, I persevered, and my bare feet met the ancestral moss. The water was pure, straight from the biggest glacier in Iceland, just behind the mountain. Transparent to the point of barely existing. But as soon as I sank my hands in its absence of color, it was them who seem to not exist anymore. As I took my red hands out of the water, I realized the wind had been a pale shadow, this was where she truly lived: in her cold water.
I went back to the hotel. Not to rest, but to keep exploring. Most of the running water in Iceland comes directly from the glaciers. It was time for my first shower. I was doing cold showers daily back in Portugal and had done ice-baths several times in the weeks prior to my trip. All of these proved trivial investments in the understanding of Iceland’s cold. Showering in glacial water is a violent acupuncture. This was no longer a matter of discomfort: it was pain. It was, until that point, the coldest thing I had ever felt. But that would change very soon.
On the third day, after walking through one of the few forests in Iceland – where nuns had converted to Satanism -, feeling black sand on my feet, and walking alongside a fearless raven whose wings caught the sun’s gold, I found myself in front of a waterfall: Stjórnarfoss. A new friend was with me – he had spent the day with me facing all these adventures, while we talked about Odin, Haruki Murakami and progressive metal -, the fact that he was willing to hold a towel while I stood in my speedos in front of that waterfall, was proof enough of a friendship. The sun was already behind the mountains when I decided I would really do this.
My foot disappeared from my body as it entered the water. I only found it again when it felt the sharp rocks beneath. I sat down and began to advance with my feet in front of me and my hands behind me. As every submersed cell on my body screamed for mercy, a thought kept troubling me: this isn’t as cold as it gets. Sure, it’s water that comes from a glacier. But it isn’t the glacier. There was no ice around me. I couldn’t see snow. And yet, my body shook as if it was trying to get away from my soul.
After I was done, all that occupied my mind was the notion that there was something colder out there, which meant, something much more painful. Something that I would have to face. I started to have doubts. Was this safe? My body had never shaken so violently from the cold and the water had only got as far as my chest before I got out. I had committed to go into something colder and deeper. Would I survive? I was a long way from home. A long way from comfort.
The eve of my last day in Iceland was the day I had marked to go into the waters of the glacial lake. I cleared my whole day just for that. I got up early and got into the cold shower. It didn’t hurt so much this time, but it was still painful. Outside, was the worst weather I had experienced thus far. The remnants of a storm kept anger in the sky. I came out barefoot and shirtless and meditated beside one of the oldest churches in Iceland. After that, I went back to the small stream near the hotel and laid on the moss, letting her rain, her wind and her cold fall on me for as long as I could. The only thing on my mind: getting inside the freezing water.
When the friend that had invited me to go on the trip ended his shift at the hotel, we got into the car and drove to the glacial lake: Fjallsárlón. My arms shook in fear throughout the whole half hour drive, while I listened to Heilung’s Alfadhirhaiti. It’s a song that invokes Odin, the leader of the Norse gods who sacrificed himself to himself for knowledge. The pain he must have felt, hanging from a tree for nine days with a spear thrust into his ribs. I told my friend he would have to take me out of the water if something went wrong. He was a good friend, I know he would, if it came to that.
We parked near the lake and by the time I got near the water I was already soaked by the rain. Pieces of the greatest iceberg in Iceland, Vatnajökull, floated on the lake in all shapes and forms. Its gigantic form loomed from the opposite shore. In the blue and grey, the only warm colors were the yellow and orange of the signs that warned of the risk of death and hypothermia if you would get into the water. I undressed down to my swimming speedos, as a group of Italian tourists wondered about my sanity. My friend held a towel and my clothes. He was a good friend; he was looking after me.
I had put my mind in a place where no force could move it. Nothing would ever stop me from getting in that water. I kept shaking, this time in excitement. My foot stopped existing as it entered the water. It became pain. That whole lake was pain, and I was about to become one with it. My body wanted to disobey my mind’s will. It shook so violently I thought I wouldn’t be able to get any further without falling. So, I let myself sink into the water. All the way down to my chin.
I felt immersed in the potential destruction of myself. Limits became icy hands crushing me. Everything in me wanted to get away, except myself. I closed my eyes, the hands of the cold let me go, and I felt my body become white electricity. I became pain. And becoming it, I felt myself grow beyond myself. To understand I was much more than I ever imagined. The power which had threatened to annihilate me, was in me. I recognized myself in it, and it in me. The only way to express it was to scream in defiance of the cold, and in defying, earning its respect. Where was I when I screamed? In a place beyond.
As I left the water, I felt very different. I went back in once again, before finally returning to my good friend, my clothes and a group of Italian tourist’s bravos. I wasn’t cold, I wasn’t hurt and didn’t feel sick in any way. I felt connected to a force far greater than myself, but that was also a part of me, as much as I was part of it. I hadn’t changed, I had discovered a new part of myself. On the drive back to the hotel, I couldn’t stop talking to my friend about what I had felt, but I barely had the words to describe it, even if it so clearly burned inside me.
I thought about it for months before writing about it. Even now, I believe I can never truly express it in words, but that is something great experiences have in common – they are beyond communications, their true understanding comes from the experience itself. I still consider it one of the closest things I had to a religious experience.
I went to Iceland with an idea of what cold and pain was, only to find out that they were far greater than I thought. The limits I thought existed, and which I was determined to surpass, were also far greater. Which meant that I did something far more difficult than I thought I could.
I wonder how many opportunities of knowing myself I lost because of unwillingness to feel pain. The insights I might have lost to comfort. The courage that warmth and softness hid from me.
Pain is a barrier between what we are and what we can be. The bigger the pain the further you’re daring to go beyond your limits. Some pains are tall gargantuan figures at the shore of the ocean of our self, blocking the horizon of our imagination, with one hand threatening us with destruction and another promising us dreams. If you are strong enough to resist the touch of destruction, you will be pointed at the dreams beyond the horizon. That’s the meaning the cold pain brought me as I screamed – now knowing it was with the joy of one who sacrifices himself to understand himself.
