Ocean swimming in Iceland [journal]
I had been walking out into the ocean, splashing around for 10 minutes, then making my way to the local hotpot to warm up. It was non-committal, the cold was manageable, and I could always touch the bottom. Easy stuff.
This previous Saturday, the village I’m living in held a festival to bring the town together and one item on the itinerary was an ocean swim. A real, actual ocean swim that involved paddling and things. I had three motives for deciding to do the ocean swim; it would make good footage for the film I’m working on, I’ll feel like a fraud if I chicken out, and I’ve had three separate dreams that I’m actually a seal since I arrived here. Iceland is a weird place. It gets in your head.
Anyway, Saturday morning rolled around and I was still sleepy, but I had an early breakfast and looked outside. Little wind, a lot of sunshine, a relatively cloud-free sky. One of my roommates – a far more athletic woman than I – had decided that she would do the swim too, and our third roommate made the last minute decision to tag along as well. We were dancing around the living room, getting hydrated and blasting some Tame Impala to get us in the mood.
Fast forward an hour and I’m scrambling down on these slippery rocks, wearing a pair of bikini bottoms and my sports bra. The waves were coming in violently and quickly, so I had foregone my usual bikini top out of fear that I’d lose it along the way. I was wearing a pair of brown woolen socks for two reasons; a kind lady named ValdÃs explained that this can help retain some warmth in your feet, and I was paranoid about panicking if my foot touched something slimy.
I knew from experience that the first breath is the hardest. I slipped between two jagged rocks and fell into a bed of seaweed, and the cold of the water literally took my breath away. I was treading water and trying to regulate my breathing and trying to keep my arms moving. While my body adjusted I dog paddled along, avoiding keeping my head submerged, as LÃljá recommended. I timed my paddles with the waves that rolled in, but ended up with mouthful after mouthful of salty seawater. The current was determined to push us back to our starting position, and for a long time it felt like I was getting nowhere at all.
After fifteen minutes, I could feel my legs again. I was paddling along, watching the water rise and fall around me, and could see tiny rocky islands at eye level in the bay. The water looked milky and grey in the light, and I could see the high mountains rising out on the other side of the bay.
When my arms got tired, I rolled onto my back and kicked along in a half-hearted backstroke. The clouds were moving quickly overhead, and I assumed the wind had picked up, but I was safe and sheltered in the bay. I would push my head as far back as it would go, so that my destination was upside-down in the distance.
The destination was the café on the edge of the bay, where there was one of those concrete driveway boat harbour things that rises out of the sea and meets the road. As I approached, the waves battered me around, hitting me from behind, and then hitting the surrounding cliffs and pushing me back out to sea again. There were submerged concrete blocks that I clamoured over, scratching my stomach and my legs. I pulled myself out of the water, was thrown a bottle of water and put my feet up out of the sea so they could warm up. I felt pretty exhausted from battling the current and trying to stay warm (the man who followed us in an emergency kayak later confirmed that the water was 3 degrees Celcius). Those behind me emerged as well, we passed around the water and they began walking up to the café. LÃljá turned toward the sea, stepped back in, and called out to me.
“Are you swimming back?”
I looked at the others, who were now on the grass beside the harbour. They all shook their heads in unison, making a beeline for the car that had just pulled up.
“Are we supposed to swim back?” I asked LÃljá.
“I think this was the plan,” she replied.
I waded back out into the water, climbing over the concrete block that had bloodied up my legs, and started swimming back to our starting point.
This time when the water took my breath away, I didn’t get it back. I waited for my body to adjust to the water temperature, but I felt a perpetual cold creeping up from my feet. I wondered how long I’d been swimming for. I settled into a head-above-water freestyle, but every time my hands broke the surface of the water they felt like they were being cut open. Eventually, I alternated between lying on my back and relying on the current to carry me back, and an exhausted breaststroke, made more difficult by the fact that I could feel my legs trembling.
I reached the slimy, disconcerting bed of seaweed, climbed up the pile of rocks to Saulaugar, who waited with a woolen jumper and blanket. My legs were wet and bloody and my skin was pink and cold. “Careful,” said Saulaugar, “your skin is very fragile when it’s cold. This is why you are cut.”
I’m not good with talk of veins or skin at the best of times, but dehydrated from salt water and shaking from cold, I almost passed out. The words “fragile skin” spun around in my head and I held onto the car for support.
She drove LÃljá and I to the hotpot so that
we could warm up with the others, who were already sitting, smiling and warm,
sipping coffee and eating chocolate sticks.
I was trying to breathe normally, but on every exhale my thighs would
shake and tremble and threaten to give out.
I tried to step into the hotpot, but it felt more stepping into a teapot
than a pool. Blue spots appeared on my
hands and feet, my tattoos were raised like welts, and thick red marks lined
the inside of my arms.
I sat, shivering, in the forty-degree
hotpot, drinking cup after cup of coffee, wishing I could fall asleep and wake
up feeling warm. After an hour I had
stopped shaking, and the green bruises on my stomach, legs, hands and arms
began to rise in little eggs.
“We’re going to go swimming probably on
Monday after work,” LÃljá said to me. I
was pulling on my tracksuit pants in the change room, contemplating having a
nap before the afternoon and feeling absolutely wrecked.
“I’ll text you so that we can pick you up and
you can come?” asked ValdÃs.
“Yeah, sounds good,” I replied.
Until next time!
Until next time!
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