Septmeber 16, 2010
I had to throw out all my Canada-based generalizations about hitchhiking in Iceland.
No room for a driver to pull over? No problem. They just stop on the highway anyways and throw open the door where you’re standing. In the event of cars behind, and oncoming traffic, the cars behind will wait politely while you stuff your backpacks into the trunk of your ride.
Oh, there’s three people in that car already, they won’t be stopping? On the contrary. What’s two more people with backpacks the size of young obese children? No problem, we’ll fit you in.
Going somewhere other than you are? Well, it’s not too far out of our way; we’ll just take you there. Elderly drivers, and the ultimate never-stop-for-hitchhikers-people, mothers with little kids? Of course, get on in!
WOW.
Our first week in Iceland, we hitchhiked everywhere we were going, which was, all over the southwest of the island.
For me, hitchhiking is completely the most desirable way to travel, if your schedule is at all flexible. I’m writing a book about why hitchhiking rocks and why more people should do it, but to summarize in three bullet points, it’s because: you meet the raddest people you wouldn’t otherwise, your itinerary may spontaneously divert in a positive way, and it’s free. So, it was an automatic choice for me. After a cursory glance at the prices of buses for the hordes of tourists, it was a no-brainer. Hmm, we can pay to get driven around, OR we can eat.
And then, Icelanders took my biggest hitchhiking-induced observation of people (that people are basically good and generous and love helping others if you give them an opportunity to do so), to a whole ‘nother level.
Icelanders are the best tour guides imaginable. You could not pay for the shit you can learn from someone who’s lived there all their life (and sometimes I felt like I should pay, for the hours’ guided tour we just recieved). Most Icelanders have an exceptional command of English, and a thorough knowledge of Iceland. Everyone we talked to knew all about the parts of Iceland we were going to; most had visited all the sites we planned, and could make insightful suggestions about our plans.
Of course, size is a factor in Canada, but you can’t hitchhike around Ontario and be able to discuss Takkakkaw Falls or Lake O’Hara with the average driver.
Icelanders are very proud of their country (Good God, for good reason!), and this seems to manifest in the immediate “If you want to stop to take a picture of anything, just say so!” injunction, and also the frequent “awesome side-trip”. We’ll be rolling along making small talk and then the driver will slow and turn out on some random dirt road, usually asking if they may stop, commenting that they “think we’d like to see this”, and in couple seconds we’ll be parked at some massive waterfall, or totally hidden volcano caldera, or enchanting cave. We will marvel, they will laugh, we all pile back in and carry on. This awesome side trip effect (always to places fully overlooked by our Lonely Planet bible) made me totally dizzy with the scope of what we might be missing on a daily basis on all the unexplored side roads we were missing.
This sweet national pride was completely incongruous with the question we were invariably asked, by Icelanders, with an inflection of perplexity and near-shock: “So, why’d you come to Iceland?” Or “Why Iceland?”, “What made you come here?”, or “What make you pick Ísland?” We were asked this dozens of times and never got used to answering it gracefully. Blurting out “Jesus Christ, look around!” didn’t seem appropriate, and I was usually confused by the question. Still am. I’ve no idea why everyone asked this, and I still suspect the real question was something else, like “how did you learn that Iceland was so cool and why did you start wanting to come here?” That’s usually the question we did answer though (“blah blah blah, Derek did research, wanted to come here, I lobbied briefly for New Zealand, glad I lost…”), and it did not seem to satisfy.
We actually got used to Icelanders driving out of their way for us. Our first ride delivered us to the campsite in Selfoss although he was terribly late for a clan reunion and already in trouble with the clan. Our next ride took us to the ferry dock some 20km out of their way with the shrug “Oh well, we haven’t seen the new dock yet.” I asked for advice about camera stores and got delivered to the door of Iceland’s version of BestBuy. And on, and on and on. After getting a car, and grasping that the price of gas in Ísland is roughly twice that in Canada, I appreciated the generousity of so many drivers much, MUCH more.
In the other direction, I often asked my go-to question, “So, why’d you pick us up?” Apparently, this was a real poser. I got looked at like it was a rhetorical question, like they must not understand the question, or like I was retarded. I stopped asking the question.
A little background: When I ask this question in Canada, and I always do, there is always an answer. It may be as simple as I was bored, or I need to stay awake, but usually there is an entire thought process behind the decision to pull over for me, and it may even stretch tendrils into distant personal history, philosophies on what it means to be a man or a Christian, or political views. There is a frequent aspect of fear, which goes one of two directions. Fear for themselves, which was battled by forces of goodwill and lost to being magnanimous, or fear on my behalf, which they put to rest by picking me up before anyone bad did.
So back to Iceland, where apparently there is no answer to the question “Why did you stop?” Apparently, there is no reason for the question to exist. What does this mean? There is no fear? There are no bad people? No thought process is required? I don’t know. It is almost as though it’s an automatic reflex for Icelanders to stop for hitchhikers. I would almost go so far as to say that if they can pick you up, that they feel obligated to. It seemed that way, at least for all of those people who did stop for us, but that is a huge statement to make.
And that was just the Icelanders. We got rides from many travelers as well, and travelers in Iceland seem to adopt a when-in-Rome attitude and do the same. They are not surprised by the “So why’d you stop?” question. Hitchhiking was described as common in their home country by exactly….no one. Like Canada; sometimes people “do it”, but it’s “not done”. Ha! Rides from travelers were not as helpful or informative as rides from Icelanders.
In spite of the general awesomeness of hitching in Iceland (and our week hitching was supremely invaluable), we still encountered the limitations of it. We definitely wanted to reach places off the beaten path (just how far off, we learned once we were drivers), and we also got stuck waiting at times and missed stuff. The Icelanders who eventually picked us up after a long wait were invariably horrified that we’d had to suffer so, but still, we worried about heading for parts of Iceland much less populated with local drivers.
We switched to a “rented” car for going to the Westfjörds and Akureyri. In fact, we wouldn’t have even gotten our car if it weren’t for hitchhiking. One of our rides suggested a website that’s like Craigslist of Iceland, where car owners rent out their personal vehicles. That one tip allowed us to find a car we could afford for the whole rest of our trip, a perfect, standard 4WD for lets just say a fraction of the price of even discount car rental agencies.
Thank you, Iceland drivers!
All the rabble now about to run out and hitchhike in Iceland still need to buy my book (once it’s done), for tips on how to be the best, respectful hitchhiker you can be.
More details on individual rides in the story part of Iceland. These are the generalizations.
Hi — I’ll be traveling to Iceland this July, and will be doing a mixture of hiking and exploring by car. Would you mind sharing the information on getting a rental from a local?
Thanks
TC
I emailed you; start with bland.is
Sorry, but I have the same question. I looked at bland.is but couldn’t find anything in the way of car rental (after running through google translate), just sales.
Have been reading the blog for the past hour, though. Good read! Bought tickets to Iceland and Faroes a few weeks ago but am getting cold feet, as this would be my first int’l travel experience. Don’t know if I’m up to all the planning and spending.
I doubt you’ll be sorry you went!
It is possible that private car rentals have run their course. Our first trip in 2010 saw Iceland in post-collapse crisis, and individuals were getting creative about making extra money.
You could try posting an ad on bland.is