The Hard Way: Freezer Burn

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Outside Magazine December 2004

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The Hard Way
Freezer Burn (Cont.)

ICELAND GREW OUT of its warrior adolescence long ago. Today it's a nation committed to nonviolence. Icelanders have a higher standard of living than Americans, lower infant mortality, higher life expectancy, universal health care. There is hardly any poverty, there are no homeless, and most Icelanders have lived, studied, or traveled abroad.

And yet the enduring desire to experience the extreme lives on.

Staggering out of the Kverkfjöll cave, cloaked in steam, Karl and I plop down in the warm river, breathing deeply, surrounded by arcing walls of ice.

The water is luxuriant, and as we strip off our layers of wool and fleece, Karl tells me of the Tindfjoll Games, a mysterious Icelandic event he says no foreigner has ever witnessed.

"It is something that happens in the mountains at night, usually in bad weather. It begins with a feast."

Karl says that, for this year's contest, his friend Tomas has already shot the reindeer, and the hakarl has been fermenting on the beach for weeks. Prodigious amounts of liquor will be consumed before and during the events, all of which will be performed buck naked.

First there's a race around the hut—barefoot, of course. Karl says it's only really interesting during a blizzard, when it's possible for someone to lose their way after the ninth or tenth lap. Then come games of strength, such as arm wrestling and its more bizarre offshoot, Inuit mouth wrestling.

But Karl's favorite is the snow-angel contest. "I have a friend, Magnus Gunnarsson, who holds the unofficial world record: 530 arm and leg movements," he tells me. "The snow was pretty frozen, and in the morning he had a hard time remembering why he lacked some skin on his elbows, heels, and shoulders."

Karl and I absentmindedly eye our sopping pile of ice-climbing gear. Sometimes it happens that two people come up with the same brilliant idea at once.

"Shall we?" asks Karl.

We drag our plastic boots into the water and pull them on, snap on crampons, clip on helmets, tighten the leashes of our ice axes, and stand up.

Naked ice climbing, as it turns out, is a very delicate business, and I admit to taking an embarrassing fall.

Afterwards, we de-ice ourselves in the welcome, healing heat of the water. Glacial liquid laps at our chins. Steam rolls out of the cave and drifts downstream. I'm surrounded by blue arctic ice, but I'm deliciously, equatorially warm. It feels both entirely natural and supremely foreign. I realize that this is what Icelanders have been doing for 11 centuries.

"OK," Karl says. "Now you are welcome to the Tindfjoll Games." His big red face is one giant grin. "I just hope the weather is bad."

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