A landscape photograph can be deceiving. In the one I took at Jökulsárlón, blue-white icebergs are scattered across the water, with mountains rising behind them as though someone had arranged the entire scene for a wide-angle lens. What the picture does not contain is the long coach journey, the cold, or the peculiar sensation of standing beside pieces of a glacier which have broken away and are quietly making their way towards the sea.
We had reached Iceland in late October 2016 by an indirect route: Singapore to Copenhagen, three nights in Denmark, and then onwards to Reykjavík for a tour called the Great Aurora Hunt. Afterwards, we would return to Copenhagen for one final night before flying home. Looking through the old emails and photographs a decade later, I realised that the journey was much less orderly than the itinerary I had originally prepared, and considerably more interesting for it. One country seemed to have considered every small design decision; the other looked as though it was still in the process of being made.
Copenhagen, Before the Ice
We landed in Copenhagen on the morning of 22 October after an overnight flight from Singapore. Wakeup Copenhagen Borgergade was our base, and after the necessary business of settling in, we went out into a city already dressed for autumn. The light was muted, the air was cool and there was enough visual material in the shopfronts, buildings and streets to keep me happily distracted before we had even reached the first tourist landmark.
We went to the Little Mermaid, of course. She is a surprisingly modest sculpture for something that occupies so much space in the tourist imagination, although the crowds made it clear that we were hardly alone in feeling obliged to see her. Later we explored the Christiania area, where weathered brickwork, graffiti and a less regulated visual language provided a useful contrast with the polished, carefully maintained city centre. Our personal photographs of the mermaid prominently include our faces, so I have left those out of this public photo essay.
Royal Squares, Autumn Leaves and the Importance of Coffee
The next day, 23 October, took us through the royal quarter. Amalienborg’s enormous square and equestrian statue have the sort of composure that architecture acquires when it is confident nobody is going to rearrange it. We moved through the gardens around Rosenborg Castle, where the trees were already turning yellow and brown. In the photographs, the leaves and the pale October light tell me almost as much about the day as the landmarks themselves.
Before leaving Singapore, I had assembled one of those slightly unreasonable sightseeing lists that are more optimistic than any human pair of feet. The Round Tower, Marble Church, Carlsberg Brewery, Danish Design Museum and a possible canal cruise all appeared in our planning emails. There was even mention of a Noma lunch reservation, although I have not found the corresponding confirmation or a photograph of the meal, and I would rather leave it uncertain than invent a culinary triumph ten years later.
What I can confirm is a stop at Copenhagen Coffee Lab. One of the pictures shows a cup resting on a candlelit table, which has somehow become a more appealing record of the trip than half the architectural landmarks I researched beforehand. Perhaps that is what photographs do over time. The grand sights are already familiar from everyone else’s camera, while the small things remain particular to the day you were there.
Tivoli, and the Old-Fashioned Art of Amusement
Tivoli Gardens was a natural stop, but what caught my eye was not simply the rides. There were wooden buildings, fairground details, a windmill and an appealing mixture of styles that seemed to have accumulated over time rather than been subjected to a single design committee. Copenhagen is often sold through clean-lined furniture and minimalist interiors, yet Tivoli has never been embarrassed by ornament, theatricality or a little deliberate absurdity.
I recorded a short video there, mainly taking in the windmill and surrounding structures under a grey sky. Nothing exceptional happens in the clip, but I like it for that reason. It captures the ordinary movement and sound of a place on a particular autumn afternoon, and it seems more useful to this recollection than another polished promotional film.
The City on Foot, and a Museum Worth the Time
On Monday, 24 October, we had reserved two places on a three-hour walking tour beginning at City Hall. The photographs put us in and around the building at approximately the right time, although I cannot reconstruct every stop in the guide’s route. I remember being taken with the ornate interiors, particularly the painted details, chandeliers and staircases. It was exactly the sort of place where a designer risks falling behind because he has stopped looking at the larger room and started examining the edges.
The same day’s photographs include a small statue against a brick wall covered in red ivy. It is a minor detail with no particular place in a conventional itinerary, but it has aged rather well in the archive. Later we found ourselves by Nyhavn, where historic vessels and tall masts stood in front of the brightly coloured harbour houses. The overcast sky made the whole scene feel quieter than the summer postcards, which suited it perfectly well.
Our final Danish morning, 25 October, was spent at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. The combination of classical sculpture and ancient Egyptian objects appealed directly to my longstanding interest in drawing, art history and the way people have represented bodies and faces across different periods. I was in no particular hurry to leave the galleries, although we had a flight to catch later that evening. The photographs are mostly of individual objects and their arrangement in the rooms, precisely the things I would stop to look at again.
From Copenhagen to Reykjavík
We flew from Copenhagen to Keflavík on the evening of 25 October and checked in at 22 Hill Hotel, our Reykjavík base for the week. After Denmark’s streets, palaces and museums, Iceland felt like a deliberate change of scale and temperament. The landscape seemed to begin almost immediately beyond the built-up areas, and the light was a constant reminder that late October was not quite the season for long, leisurely sightseeing days.
We spent 26 October exploring Reykjavík with the group. Hallgrímskirkja was impossible to ignore, its stepped concrete forms rising over the city like an artificial geological formation. The comparison with Copenhagen could hardly have been more pronounced. Where the Danish capital had offered painted ceilings and carefully composed civic squares, this building took a stark material and made it feel entirely appropriate to its setting.
There were gentler moments along the waterfront, particularly when the cloud began to open over the sea. The Sun Voyager, with its polished ribs suggesting the outline of a boat, seemed to belong to the coastline without trying to compete with it. I was reminded that Icelandic architecture and public art often make more sense when seen against the surrounding light and weather than when isolated in a travel guide.
My camera arrangements were less reliable than the itinerary. A nearly new Olympus TG-860 compact camera stopped working partway through the European journey, and I contacted the manufacturer after returning home. It was irritating at the time, particularly on a holiday built around landscape photography, but the phone photographs survived. Ten years on, it is a useful reminder that the best equipment is often the equipment which actually records the trip.
The Golden Circle, or Watching the Ground Work
The Golden Circle outing on 27 October included Þingvellir, Gullfoss, the Geysir geothermal area and a greenhouse stop at Friðheimar. These are familiar names now, but their familiarity does little to prepare you for a place where the ground steams in front of you. Iceland has a knack for making geological processes feel neither distant nor theoretical. Something is always erupting, flowing, freezing or slowly wearing away.
At Strokkur we watched steam drift across the wet earth as visitors waited around the geothermal field. A geyser is difficult to describe without making it sound like a scheduled attraction, and of course the waiting is part of the experience. What stayed with me was the mineral-stained ground, the vapour, the cold air and that mildly unsettling sense that the land beneath our feet had rather more going on than it cared to reveal.
The Long Road South
Our journey to the south coast and Jökulsárlón took place on 28 October. I can say that with some confidence because the original photographs retain their capture dates, even though the preliminary tour paperwork put the long excursion on a different day. It was a substantial journey, and the first major visual reward was Skógafoss. Water fell in a wide white sheet against a dark cliff while a rainbow hung across the spray. People at the base appeared very small indeed.
I remember the combination of textures: black gravel, green hillside, cold mist and the dense, almost physical presence of the falling water. It needed very little help from a camera. Everyone was photographing it, of course, but that hardly diminished the experience. Sometimes the obvious photograph is the obvious photograph for a reason.
Further east, the landscape became a succession of rough lava fields, green moss, flat open ground and distant snow-covered mountains. There were long stretches when the only sensible thing to do was sit by the window and watch the country change. I have rather more affection for those in-between photographs now than I did when they were taken. They show the journey itself, not only the famous places at either end.
Jökulsárlón, Where the Ice Takes Its Time
When we finally reached Jökulsárlón, the long day made rather more sense. Icebergs of different sizes drifted across the water, some almost white, others marked with blue shadows and darker layers. The lagoon did not have the monumental, fixed quality of the museums we had visited in Copenhagen. Everything in front of us was temporary, although it was moving on a scale and at a pace that made our own few hours seem quite insignificant.
Our photographs also show us in bright orange life jackets associated with the lagoon boat excursion. Those pictures are useful for reconstructing the day, although for the public article I prefer the quieter photographs of ice and water without us in the foreground. I remember the cold, the light and the way the scene seemed to resist the tidy perspective of a postcard. The ice was spectacular enough without anyone having to pose in front of it.
The return journey was long, as returns often are after a day filled with famous stops. As the light faded, the country became mostly darkness outside the coach window, with occasional buildings and passing headlights. Holiday albums have a habit of editing out that part. Travel is not always at its most memorable when something is happening, and not every hour is equally enjoyable, but those quieter stretches are part of how a place gets under your skin.
Looking for the Northern Lights
The Great Aurora Hunt was the promise around which the Iceland itinerary had been organised. An aurora, however, is not a theatrical production that starts at the time printed on a ticket. It depends on the sky, the weather and conditions no one can control, which means a certain amount of waiting and driving are built into the experience. The guides could search for clearer patches and make informed decisions; they could not simply arrange for the lights to appear.
We did see the Northern Lights, and I managed to capture some of them with my DSLR. Those photographs are in a separate photo library that I cannot access at the moment, rather than among the phone images used to reconstruct this account. It is an important distinction: the aurora wasn’t merely something we spent the week hoping to see, and the absence of those photographs from this article is not evidence that we missed it. Until I can recover the original frames, I would rather leave this part of the journey without an illustration than substitute someone else’s photograph or invent details about the display that I can no longer verify.
The Blue Lagoon, After the Light Had Gone
We booked the Blue Lagoon for nine in the evening on 29 October, which was perhaps not the cleverest use of a place whose surroundings are such a large part of its appeal. There was also some confusion over the distinction between group transport and admission, which left us dealing with the booking arrangements later than was ideal. We eventually got in, but it was not quite the effortless spa interlude we had imagined when making the plans back home.
The warm mineral-rich water was welcome after the cold, and the Comfort package came with the familiar mask, towel and drink arrangements. The locker wristbands and the required shower before entering were part of the process, as was the slightly disorientating business of navigating an unfamiliar changing room. But by the time we were in the water, most of the surrounding volcanic scenery had disappeared into the dark. There are visits where atmosphere improves everything; this one would probably have benefited from a little more daylight.
This short official-style travel film gives a sense of what the Blue Lagoon looks like in daylight. It is not footage from our visit, and the contrast is rather the point. We experienced the warmth and the water, but far less of the landscape than the daytime visitors in the film.
A City You Can Eat Through
On 30 October, our last full day in Reykjavík, we joined a Wake Up Reykjavík Food Walk beginning near Harpa in the early afternoon. After days spent looking at enormous landscapes, the idea of moving between small cafés and food stops was a welcome change. The weather was cold and wet, which made the itinerary of warm interiors particularly appealing. Harpa’s geometric glass façade was worth a photograph in its own right before the tasting began.
Fortunately, I had sent myself a list of what we ate, which is far more precise than my memory would be on its own. We began with lamb soup at Íslenski Barinn, then sampled cheeses and cured meats including lamb, horse and smoked goose breast. Café Loki supplied rye-bread ice cream; there was skyr near the parliament, a hot dog at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, lobster soup and finally coffee and dessert at Apotek Kitchen. The range made the walk a rather good introduction to how many different things people can do with familiar ingredients.
Food tours are particularly good at correcting the habit of treating a country as a collection of buildings and scenic viewpoints. Somebody explains what you are eating, another person offers a small piece of local history, and you find yourself trying a combination you might have ignored on a menu. I cannot claim that every taste became a favourite, but the whole sequence was much more memorable than the usual hurried restaurant meal between two tourist stops.
One Last Dinner in Denmark
We flew back to Copenhagen on 31 October and checked into Wakeup Copenhagen Borgergade for one final night. That evening we ate at Restaurant Skindbuksen, and the photographs show a hearty plate of fried fish and chips, other food on the table and the restaurant’s illuminated sign outside. After a week of geological spectacle, a straightforward dinner in a familiar city was a pleasantly undramatic way to end the trip.
We departed Copenhagen on 1 November and arrived back in Singapore the following morning. On paper, the trip is a neat itinerary through two countries and a few airport codes. In memory, it is far more uneven: the restraint of Copenhagen’s royal squares, the eccentricity of Tivoli, a museum full of ancient figures, cold spray at Skógafoss, ice moving across a lagoon, an over-late visit to warm water and an afternoon of unfamiliar food.
What the Photographs Remember
Reconstructing this trip nearly ten years later has meant separating the places we intended to visit from the places the surviving photographs show us actually seeing. My old emails are full of useful plans, some over-ambitious and a few probably forgotten almost as soon as we arrived. The photographs are less grand. They contain a coffee cup, ivy on a wall, a fairground windmill, a bowl on a café table and one memorable waterfall.
We went to Iceland hoping to see the Northern Lights, and I did manage to photograph some of the display with my DSLR. Those pictures are not in the archive I have been working from, so they will have to wait for another pass through the photo library. For now, the images that keep drawing me back are the ones I do have in front of me: a waterfall, a few pieces of glacial ice, a fairground windmill and a coffee cup on a Copenhagen table. I am glad we kept the untidy archive, even if the most elusive photographs are still sitting somewhere else. It has more to say than the polished itinerary ever did.
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