FLOATING THROUGH OBLIVION

Oasis

The word oasis refers to a fertile area in the desert. The essential component of the concept is water, for the area is made fertile because of it. The popular image is a half-dozen palm trees, huddled religiously around a small pond, surrounded by an expanse of sand.

Although there are no smouldering deserts in Iceland, Icelanders, like all peoples, have their oases, albeit purely in the figurative sense. Our oases, like the original referent, are unthinkable without the presence of H2O: our oases are warm water, and we’ve long harnessed the power of geothermal energy to make our existence on this harsh island more bearable.

Consider Snorri Sturluson: the renowned historian, poet, and politician thought to have authored, or at least compiled, portions of the Prose Edda, a vital source for Norse mythology, as well as Heimskringla, a history of the Norwegian kings. Although there’s no way to be certain, Snorri may have found not only refuge but also inspiration in his ancient jacuzzi in Reykholt, one of the oldest and most famous man-made hot tubs in Iceland. The pool, fed by the hot spring Skrifla, was mentioned in the Book of Settlements, suggesting it may have been used as early as the 10th century.

Modern Iceland would no doubt be unrecognisable to Snorri Sturluson, although if one were to resurrect the hoary historian, the best way of easing him back into the chaos of modern life would likely be to set him down at the public pools. Have him strap on a floating hood and a few floatation devices. And allow him to be reborn through water.

Perspective

Unnur Valdís Kristjánsdóttir has no recollection of the first time that she visited a public pool – but she has vivid memories from her time in water as a child.

Her mother, whom Unnur describes as “a busy woman,” would often buy herself some free time –much the way that a modern parent would employ an iPad – by allowing her daughter to take long soaks in the bathtub.

“I dreamed of designing a moveable tub,” Unnur remembers, “one that I could use to travel the world. This idea, perhaps, later came to inform my manifesto; it’s an outlandish notion, I know,” she admits.

Unnur began modelling at the age of 15 and although she was somewhat embarrassed about her career in its immediate aftermath, that regret was gradually supplanted by a sense of gratitude. She’d been afforded the opportunity of travelling the world, which gave her a certain distance from and perspective on her native country. Gore Vidal looking across the Mediterranean from Ravello.

Later in life, when grappling with an especially difficult decision – one which she had been musing upon over a period of many days – she decided to take a break and visit the pool. It was there that she had an epiphany, like Archimedes in his bathtub (“Eureka!”), intuiting, in retrospect, that that epiphany was closely tied to the water.

And from there, a whole culture has sprung forth.

Letting Go

On the morning of Tuesday, December 20, I tumbled out of bed at 5:25 AM.

I popped open my laptop and did some work, roused the kids, fed and dressed them, and drove the younger one to school, trying impatiently to keep him focused on the task at hand, and inuring him to the idea that, in the modern world, there’s no time to stop to admire the magic of everyday existence. I dropped my mother-in-law off at the car dealership before visiting the doctor’s with my elder son, who yelled hysterically over the prospect of an infected finger (which may have explained the fever), and throughout the day I continued this marathon game of whack-a-mole with my hydra-headed to-do list. All the while, my consciousness seemed to drift, almost incessantly, to the small business that I operate with my wife.

When I finally came to, sometime later that evening, in a parking lot outside a nursing home complex deep within snow-ridden Reykjavík, I was exhausted.

And late.

I rushed out of the car and weaved confusedly through the parking lot, spotting a pedestrian in the moonlight. “Excuse me, is there a pool here somewhere?” I asked. “It’s down there,” the woman replied (something about her inflection suggesting this was not the first time she’d received such a query). Before hurrying onwards, she pointed quickly towards the corner of the complex, at the end of a sloping and slippery driveway.

“Thanks.”

I kicked off my boots in the foyer and was directed towards the locker room, where I met a man who’d recently returned to Iceland from Norway. He asked if this was “my first time,” and I admitted that it was.

“I advise you to just let go,” he offered. “It may seem a little strange at first, this whole thing, but don’t pay it any mind.” I determined at once to heed his words, although something about my physical and mental state felt especially antithetical to the kind of levelheadedness often required to ease into a new experience: my nerves were tingling, my mind was detached, and my gums were gauzy from all the nicotine pouches I had too frequently insinuated below my upper lip. I breathed deeply, tried to relax, undressed, showered, and clambered awkwardly into my bathing suit.

I FELT AS IF I HAD BEEN REBORN; I FELT SO UTTERLY DISORIENTED AND CONFUSED THAT I FORGOT, ALMOST, WHO I WAS.

But then – an oasis.

The pool itself was maybe 25 metres [80 feet] long and situated beneath a low ceiling, although I’d later think of it as almost infinite in its extension. There were big windows that looked out towards the apartment complex to the east. The majority of the blinds were up, although I only caught sight of a single person, busying herself within a kitchen. Lanterns lined the edge of the pool and music was playing. These weren’t the kind of mildly off-putting, vaguely oriental tones that so often accompany meditation sessions but the less intrusive, more familiar Nordic ambient: a soft piano on a slightly varying loop.

Unnur stood in the middle of the pool and asked the dozen or so participants to gather round in a circle. She explained that the winter solstice session was a sort of national holiday for Flot, her water therapy practice. It was their “Independence Day.” Unnur talked briefly before handing the stage over to one of her assistants, who continued the introduction with a handful of rather disjointed and digressive ideas, softly intoning some of the more popular spiritual catchwords, which made it difficult to focus.

And then we fastened our floating hoods.

Into The Abyss

Unnur conceived of the idea for the Flothetta (a floating swim cap) in 2012.

At the time, she had tried her hand at various pursuits, before enrolling in the department of product design at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Her fascination with health and well-being, combined with her life-long love of water, inspired the product’s design, which originally consisted of a set of leg floats and a single head piece. (The concept has since evolved to include a blindfold, to keep the user’s field of vision in check, and additional leg floats to accommodate different physiques.)

I began to float in the darkness, my body undulating in rhythm with my breathing: each deep inhalation drawing me closer to the surface, which also served to raise the volume of the music: a phenomenon so rhythmic and routine that it felt almost artificial.

A friend of mine had described the affair as “a return to the womb,” but my experience was different; I felt as if I were floating through empty space, sinking into a dark and comforting oblivion. At first, it was relaxing and strange and beautiful but not yet remarkable. That latter feeling only became applicable when two hands reached out to “the soft animal of my body” and gently manoeuvred my limbs through the ether, before cradling me, as if I were a child, in an embrace that felt vaguely angelic.

I began to spin, and although I must have been moving slowly through the water, the conscious sensation was akin to hurtling, almost at the speed of light, through the darkness of space. It was indescribable. When those two arms released me, I began to feel like an astronaut in one of those disaster movies, drifting helplessly from whatever remote station to which I’d been attached. I longed for a lifeline. For the renewed sensation of human touch.

Time moved mysteriously, too.

I drifted in and out of consciousness, at times thinking that I’d fallen asleep, and, at other times, very much inhabiting the present moment; and thankfully, Unnur, or one of her assistants, returned at regular intervals to again cradle me in her arms.

I spent a total of 90 minutes in the water (although that couldn’t possibly be right?) and after Unnur had gently removed my floats, she reorientated my body in the water, pressing me up against the pool wall to recover. I felt as if I had been reborn; I felt so utterly disoriented and confused that I forgot, almost, who I was.

THE CONTOURS OF TIME SEEM TO ALTER IN THE WATER.

“What was that?”

Questions

“It was like zooming through outer space,” I told Unnur, over the phone, a few weeks after our session. “Is that common?”

“I haven’t heard anyone mention moving at such high speeds, but that thing you said, about time, that I’ve heard; the contours of time seem to alter in the water.”

One of the things that Unnur and her instructors try to emphasise in their float therapy is not over-curating the experience – to keep it simple and manage expectations – so that each practitioner is at liberty to enter into their own realm.

“We don’t want to force an experience upon you. We want to keep it pure,” she observes.

Unnur explained that the weightlessness served to calm down the senses: to unburden the body and its musculoskeletal system, to achieve a deeper calm.

People often find themselves in this wide expanse, which can be a bit overwhelming. They feel lonely, as if they’re drifting through a void, which, perhaps, serves as insightful commentary on the relationship between the human being and the modern world: we’re always stimulated, always addicted to something.”

Encountering nothingness, Unnur seems to suggest – the modern mind reels.

“Have you experienced such powerful feelings yourself?” I inquire.

“I have. But also, I’ve begun to use float therapy as a kind of exercise in intuition. When I need an answer to something, for example; we often know the answer ourselves but fail to find it amidst the hassle of daily life. And I think there’s something truly of value there, allowing us the opportunity to solve our problems in a gentle manner, as opposed to losing the run of ourselves. There are so many people in positions of authority who are making decisions that affect us all; it’s important that these decisions are made well, with quality and thought.”

“It felt so alien and yet so familiar; as Icelanders, our fate has long been interwoven with water.”

“Yes, our daily trips to the public pools make us semiexperts in water, unlike those who only visit pools once or twice a year. The Icelanders are very quick to relax and trust the water. Foreigners, on the other hand, find it more difficult to let go.”

I told Unnur how the sensation of human touch seemed to elevate the ritual to something almost transcendent.

IT FELT SO ALIEN AND YET SO FAMILIAR; AS ICELANDERS, OUR FATE HAS LONG BEEN INTERWOVEN WITH WATER.

“There’s so much healing power to touch. We know this when it comes to our children, and we take good care of them, but perhaps we forget as we grow older. It loses its importance. We need it.”

I hung up the phone and returned to the chaos of modern life. But have since, during feelings of distress, returned to that place, where I seemed suspended in oblivion; it reminds me of that Czesław Miłosz quote: “Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.”

And there’s comfort in that.

This year, Iceland Review celebrates its 60th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, we’ve dug deep in our archives to bring you some highlights of Iceland’s history, through the eyes of contemporary journalists and photographers.

On the morning of January 23, 1973, the fishing village of Heimaey in the Westman Islands awoke to a volcano erupting in the backyard. A fissure a mile-and-ahalf long had opened up about half a mile from the edge of the township. The inhabitants were evacuated in a matter of hours, the sick and elderly going to the mainland by plane and everyone else piling on fishing vessels to escape the lava and ash. Amazingly, no one was injured.

Firefighters, scientists, and geologists stayed behind or travelled to Heimaey to keep the village and the harbour from being destroyed. Pumping equipment was brought in from the mainland and abroad, and ‘suicide squads’ began pumping ice-cold sea water at the leading edge of the lava flow. By the time the eruption had subsided, a 27-metre [90-foot] rock tsunami stood frozen, just yards from the harbour.

The volcano – subsequently named Eldfell, or Fire Mountain – remained active for nearly six months. In July 1973, it was announced that the eruption was finally over. While the harbour had been saved, the eastern side of the town was buried under 40 metres [120 feet] of lava, with a total of 112 houses destroyed, either burned or buried entirely.

For nearly six months, the islanders had lived with relatives, friends, or strangers on the mainland, cramped and uncomfortable. As soon as it was deemed safe to return, they began filtering back to their hometown, only to find half of it in complete ruin. They began the long process of rebuilding. More importantly, they used the eruption to their advantage, using the newly created chunks of land to extend their airport runway and harnessing the energy of the volcano to heat their homes.