Students on Ice Day 2: Bridge over troubled water

Iceland is situated smack in the middle of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, which means that it is slowly, constantly pulling apart. It causes small earthquakes each day, too minor to be felt most of the time, but these below-the-surface tensions are responsible for shaping the country – a fitting metaphor for our thinking about international issues, it seems to me.
Our first stop on the Golden Circle was Parliament Plains, the spot where the Iceland’s parliament was founded in the year 930, and its oldest national park. As we strolled across the tectonic plates, experiencing two different continents within moments, I chatted with Eric Mattson, one of our geological experts, who explained that there are underwater mountains much larger than Everest, and told me more about the movement of the Earth underneath us.

I was moved, too, as we took a moment of silence at this timeless gathering place to think about the murdered students of Norway – students who were so much like the ones we are with today, committed to creating positive social change.
As we traveled, we saw that geological conditions affected water on a massive scale. It bubbled and hissed and steamed from the ground, sometimes heated to more than 200 degrees by underground magma. At Gullfoss (translated: Golden Falls), it thundered down in powerful cascades. At the Geyser – the original site from which all other geyser phenomena take their names – we saw it burst spectacularly into the air every five minutes. This power provides heat and electricity throughout the country. It is also responsible for the massive ash cloud that brought air travel in Europe to a halt last year.

 
 
We returned to Reykjavik, disheveled in our hiking gear, where the President of the Republic of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, was waiting for us at his home. This powerful figure greeted the students with soda in wine glasses and, after sharing thoughts on the threats facing the Arctic and the need to heed Northern voices, invited them to explore the house.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toc0pUF8Y9o&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
If you will pardon the lame pun, I am touched, to the core, by this place and the people we have encountered. We have been guided through Iceland by Ari Trausti Gudmundsson: astoundingly knowledgeable geologist, astronomer, mountaineer, volcano expert, and… poet, as it turns out.  Tonight our colleague, author James Raffin (JR), shared one of Ari’s poem with us, and challenged us to think about our experience in new and personal ways. As I look back over the day’s many events, it is this that lingers with me – it, too, has great power.

A Traveler’s Short Poem on Love
by Ari Trausti Gudmundsson
How good it is
to have
two hearts
that beat for every step
one to endure by
another at home to cry out for