Spoiled by solitude in Iceland’s north

The Vikings, it turns out, knew a thing or two about real estate and marketing. When the first Viking settlers came to Iceland, legend has it that they switched the name for the island with that of its closest neighbor — a move intended to encourage settlement of ice-covered Greenland so the Vikings could keep the surprisingly green Iceland to themselves. Eleven centuries later, the Vikings’ deceit no longer keeps visitors away. Since 2003, tourism to Iceland has tripled, and there’s growing concern that the number may be more than the small country can handle. Most of those 330,000 people live in the capital, Reykjavik, and in high season, tourists can easily outnumber the locals and overwhelm the small city and the surrounding area. [...] in the vast countryside, there’s no shortage of wide open spaces. A speck of a town tucked into the eastern side of Skjalfandi bay, Husavík may have been the first place those early Vikings saw when they arrived in Iceland as a small group led by Swede Garðar Svavarsson in A.D. 870. The name Husavík means “bay of houses,” and today it’s home to only 2,300 people, barely putting it in the ranks of the country’s top 20 most populous towns. Aside from the tiny harbor, there’s a church, gas station, whale museum, three restaurants, a few dozen brightly colored aluminum-sided houses, a grocery store and a liquor store that stays open no later than 7 p.m., even on Saturday night. Every cabin has a compact bedroom, a basic kitchen and bathroom, and a deck with an unobstructed view of the bay and the moss-covered mountains on the opposite side. Each day, we go exploring in the morning; at night we return to cook dinner and watch the sunset from our deck. In summer we get a lot of visitors,” he says, “but most people come for the whales and then move on, or they stay in Akureryi. Today, there are fewer than 30 people in our group, and we’re only able to spot a few lone whales. The nearby Golden Circle route is traveled by more than 600,000 people each year and encompasses a trifecta of the country’s other most-visited attractions: There’s no official tourist route between the main attractions in the north, and unlike on the Golden Circle route, there’s also no line of massive tour buses spewing flag-toting guides at each stop. Supposedly, the Apollo 11 crew trained for their moon walks here; the story goes that NASA determined that it was the best place on Earth to simulate conditions on the moon. The tourists get in their cars and drive away, and the fishermen pack up their gear and head home, leaving the harbor silent and still. Later we walk slowly back to our cabin, stopping to dip our toes into the frigid North Atlantic and again to pet the horses, to enjoy the sun and the salty breeze, and to revel in the feeling of being completely alone in this quiet corner of Iceland. On our last full day in Husavík, we visit the northern version of the Blue Lagoon, the Myvatn Nature Baths, which, like their southern counterpart, are fed from the runoff of a geothermal power plant. The mineral-rich water is reputed to have healing properties, though unlike at the Blue Lagoon, here there’s no swim-up bar and instead of a fancy restaurant, there’s a self-service cafeteria. “Locals come after work and on weekends, and from June to August we have a lot more tourists,” she says, but it’s still nothing like the Blue Lagoon. [...] Dan and I are the only two people bobbing in the milky neon-blue water of our own private hot springs. When a German family and a group of three Brits finally join us, we take it as a sign to move on. After being spoiled by the solitude of Iceland’s wide open spaces, more than eight people almost feels like a crowd. Whale-watching tours in Husavík harbor; three-hour tours offered multiple times per day April 1-Oct.