Visiting the Sky Lagoon In Iceland Awakens The Primal

Forbes

16 hours ago

It's not often that I travel someplace, and then dream about it for months afterwards.
I dream frequently about the Sky Lagoon in Iceland, which I visited last December.
In my dreams, I pause at the entrance to the geothermal lagoon, which is on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The front desk, in my dream, is carved out of stone. The hallway beyond, a rich alder wood. Should I choose a private changing room, to the right, or the communal changing area, to the left?
In the dream, I often choose the left so that I can be with other women. When I disrobe, my body is an apparition in a room full of other apparitions, cast against the polished wood lockers. I change into my bathing suit. My feet slap against a wet stone floor. I enter the water in a cave. The water is immediately warm.
My dream is the same as my experience was.
'Have you ever been to the Sky Lagoon?' I asked Jónsi, the Icelandic musician and artist, when I had dinner with him in Savannah, where I live, this past February. Jónsi had an exhibition of his installations on view at the SCAD Museum of Art. He was in town for the opening.
'Of course,' he said. 'My mother bought me tickets there for my birthday.'
'I dream of it all of the time,' I told him.
'It's a special treat for us Icelanders,' he told me.
It's almost never cold in Savannah, or dark, unless there's a storm. In December, when I was in Reykjavik, the sun only rose for four hours a day. And when it rose, it did so barely. At noon, it was crepuscular. It rained sleet rather than snowed. Outdoor cats came through the automatic doors in the hotel where I was staying and slept on couches in the lobby. In the mornings, I went to Sandholt, the famous bakery in the center of the small city, and ordered a hot chocolate for the warmth.
Given the weather conditions, it wouldn't seem to be an ideal time to visit an outdoor lagoon. But swimming outdoors in the geothermal waters are how Icelanders survive the winters. That, and the Christmas lights that adorn every balcony.
On my two visits during my time in Iceland, I entered the Sky Lagoon I did in my dreams, but always with a private changing room. I changed out of my silk thermals, my fleece lined pants, my turtleneck, my wool sweater, my parka, my hat, my mittens. I put on my thin bathing suit, and shivering, entered the waters.
After the cave, you are outdoors. In the low light, rocky walls loom, wreathed in fog from the hot water. On the lagoon, red orbs, sheathed in black nets, bob on the surface. The path clears, and offers a vista to Skerjafjörður Bay, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the shores of Iceland. The edge of the lagoon is 75 meters long. You lay your head on the wall and watch the lights from nearby towns along the peninsula twinkle. You watch white birds land on the ocean. You watch other people, sheathed in mist, move through the waters. You don't feel cold in a bathing suit even though you're outdoors near the Arctic Circle in winter.
It's easy to step back in time, in such an environment. You're no longer in the 21st century. You're in prehistory. You're a woman in a place where ice fills the ocean, mountains make the interior impassable, and volcanoes erupt with frequency. It's the end of the world. You turn to ritual to survive it.
At the Sky Lagoon, when you bathe in the water, you begin Skjól, an ancient 7-step ritual of shelter and protection. In the darkness, when your body is warm enough to even consider it, you step out in air. You run towards a small pool. You force yourself to stop thinking, and then move your body automatically into Kuldi, the cold plunge. The second step of the ritual. The shock of the sensation erases all memory of itself.
You're in kuldi for one second, two, and then you're back out into the air, running into the turf house at the western edge of the lagoon. Just inside the door, there are two saunas, one for quiet, and one for conversation. Both have expansive views of the bay through unbroken panes of glass. They offer ylur, or warmth. Humans have been using saunas for relief from the cold since the Bronze Age. On the curved wooden benches, the air is so dry that you must pinch your nose to breathe without sharp pain in your nostrils. Even though you've so recently been very cold, you get too hot very quickly.
So you move on to Súld, or misty rain, a walk through a room constructed from rough-hewn wood with an open roof. When it snows or rains, as it does frequently in Iceland, you feel the elements directly on your skin. Why linger in discomfort when Mýkt, or softness, awaits? In a communal room, you stand at bathing stations made from stones that have been carved to look like streams on a mountain. You rub your skin with a scrub made from sea salt, sweet sesame and argan oil, among other ingredients. The scrub comes off easily in Gufa, the penultimate step, which consists of a steam room.
You sit in a dark corner and wash your sticky arms with hoses attached to the wall. Soaking wet, you end the ritual with Saft, a shot of tea made with birch, angelica leaves, and Icelandic moss, which has been mixed with Crowberry juice, made from berries native to Iceland. And then, because visiting a geothermal bath in Iceland means stepping out of time — smart phones are not allowed in the turf house — you go back to bathe in the geothermal waters outdoors. The sun has already set. The day is over. You can linger.
The whole experience is completely unique but somehow feels deeply familiar. In your genes, you've carried this experience. The dark of winter. A walk in the cold through the forest. The snow. The air on your skin. The wetness. A warm, tight place, made too hot by fire. The communion of other human bodies. A ritual that lifts you from the drudgery of surviving.
It's no wonder I dream of the Sky Lagoon. I dream of it through thunderstorms in Savannah. Through humid days and extreme heat warnings. My Celtic blood remembers a cold, dark place. Seasons without sunlight. Bathing in geothermal waters. Iceland, a place where I might have once been. Or at least that my subconscious remembers knowing.