Or, Viking World Is a Bust
I started traveling on my own in 2007, right as Mapquest was giving up the ghost and smart phones were poised to shake up travel as we know it. There were two options, really: do research and head out into the world with a plan or show up somewhere and cross your fingers that it worked out. Both methods had their highlights – the former brought me to the charmingly named burg of Pizzighettone in search of a golden, mosaic-bedecked church while the latter sustained me through multiple winter trips to Venice, traversing the canals under cloaks of fog – and their lowlights (getting stranded at the Milano Porta Garibaldi station for the umpteenth time in spite of both a plan and a back-up plan comes to mind), but ultimately a combination of the two sparked my love of adventures.
Then iPhones showed up and all spontaneity died. Where to eat? I’ll spend half an hour on Yelp trying to comb through real feedback and casual competitive sabotage only to come up with an insipid meal. Train delayed? Here are five alternate routings. Something off the beaten path? Check Atlas Obscura, of course. I find myself missing the chaos and excitement of those early days when I didn’t know what would come next, but the phone is such an easy trap to fall into.
In the hope of recapturing that spirit, I made the decision to spend my surprise day in Keflavík at a place called Viking World because I saw it on the map. VIKING WORLD. The name alone had me sold.
If you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, then it's true too that you shouldn't pick a museum by its name.
The highlight of the museum is ostensibly the Íslendingur, a recreated viking ship that actually sailed across the Atlantic. I loved the smoky, resinous scent (made, as I understand it, from actual Norwegian wood... which I could not keep myself from making dad jokes about in Norway. Anyway.) and it was obviously an impressive piece of work, but the museum was a bit lacking otherwise.
The real highlight was the building itself, a spectacular glassy modern dreamboat of a thing. And that's what I got – for all my troubles – and now you can spare yourself the visit.
