Joseph Rosendo's Steppin' Out

-Welcome to Iceland!

-It's said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

- Steppin' out -Welcome to "Joseph Rosendo's Steppin' Out."

Today we're steppin' out in Iceland and celebrating its breathtaking natural wonders and authentic human connection.

[ Laughs ] This is great!

- Steppin' out -"Joseph Rosendo's Steppin' Out" is made possible by... -Since 1975, we've inspired adults to learn and travel in the United States and in more than 100 countries.

From exploring our national parks to learning about art and culture in Italy, we've introduced adults to places, ideas, and friends.

We are Road Scholar.

We make the world our classroom.

-There's a reason people call Myrtle Beach "The Beach."

There are 60 miles of wide, sandy beaches along South Carolina's Grand Strand coast.

This vacation destination has golf courses, attractions, food, wine, and Southern sun.

-Here we are at the Independence Day celebration.

What does this day mean to you?

-I think we're all very proud to be independent Icelanders, and this is part of what we are.

-I understand also that most people are in the parade.

-Yeah, that's the system here that everyone gets in the parade.

-[ Laughs ] So we all march together to celebrate the day.

-Yes, yes.

-How wonderful.

[ Laughs ] This is great!

Okay, well, here we are in the middle of the parade.

What does Independence Day mean to you?

And how about joining in the parade -- what does it mean to you?

-It just means freedom, of course.

Just being with everybody, having fun, just being in the crowd with people.

-Fabulous.

Gleoileg hto, which means "happy celebration" in Iceland, or close to it.

-This is from my great-grandmother's.

-Your great-grandmother's?

-Yes.

-From when?

-1890.

-Wow.

What does it feel like wearing the costume for the celebration of the Independence Day of your great-grandmother?

-It feels great.

-Does it?

-Yeah.

Powering.

[ Laughs ] -This is for my great-grandma from 19...

I think she made it herself in 1925 to 1930.

-Wow!

That's fabulous.

-Yeah.

-What do you feel like wearing that?

What do you feel like?

-Very nice.

-You bring their spirit into the celebration, don't you?

-Exactly.

-What does it feel like to you to be part of the celebration?

-Really fun and really nice.

-It does?

Great.

-Yeah.

-Great.

And what does it -- What does this mean to you, this day?

-Um, I don't know.

It's just like, it's really fun to meet everybody and celebrate Iceland and the Icelandic culture.

[ Cheers and applause ] -About the size of Ohio, Iceland is traversed by 10 driving routes.

Three of the most popular are the Ring Road, the Golden Circle, and the Diamond Circle, which lead me to many of Iceland's fire... water... and ice wonders.

Yet while its picture-postcard scenery charms me, its most appealing natural attractions are its people.

I'm with Fridrik Jakobsson, who is a restaurateur and a baker of bread in holes in the ground.

That's one of the advantages of having geothermal areas in Iceland.

-This is the one I put on yesterday.

It takes 24 hours, and the temperature there... -Yeah.

-...is just about 220 Fahrenheit.

-So we're just gonna pull this straight up?

-We'll pull it up.

-I don't want to tip it over.

-No, I don't want to tip it over.

-No, no, no, no, no.

-A little bit forward.

-A little bit forward.

Wait a minute.

-Don't fall in, though.

-Whoop, whoop, whoop.

-There you go.

-There we go.

-Then just swing it over here.

-Swing it over here?

Okay.

-Yeah.

-Great.

-That is a loaf of rye bread.

-It takes 24 hours?

-24 hours.

-Wow.

-Fresh-baked by Mother Nature.

-Oh, when do we eat this?

This smells great.

-In a second.

-Okay, good.

-Let's give it a try.

-Let's give it a try.

Boy, it looks delicious.

-So then you just grab a spoon.

-A spoon?

-Yeah.

Take some butter.

-Okay.

-And then you dig in.

-Skol.

-[ Chuckles ] -Wow.

-Yeah.

-That's tremendous.

-Yeah.

A traditional lunch in this area is a thick slice of rye bread.

-Right.

-Then equally as much butter.

And smoked trout on top.

-Equally as much butter?

-Yeah, that's the rule.

And that's gonna last you the day.

-This is great.

-Yeah.

-Mmm.

Delicious.

-Yeah?

-Very good.

-That's good.

-Thank you.

-You're very welcome.

-Tusen takk.

-Tusen takk, yeah.

-The fuel that powers Fridrik's geyser bread oven is a gift from Iceland's 20 high-temperature geothermal fields.

Thanks to the country's location over a volcanic hotspot on a rift between continental plates, the magma below sends superheated water to the surface in many forms.

You know, some people think of the world as ancient, old, and dying.

But you come here and you look around and it seems newly born, alive and breathing, still forming.

It's a lesson to all of us.

It's kind of the way I feel sometimes.

Iceland uses its energy derived from hot springs, underground water, and volcanoes for more than baking bread.

From five power plants the island nation generates about 25% of its electricity and heats about 85% of its homes geothermically.

This is otherworldly.

This is really a look into the future.

Why is the ON Power geothermal plant here?

-We are located in this Hengill volcanic system and we utilize that with our geothermal power plants here.

The rock here in Iceland has a lot of holes in it, and so water can accumulate in these areas and then gets heated up by this volcanism below us.

Then we tap into that by drilling into this geothermal reservoir, extract it to the surface of the Earth.

Here at this facility, we are utilizing a heat-exchanging process where we take up fresh, cold water and we are heating up the cold water with this geothermal fluid, and we flash it into steam, and then we use the steam for electricity production.

-Ah!

It's great that you're figuring out how to use nature to benefit man without destroying nature.

But you're living under the threat of nature, too.

The lava from volcanoes can wipe out whole towns.

-Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, we have just accustomed to it.

We are trained in school how, for example, if a big earthquake happens.

But since this is just a volcanic active island, then we just have to live with it.

And we do that in harmony with nature.

-Does it add anything to the Icelander spirit?

-Yeah.

We are also really strong with nature.

We like to preserve it.

So I think since we are in this harmony with nature, then we just take care of it more delicately.

-Well, thank you very much for what you guys are doing to help the planet.

One of the sources of all that heat is Iceland's 130 volcanoes.

Most are dormant, but with luck, you might catch one in mid-boil.

The Inside the Volcano tour drops me into the heart of the only user-friendly lava chamber on Earth.

-Take a listen.

It's so quiet.

It's almost like coming down into stilled time, because nothing grows here.

Nothing lives here.

Nothing has died here.

It's kind of like just going back what it would have been exactly like 4,500 years ago.

So if you look here, you can see that there's an additional chimney that goes a bit further up but has collapsed, because this whole section here used to be open, and the magma would be shooting out.

And then normally what would happen is when the magma drains out, these walls would cave in on themselves.

And it started to collapse, because you can see how it's closed off, and then it just magically stopped.

-We don't know why.

-We have no idea why, but we were left with this tiny, little opening, which, you know, is an absolute miracle.

And someone was crazy enough to come down here for the first time.

As far as we know, this is the only place where you can do this.

-Really?

-This is the only magma chamber that you can go in the same way the magma came up.

-To be standing in the middle of a volcano is pretty exciting.

-It's pretty insane.

-Nature here has two faces.

What was it like growing up here?

-I actually think it makes you very resilient.

-Resilient?

-Yeah.

And it makes you -- I don't know, I think it makes you respect nature and how we're here alongside it.

-Uh-huh.

-And I think because Iceland is very unspoiled, there's a lot of just landscape that's beautiful.

And you kind of, you know, you grow up with it and it makes you grounded.

I think it's really magical.

[ Motor rumbling ] -Jasmin, looks like, uh, in Iceland, if you don't like the weather, just wait 10 minutes and it'll change on you.

-That is exactly what this is.

-I don't think we're taking the helicopter back.

-No, I don't think you are.

I don't think you want to.

-No.

-[ Laughs ] [ Gasps ] Look!

A fox.

-Oh, look, look, look.

-That's Anut.

[ Laughs ] Off he goes.

-Oh!

When you think of Iceland, you think of ice.

It's gonna be cold.

It's gonna be wintry.

You don't think of temperatures as if I was sitting on a beach in the Caribbean.

But here in the greenhouse, it's like that.

And you're able to keep it bright and cheery.

It's summer all year round.

-We can say with a good help from our nature, we can make it possible, so we use the hot water in the ground to warm up our houses, and then we can use our electricity to make sun or light for the plant every days of the year.

And in Iceland, we can be proud that all our electricity are green-making electricity.

So we can call it a green greenhouse with all this green energy.

-What's the relationship you have with nature here?

-We have a very strong respect for the nature because it can change So many things so fast, but also we need to live with it.

So we need to find a way to survive around it.

One thing in Iceland, we say, "Petta reddast" -- "it will be fine."

-It will be fine.

-For us, it's really important to make a perfect day for the plants every day of the year.

Really important is to have a good water to give the plant.

Tomatoes are 92% water.

We are giving the same water that we are drinking in our houses.

And in Iceland we say we have the best water in the world.

-I believe that, I believe that.

-Then that helps with to give you a fresh, good taste.

-In the restaurant, your tomato soup is, like, famous.

-Yeah, that's our signature, we can say.

Please have a taste.

-Oh, wow.

Beautiful.

Well, this is the culmination of our tour -- lunch in your restaurant.

And if I wanted another little cherry tomato, I can just reach over here next to me and... -You're sitting beside them.

-...I'm sitting beside them.

Have a cherry tomato.

Oh, and Healthy Mary.

-Healthy Mary made from green tomatoes, ginger, honey, and lime, to give you energy for the whole day.

-Oh, I'll need it.

Skol.

-Skol.

-A must-stop on the Golden Circle route Thingvellir National Park is located on the Rift Valley between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.

It's also the original site of the world's oldest parliament, the Althing, founded in 930 A.D.

The park offers a dramatic landscape scored by cracks and canyons, some filled with incredibly clear and cold water.

Stunning, wondrous, and literally breathtaking are how I describe snorkeling in 33-degree water in the crack between two continents.

It takes the glacier melt 70 years to reach this spot, and the water is so clear, it feels like flying.

Is that just dirt that's on it that makes the black color?

-So this is a very special glacier because underneath it, it has a volcano.

So the black dirt that you can see is volcanic ash.

-Ah.

-So every volcanic eruption puts another layer... -Exactly.

-...on the ice.

-Over here we have a very nice view over the lagoon.

If you're going to look from here where the kayaks are, so that's how much ice is missing since 2010.

-How high on these walls did the ice originally go?

-Before it was even, like, on the level of the walls that you can see over here.

-So we've lost a lot over the centuries.

-Exactly.

-Wow.

-Yeah.

So, over here, this is a new crevasse.

Because the glacier, when it's moving down, it's cracking, you know.

-So it isn't the water that's creating the crevasse.

It's the movement of the ice.

-Exactly.

It's the movement of the whole glacier.

-How does the ash affect the melting of the ice?

-So it depends on the layer of ash.

If the layer of ash is thicker than two centimeters, it's going to work as an insulator for the ice, so it's going to melt a little bit slower.

But on the other hand, if it's thinner, it's going to attract the sun because it's black and it's going to melt a little bit faster.

-So there's so many elements that go into play to how much of this glacier we're gonna have left.

So we're lucky to be here.

It's just spectacular.

Just spectacular.

-It is spectacular.

Definitely.

We should call each other lucky that we are still able to hike on the glacier.

And I myself feel very lucky that I am able to call this place my office every day.

I still feel very appreciative that I'm working on the glacier every day.

-It's a very unique experience.

I feel grateful that you brought me up here.

Thank you so much.

-You're welcome.

-I guess we should get down before it melts and goes away.

-Let's go.

-It's gonna take a little longer than us getting down here for that to happen.

While the island has been covered by ice for most of the last 3 million years, people have been living on Iceland for more than a thousand years.

The Skogar Folk Museum houses the cultural artifacts from their long and determined struggle to forge a symbiotic relationship with Mother Nature.

-Here in the Skogar Museum, we talk about it from the period from the Viking Age until the year 1900.

-And you're a descendant of the Vikings.

-Yeah, I'm a descendant of Inglfr Arnarson.

-What did that mean when you went Viking?

-If I said I'm going to Viking in the old Icelandic sagas, that would mean that you're going to become a pirate.

-So you're pillaging and plundering so if you're off to do that, then you're Viking.

And how did they survive here by the majority -- in the early days?

-After they came here to Iceland, they would often actually chop down their ship and build a house from the longship that they came in on, because the wood here is very scarce.

-And part of that here at the museum, we're going to see what people lived in with the turf houses, which is ingenious how they were able to build these houses that were also very well insulated from the harsh weather.

What was the major occupation here on Iceland for the first people who came?

-People would be dairy farmers in the summer... -Right.

-...and fishermen in the winter.

-This is something I found very interesting.

-Oh, yeah.

-As you can see, it's quite solid.

These -- This is actually a pair of pants.

-Yeah, these are the -- -How could you put that on?

-[ Chuckles ] Yeah.

These here are the oilskins.

-Uh-huh.

-They're made from sheepskin or cattle skin.

So basically, I would have to wake up in a turf house back then.

-Yeah.

-And then I would have to cover the pants with oil.

Oil softens the pants up.

-Right.

-Makes them wearable and also makes them waterproof.

Yeah.

-And the fishermen use that?

-Yeah.

And they would be very stinky because they used unprocessed cod liver oil.

-Well, this is a wonderful presentation.

So people can get an idea of what life was like.

If you were gonna tell me one thing for my viewers for them to understand what Icelanders are or what their character is, what would you say?

-Maybe just petta reddast.

-It'll work out.

-Yeah, exactly.

-Yeah, I love that.

That's terrific.

-Yeah.

-Well, takk.

-Oh, takk.

[ Chuckles ] -Torfhus Retreat is inspired by the turf houses I explored at the Folk Museum.

A luxury twist on the Viking theme, it is run entirely on geothermal and hydroelectric sustainable energy, including the private pools whose design puts us in a Stonehenge state of mind.

Our Icelandic adventure continues.

We're leaving the second largest town in Iceland, Akureyri, to head to Grmsey Island, the northernmost point to experience summer solstice, where the sun never sets.

But the sun won't set really until July the 8th.

Today is the 20th of June, and we've been having at least 22 hours of sun.

So great to come in the summertime because you just get more of Iceland.

Here's a little summer solstice island fun from Iceland.

Oh, look at him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hold on, hold on.

-Hold that and run back.

Run back!

-Come on, come on!

One... Two... Three.

Ohhhhhhh.

Hey.

[ Cheering ] Everybody has a little community fun on the island.

[ Laughter ] That's pretty funny.

Located in the northernmost part of Iceland on the Arctic Circle, Grmsey Island has 100 people and 1 million seabirds.

Its remote location and family-sized population makes it feel authentically Iceland.

The people who live there exude equal measures of grit, resilience, and good-natured optimism.

There are very few homestay beds available, so expect to join in the family meals and local celebrations.

Skl.

-I'm preparing a treat for us out of some local products.

So what we have here -- dark rye bread, and on it I'm putting cured salmon.

You want to try the bread here.

You have to have loads of butter on it, because it really smooths out the sweet taste of the bread to get some salty butter with it.

-Mmm.

-We are going to have first the traditional Icelandic appetizer.

-Yeah.

-This here is a fermented Greenland shark.

-Greenland shark?

-Yes.

And with the Greenland shark... -Yes.

-...you're going to have the Icelandic brannvin.

Take that.

-Yes!

-[ Laughs ] -It is -- -No, it is really good.

-And distinct.

It's distinct.

-I don't agree.

If you were -- -No, I said it's distinct.

I didn't say it stinks.

-No, it does stink.

-No, no, no.

It's -- It does do that, but it's distinct.

-Now we take the shark and then we say skl.

-Skl.

-Skl.

-Skl.

-Skl.

-Mmm.

It takes a couple of sips to get the shark down.

-Well, in my opinion, if you would offer me a chocolate or this shark, I would much rather take this.

-It has a very pungent taste.

-You won't forget the taste.

-No.

-No, that's for sure.

-No, no, you will not forget the taste of Greenland shark.

Now we have an assortment of beautiful things that you brought.

-So we're kind of doing this spontaneously.

-Right.

-Because we know in Iceland it always reddast.

-It always works out.

-Yeah.

You chip in and it works out.

-You don't get stressed out.

"Oh, I didn't have enough food for my guests."

No.

You just do something and it all works out.

It was really wonderful.

Thank you.

Takk, takk, takk.

It's midnight on Grmsey Island.

This is a local work of art that they put here to mark where the Arctic Circle is this year, 2024.

And it will be moved every year.

Or as things change, when the Arctic Circle changes.

We don't have a clear sky for summer solstice, but the sun is still going to make its way down to the horizon, stop, and head back up into the clouds because it will not set tonight.

There's a certain power and energy you get from there being 24 hours of daylight.

It's extraordinary.

[ Birds squawk ] This is so spectacular.

Every summer, thousands of puffins come to these cliffs overlooking Bsavk Bay here in Grmsey Island to make their nests.

I could spend hours just sitting here watching them.

They're so comically dressed up for the occasion.

I've visited more than 100 countries, and Iceland is a country of highlights and wonders, and it's pretty near the top of my list, if not there.

Thank you for stepping out with me in Iceland.

This island country is a world of wonders.

Waterfalls and volcanoes, geysers and glaciers, dramatic fjords and drifting continents.

Whether it's on the Golden Circle or the Ring Road, at every turn, there's something to take your breath away.

Celebrating nature's blessings and overcoming its threats have been a fact of life for Icelanders since their Viking ancestors arrived more than a thousand years ago.

Their struggle against the elements is part of their character and culture.

They deal with obstacles without becoming one, creating new solutions to old challenges.

The cliffs along Black Beach reflect their resilience and spirit.

On layers of sharp, cold, black stones, green plants, lovely with tiny yellow flowers, thrive.

Icelanders like to say petta reddast, which means "don't worry, it'll all be okay in the end," because today, as always, we must keep on keeping on.

Until we meet again, this is Joseph Rosendo reminding you of the words of Mark Twain.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

May your next adventure always be your best.

-"Joseph Rosendo's Steppin' Out" is made possible by... -Since 1975, we've inspired adults to learn and travel in the United States and in more than 100 countries.

From exploring our national parks to learning about art and culture in Italy, we've introduced adults to places, ideas, and friends.

We are Road Scholar.

We make the world our classroom.

-There's a reason people call Myrtle Beach "The Beach."

There are 60 miles of wide, sandy beaches along South Carolina's Grand Strand coast.

This vacation destination has golf courses, attractions, food, wine, and Southern sun.

-For a DVD of any of my "Steppin' Out" adventures or my companion memoir and travel book, "Musings: The Short Happy Pursuit of Pleasure and Other Journeys," call 888-876-3399, order online at josephrosendo.com, or e-mail me at [email protected].

- Mm, mm, mm - Steppin' out -Now that we've stepped out in Iceland together, learn more at josephrosendo.com, where you can follow my worldwide adventures through my magazine, blog, podcast and social media.

Stay in touch -- 888-876-3399, or e-mail me at [email protected].

- Steppin' out -Rain or shine, the Seljalandsfoss waterfall is still beautiful.

Oh!

Oh!

-He's all good.

-Skl.

This is really, really fun and warm.

- Steppin' out