Iceland: The Sweet Sunny North

That title, “The Sweet Sunny North,” refers to a pair of Norwegian folk compilations by David Lindley and Henry Kaiser, though I thought of the phrase often while traveling through Iceland. I arrived in this subarctic country appropriately layered, anticipating the wind, rain, and mercurial weather shifts I’d spent months reading about. After the fifth straight day of sun, it was clear I’d landed during a fluke season. This was confirmed on my last day in Reykjavík by a pair of young Icelanders in a gift shop who proclaimed it their sunniest spring in years.