The Volcano Open
My playing partner has one eye, a crooked, Roman nose and a thin lipped grin that wraps round to his ears. His accent is jagged and bold, combining the deep rolling r’s of Northern Scotland with a Nordic inflection. His small vocabulary encourages him to speak with alarming directness.
His swing is agricultural. A powerful, but ill-refined axe wielding motion that occasionally sends a bulleted low draw scuttling down the fairway. Most of the time it doesn’t.
Golf is not Sigurdur’s priority. He lists his other pursuits: fishing, puffin snatching, carpentry, handball tuition, with no discernible hierarchy. He is the embodiment of his homeland’s cultural bullet points.
Siggy was born on the Westman Islands, a collection of 15 volcanic rocks dotted off the south coast of Iceland. Its largest, Heimaey, the one we’re currently golfing on, is home to a population of 4,500 people who have spread themselves across a relatively tiny 17 square kilometres.
We’re here to play in the Volcano Open: the island’s annual golf tournament. No golf event in the world takes place in a setting as mindblowing as this. Vestmannaeyjar Golf Club sits in the hollow of a monstrous amphitheatre of black rock. The cooled magma of the cliffs has a rounded and aerated, polystyrene quality that rises up to several torched meringue peaks, around 700 feet directly above our heads. At the cliff’s base, midnight blue waves crash into glistening rock formations with the repetition of a Nordic drumbeat. The subtle indentations and textures of the rock are impossibly defined under the harsh midday sun making them appear hyper-realistic.
But for all of its beauty, these fire breathing surroundings pose a very real danger. The Volcano Open was placed in the calendar to commemorate the end of a devastating volcanic eruption which almost wiped this island off the map over 50 years ago. Many of the competitors were here to witness it.
Civilisation ending natural disasters aren’t often cause for tee times, but the people here have a different outlook. Since I’ve arrived, it's clear that the Icelandic population harbours a superhuman level of resilience. I quiz Sigurdur on the reason for marking a tragedy with a joyous event:
“This volcano is a huge part of us. Four hundred houses went under it. It was a tragedy, of course. But we live with it. We respect it. It's a part of the risk of living here… we know bad times come to an end, and then they become good. We are celebrating because the people here cooled the lava. They started to put seawater on it and saved hundreds of houses. And we are proud of these guys. They stopped it.”
This mentality, parading as nonchalance, goes much deeper. Long harsh winters and the constant threat of natural disasters make optimism imperative for survival. It breeds a collection of people constantly focused on the light at the end of the tunnel.
For the brief summer months surrounding the Volcano Open, the people of the Westman Islands have the chance to bask in it.
Sigurdur rolls in a 15 footer for birdie at the base of the towering cliffs and gives an emphatic roar that ricochets off the basalt. His joy is pure and absolute, hours of duffed shots are instantly forgotten. As he marches to the next tee he thumps my shoulder in celebration, I tense my core in a bid to maintain my posture.
The final holes slip by but the golden hues that shine through the mounds make me long for endless rounds in the warm embrace of the amphitheatre.
Scorecards handed in, we gather in the clubhouse for a banquet to mark the close of the tournament. An endless assortment of fish dishes are piled on platters that line a table stretching across the clubhouse lounge.
It's well past midnight now but the stubborn sun still streams through the window. As the music begins, everyone bursts into song. A lady I haven’t yet met scrambles across the room and hands me her phone. On the screen are the translated lyrics for the Icelandic ballad that fills the room:
