WE LCO ME TO

MIDDLEHOOD
BY JUDI KETTELER greener than it is now. He sounds like a tool,
though, so maybe his judgment wasn’t the
best.
I’ve always been attracted to the idea of
places that aren’t what they seem, whether
because of nuance or misunderstanding.
It’s probably because I live in Ohio now

Iceland
but grew up in Northern Kentucky, which
is Kentucky but isn’t, while it’s absolutely
not Ohio but mostly is. As a child, I was told
I was a Midwesterner, though I could have

to Go
sworn, when I spotted my state on a map of
the U.S., it looked like the East.
Hence, traveling to this misnamed
country seemed like a wonderfully weird
thing to do. Someday. Which probably

HOW A PLACE WITH THE WRONG NAME HAS meant never. Still, I randomly read articles
about Iceland and found reasons to say

THE RIGHT IDEA ABOUT LIFE. aloud the name of its capital city, Reykja-
vík, the sultry consonance of the Ks calling
to mind a sexy, starlit landscape: Raaaay-
kavickkk.
Nothing happened for years. Decades.
And then something did.

IN 2021, TWO OF MY FRIENDS RAN FOR

our town’s city council, and I helped them
campaign. I was at their meet-and-greet
event, chatting with supporters, when I
heard a man behind me introduce himself
to someone. He said that he wrote travel
books about Iceland and helped people plan
trips.
I was suddenly a 6-year-old child, see-
ing a merry-go-round she wanted to ride.
“I want to go to Iceland!” I heard myself
exclaim as I turned around, bursting into
his conversation. I think he probably said
something like, “You should.”
Then, a few weeks later, a writer friend
from Instagram—which is to say some-

I
one I didn’t know at all but who seemed
really cool—posted that she was going on
a yoga retreat in Iceland. I messaged her.
What was this retreat? She sent me a link,
I REMEMBER TWO THINGS ABOUT THE GEOGRAPHY CLASS I TOOK AT NORTHERN KENTUCKY fully expecting that we’d never speak of
University circa 1993: I got 100 percent on the test where we had to locate every country it again.
in the world on a map, and I learned that Iceland was misnamed. The first hasn’t helped Instead, I signed up. The trip would
me much, because I routinely get the answers wrong when my son uses his “Countries of be in September 2022, nearly a year away.
the World” placemat to quiz me at dinner. I bought the best travel insurance avail-
But the second thing? That was a keeper. I can still see the professor’s handsome able and figured there was a 50/50 chance
thirtysomething face telling us that Iceland was the “green” land, whereas Greenland was of cancelation, because COVID taught me
actually the “ice” land. that life can just get canceled sometimes.
Apparently, the Viking who named Iceland saw a fjord filled with ice and thought it I dug through my purse to find the card
made for a catchy name. Then about 100 years later, when Erik the Red got kicked out of of Eric Newman, the man I accosted at my
Iceland for murdering people, he settled in a place he called Greenland, which likely was friends’ campaign event. Turns out, he lived

2 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3 ILLUSTR ATIO N BY D O L A SU N
WELCOME TO MIDDLEHOOD
a few streets over from me. I bought his
book, Iceland With Kids (though I would
definitely not be going with my kids), and
hired him to help me plan days outside
of the yoga retreat. Other than that, I did
shockingly little research, though I did
binge-watch Trapped on Amazon, a murder
mystery series set in a small Icelandic town
that becomes completely cut off because of
a blizzard, a blackout, and an avalanche. It
was terrific for hearing the language, but
it did make me wonder what I’d gotten my-
self into.
Whenever I mentioned my upcoming
trip to Iceland, which was frequently—be-
cause it’s a crackerjack way to start a con-
versation: “So I’m going to Iceland in a few
months…”—the response I inevitably got
was, “Why?” I tried out various answers, in-
cluding the one about geography class. But
was that really a reason to spend a chunk of
change on a 10-day trip taking time away
from my family and my writing income? A
more acceptable reason seemed to be, “It
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3 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3
feels like a wild, beautiful place I need to
see before I die.”
But no answer was the whole truth. Be-
cause I didn’t know why I was going. Not
really.
September came, and I bought a pair of
hiking shoes and read up on driving in Ice-
land. And then, a few days after my birthday
and a night flight featuring zero hours of
sleep, I landed in Reykjavík (actually Ke-
flavik, because they have a CVG bait-and-
switch situation too) hungry, bleary-eyed,
and feeling like I was on a strange rock in
the middle of nowhere. I chugged coffee and
started driving. I had a full itinerary, thanks
to Newman, who I simply called My Iceland
Guy. Over the course of two days, I would
make my way north to the artsy town of
Akureyri, where I would meet my retreat
group.
That first morning, everything seemed
gray during my drive. It was raining. I had to
pee. Signs were in kilometers. What was I
doing here? Why had I been enamored with
513-771-5865
a random comment from some baby-faced
adjunct professor 30 years ago?
And then I sunk into my first geother-
mal spring just outside of the city. I plunked
my credit card down without even trying to
convert the Icelandic Krona, followed the
confusing shower ritual required to get in,
and finally glided through steaming waters
in a state of complete bliss. I floated on my
back in the delicious hot water, stared up at
the brightening sky, and wondered, Is this
why I’m here?
During that week, spending time both
alone and with my group, I would visit two
more geothermal springs. I would see wa-
terfalls—so many waterfalls!—and vol-
canic craters. I would walk in a lava forest
and smell boiling earth. I would sit under
the Northern Lights, clear and green and
spooky.
I would stand on a sharp cliff, the sky so
piercing blue it seemed a mistake, and take
in the North Atlantic, a sheet of aquama-
rine glass. I would do a cartwheel over the
PH OTO G R A PH BY J O N ATH A N W I LLI S
 continental divide and a handstand at what
felt like the edge of the earth. Every time,
every incredible thing, I would ask, Is this
why I’m here?
BY THE TIME I PULLED INTO AKUREYRI
after my solo driving adventure, an early
winter storm was brewing. In Iceland, a
storm (stormur) means wind. I’m talking
wild-ass wind. It canceled our first day of
activities. As we settled into our apart-
ments, hunkering down against the gales,
Andreas, our mild-mannered Swiss ex-
pat retreat leader who had moved to this
enchanted land a dozen years before and
was now raising his family here, gathered
us around and said, “Þetta reddast—it will
work out, but you have to let go of expecta-
tion.”
Pronounced something like THEH-
ta RREH-dust and sounding like a magic
incantation, it’s the unofficial motto of
Iceland—one shaped by living in a coun-
try of volcanoes with months of either too
PH OTO G R A PH BY J O N ATH A N W I LLI S
much light or too much dark and harsh,
fast-changing weather. The saying wasn’t
about giving up or sitting back and doing
nothing. Rather, it was about rethinking,
adapting, and trusting that the answer will
present itself.
What I would finally understand is that
I came to this land of elf magic, with its
medieval language and snaking green sky,
mostly to encounter this idea, which was
at once completely familiar and completely
foreign.
The wind died down eventually, of
course, and the week’s activities shifted
around in ways that turned out to be better;
then the Northern Lights, which weren’t
predicted to show themselves, suddenly
burst through one evening. But I felt þetta
reddast at a deeper level than getting to see
tourist highlights.
Perhaps it landed so hard because I have
teenagers at home and, on any given day,
it feels like nothing will be all right and I
won’t know what to do. There is so much
J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 3 1
I’m afraid of losing: people I love, hard-won
rights, democracy, the ability to do a hand-
stand in whatever corner of Earth I find my-
self. But here was this Swiss man—from
the land of precise timekeeping, no less!—
reminding me to loosen my grip.
In truth, this idea that it will work out,
maybe with an unexpected answer, was a
huge part of my worldview in my twenties
and thirties. But, like so many things, it had
become harder to remember in midlife. I
think that’s why Iceland used its sly name
to grab my attention all those years ago. It
never stopped calling to me, but it increased
the volume as I got older. I need to show you
the idea you’ve always flirted with. I need you
to see where it comes from.
Or, as Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams
like to say to each other in the preposter-
ously funny movie Eurovision, about an Ice-
landic duo who accidentally make it into
the European singing contest, “I see you.
There you are.”
I see you, þetta reddast. There you are.