» posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2022 by Linda Lou Burton

Domed If We Do

Linda Lou Burton posting from Perlan, Reykjavik, Iceland – It was raining a goodly amount this morning; breakfast in the cozy basement of our hotel was splendid, tables piled with skyr (thicker than yogurt) and pylsur (sausage) and eggs and fruits and rich dark breads just waiting to be buttered. Steaming hot coffee, tall urn. But the windows upstairs framed rain. So what do you do when it rains a lot? Make your windows bigger, in fact, dome up so the entire sky above your head is visible in every direction. Add a motorized device to rotate you slowly over an hour so you can see every horizon, no matter what the weather. Soak it up! That’s what they’ve done in Reykjavik at Perlan’s domed restaurant, high on a hill above town, high atop a museum of such awesome natural wonders you have to keep going back (get an annual pass!); all of this high atop six tanks filled with water, which is, well, sort of what started the entire enterprise.

The “Pearl” as it is affectionately known, was designed by architect Ingimundi Sveinssson and opened in 1991. The first water tank, however, was built in 1939; high enough on the hill to provide ample pressure to serve the needs of the town. Tanks were added; today each of the six can hold over a million gallons of geothermal water. This hot water provides heating for homes, schools, municipal buildings, and, via a network of pipes under the pavement, keeps Reykjavik’s streets free of ice and snow in the winter. Building something on top of the tanks evolved from a 1930s idea to build a “temple” on that hill covered in mirror panels “so the northern lights could reach the people’s feet.” Function and beauty – ah! Johannes Kjarval, who was going for beauty, also proposed crystals on the roof and spotlights on the tanks so the building would respond both to the light of day and the symbols of night. The Pearl, which came about sixty years later, pretty much does all of that, and so much more.

Perlan was at the top of my list for Reykjavik “must-dos,” so we stepped out the hotel door to a waiting taxi and rode through blowing rain. We bought tickets for “the works” – The Wonders of Iceland, giving us access to the Planetarium, the exhibits, the observation deck, and above it all, the fabulous domed restaurant. There is no possible place better to spend a rainy day. Or a sunny one. I’ll tell you about the exhibits in upcoming posts (there is so much to tell!). As to the restaurant itself, we both had tasty fish and chips, very nice; but it was the dome that held our attention. Some of the following photos are mine; some I found to show how the world looks when you choose to love it rain or shine, day or night, as they seem to have decided to do on a little island called Iceland.