It’s empty in many senses of the word. First and foremost, there are almost no people in Iceland. Of the quarter of a million Icelanders, 170,000 have congregated to Reykjavik and its suburbs, which leaves less than one person per square kilometre in the rest of the country. The second largest town has about 16,000 inhabitants, and everything after that is just villages and single farms.

Since the country is essentially uninhabited, its roads are generally deserted. It is possible to drive a good 10 minutes on the main ring road around the island without seeing any other vehicles. Streets in villages and towns were also surprisingly empty – even during a weekend, during the summer when schools are out, there were almost no children outside, and we rarely saw anybody working outside on the farms either.

Tourist sites were equally empty, even the major ones – most had no more than half a dozen cars parked when we got there. This was quite a pleasant change from most other regions and countries we’ve visited. No crowds, no jostling, nobody disturbing our views.

This scarcity of people led to scarcities of all the things that occur around people. Shops, restaurants, petrol stations… I believe our road map of Iceland shows every single petrol station in the country, except for the ones in Reykjavik, and a few of the larger villages where the map only shows one but reality had two side by side.

The country was also surprisingly empty of things to see and do. Normally, I imagine, one browses a travel guide and picks and chooses between sights. Here, though, we had days when we saw everything that the book mentioned as being on our route, and even made quite long detours to pick up sights that would not have been near the top of our list… if we had had a list to choose from, that is. But when the alternative is to drive for 4 hours straight and not see anything but an empty road, every waterfall becomes valuable.

I do wonder what it would feel like to grow up in rural Iceland. Driving an hour every morning to get to school. (We saw many boarding schools as well.) Having two sports to choose from (swimming and football). No library or cinema to go to. No real chance to have any friends, because you cannot get to them. In some places, no real way to be in touch with the outside world at all – even radio coverage was patchy.

I’m not a particularly gregarious person, and I value my personal space, but I do like to have some contact with the rest of the human race. And I want to have something to do with my time. Based on what I saw, I really wouldn’t want to live in Iceland; it would drive me mad within a few weeks. One week was enough to have me twitching restlessly from lack of activity and stimulation. What do Icelanders do all day? Walk up and down their endless hills? Write lugubrious poetry?