Motorworld by Jeremy Clarkson

which has given its name, the world over, to a huge water spout. The great geyser hasn’t strutted its stuff for years but there is a selection of smaller ones that gurgle and slurp away most of the time and, every seven minutes, shoot a plume of boiling water 70 feet into the air. It would be quite a sight in, say, Barnsley, but in Iceland you might even call it dull.
    This is because to get there, you’ll have driven past Gull Foss, a waterfall of such drama and power that your ears start to bleed. My eyebrows went green too.
    Then there’s the spongy moss which has turned a monster lava field into the world’s biggest mattress, the black desert and the complete absence of agriculture. Eighty per cent of Iceland’s mad interior is common land, given to the people by the world’s oldest parliament.
    And remember, I’m talking here about a people who sleep all winter and party all summer, a people who, by any sense of the word, are crazy.
    They just don’t play by the same rules as the rest of the world. There is no Icelandic word for ‘please’. Until very recently, beer was banned, even though spirits were not. There was no television on Thursdays. They don’t even have proper surnames.
    When you’re born, you are given a name by your parents, which is normal enough except it must come from a government-approved list.
    Your surname is your father’s Christian name with ‘son’ or ‘dottir’ tacked on the end. So, I would be called Jeremy Edwardson and my daughter, Emily Jeremydottir.
    Weird stuff, but not as weird as the prices. In 1994, when we were there, petrol was nearly £5 a gallon. A bottle of wine in a pizza joint was £65 and dinner for two in one of the endless fish restaurants cost the same as four television licence fees. I’ve framed my hotel bill and it now hangs in the hall to amuse visitors.
    The national pastime up there, apart from going to the bank twice a day, is statistics. Chat to an Icelander for more than a minute and you’ll learn that they’ve produced more chess grand masters and Miss Worlds than any other nation on earth. But this is not surprising because all the men have beards and look like Nordic facsimiles of Greek philosophers, and the women look like angels. Björk is the only one who’s odd, and they’ve exported her.
    But you need to delve into their motoring culture to get the real picture – to see just how mad this place is. Take a look in the history books to see what I mean.
    The first car arrived on Icelandic soil in 1904 but with no infrastructure and no spare parts it soon died. However, rather than simply throw it away, its owner would push it up a hill and charge inquisitive visitors a small fee for the privilege of rolling down to the bottom in it.
    There was even a car factory once. Back in 1941, a ship carrying 104 kits was on its way from America to Sweden, where they would be made into Dodge saloons, when it became stranded in Iceland because of the war.
    An Icelandic mechanic was dispatched to the States to get a job in the Dodge factory while a small factory was built in Reykjavik. By the time it was ready, he knew how the cars were made and he did just that in less than a year. Sadly, in rather less time than that, most had been eaten by the winter weather so that today only one remains in active service… as a chicken run.
    Then there’s motorsport which, until recently, was impossible because road-traffic laws applied everywhere. You could have built a racetrack but it would have been subjected to the blanket 70kph speed limit.
    However, in 1981, they changed the law and Iceland went motorsport barmy, to the point that today, every weekend, central Iceland echoes to the sound of what are by far the most powerful race cars in the known world.
    To the casual observer, they’re Jeeps, but this is like calling a Michelin three-star lunch a snack.
    They have Detroit V8 engines and four-wheel drive, but that’s about all they have in common with