For the last few months, Iceland has welcomed travelers from the Steel City, fresh off of Icelandair’s new nonstop flight. The journey from Pittsburgh International to Keflavik International – about 30 miles outside of Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital city – takes less than six hours and marks the start of daily connections from PIT to Europe.
The route has been popular since it first took to the skies in May. Jonathan Potts, the Allegheny County Airport Authority’s vice president of communications and public affairs, says the airport has heard positive feedback about the route.
“The food scene and the natural beauty of Iceland is a huge draw,” he says. “And … it is a very welcoming destination for all travelers.”
Indeed, Iceland boasts waterfalls, volcanic craters, black-sand beaches, and rolling hills that look like something out of Lord of the Rings, but it has long been designated as one of the top stops for LGBTQ+ folks, too.
The Legatum Prosperity Index, a framework by the Legatum Institute, a British think-tank, “assesses countries on the promotion of their residents’ flourishing.” In 2019, it marked Iceland as the most tolerant country in the world for queer travelers – a boon that the country has promoted in Visit Iceland, its official travel guide. Similarly, the Spartacus Gay Travel Index has consistently ranked Iceland among the top 10 safest destinations, an honor that the U.S. has yet to receive. (This year, it was ranked 41st out of 210 destinations. Iceland came in 8th.)
But lists and rankings are one thing. Real, lived experience is another. And so, this writer decided to check it out for himself.
In June, a friend and I took a 10-day trip to Iceland, using Pittsburgh’s direct flight to the island, the entirety of which is about 6,000 square miles smaller than the state of Pennsylvania. The flight itself was comfortable and comparatively affordable, with a smaller price tag than some trips through other airlines that would’ve taken twice as long.
It was a fun amalgam of business travelers and families on a summer jaunt, school groups studying abroad, and retirees visiting friends. Iceland was only a final destination for some; others were just passing through, using Icelandair’s “stopover” option, which allows folks to spend up to a week there on the way to someplace else for no additional airfare.
Though it may be small, there’s plenty of country to see. We explored the Golden Circle, a scenic route that includes stunning waterfalls and gushing geysers, and we visited the site where the Icelandic parliament Alþingi met from 930 AD until 1789, situated on the crux of two tectonic plates. We ate bread baked using the heat from underground, geothermal hot springs, and we sailed on a lagoon where icebergs, broken off from a melting glacier, drifted toward the shore. From the city of Reykjavik to the sparsely populated outer regions, we ate, drank, and were merry.
And I never felt out of place for being visibly transgender. I’m well-accustomed to the probing way strangers look at me on buses back home, and part of me is always half-expecting it. The “Protect Trans Kids” bumper sticker on my car gets me tailgated and honked at, especially when I venture beyond Pittsburgh proper and into the liminal stretches of highway across the state. Pennsylvania isn’t all bad, and it’s home, after all, but we grow a skin tougher than our own to deflect the anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments sweeping across the U.S.
I don’t know enough to say that these sentiments are completely gone from Iceland, only that I didn’t experience them, and often was met with the opposite. In downtown Reykjavik, a street painted rainbow – and, creatively, called Rainbow Street – winds down from the towering Blue Church in Seyðisfjörður. Welcoming and party-ready gay bars don pride flags that I’m told are there all year, not only during pride month, and a popular wedding planner called Pink Iceland, which also offers gay speciality tours and hosts gay and lesbian events around the country, displays a sign that says, in summary, “If you’re a bigot, get lost.”
Even outside of the city, near a small fishing town called Borgarnes, a wall leading toward a petrol station was painted rainbow.
The ultimate test came, as it often does, in the form of a locker room.
Swimming pools and hot springs are a vital part of life for natives in Iceland, which is a hotbed of geothermal activity. Icelandic etiquette maintains that, in order to preserve the cleanliness of the spaces, one must shower nude in a mostly communal dressing room before slipping on a swimsuit and getting into the water. For a trans person, this situation could be akin to the final circle of hell.
My locker room experiences are limited to high school gym class (dreadful) and the Planet Fitness in Edgewood (neutral), but I didn’t want to miss out. There was one stall with a private shower, but there was also a line for it, composed mostly of American tourists, and my determination to not be stereotyped as such led me into the communal showers. When I travel, I want to be like the locals. When in Rome, they say, do as the Romans do. When in Iceland, get naked with strangers.
And so I did exactly that.
And it was totally fine.
Granted, I’ve had top surgery, but I opted for no nipple grafts, and my scars span the entirety of my chest from armpit to armpit. I’m plus-sized. I haven’t had bottom surgery. And yet, no one stared at me, and no one kept their eyes so averted that it became essentially the same thing as staring. People made pleasant small talk with each other and with me while we showered. We talked about how nice the provided shampoo smelled, and we told stories about where we were from, and an older man complimented me on my Icelandic, although he did so in English, which gave me away.
It was the first time I felt accepted naturally in a male space like that — no one asked me any questions, and yet it didn’t feel like there was an elephant in the room, either. Would things have been different if I was a transgender woman? Would they have treated me differently if I wasn’t white? If I wasn’t post-op? Maybe. Maybe I just had an especially cool cohort of naked Icelandic men. Or maybe Iceland really is all it’s hyped up to be.
And, if you do find yourself on that flight from Pittsburgh to Reykjavik, be sure to check out the Icelandic Phallological Museum once you land, which is exactly what it sounds like: The only museum dedicated to penises in the world. It doesn’t get much gayer than that.
