伏特加、冰和火

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Suffering from Glastonbury withdrawal? Head to the Westman Islands for a party you’ll never remember, says Graham Little

It was 50% proof and 100% unwelcome. But this had become a battle for national pride,and I felt compelled to do my bit for the flagging reputation of Ireland. I swallowed a mouthful of warm vodka,retreated further into my sleeping bag and prayed that the sleep police would let me go back to oblivion. It was 7am.

The Westman Islands Festival has been officially named the Greatest Party in the World, according to a Rough Guides readers’ poll. I probably should have warmed up a bit lower down the Top 40,but I’d decided I was man enough to go straight to No 1. I was wrong.

Only two types of people go to the Westmans,a volcanic chain off the south coast of Iceland:bird-spotters,chasing the world’s finest collection of puffins; and hedonists,mostly chasing each other. For four days over the first weekend in August every year,these disparate groups collide on Heimaey,the largest and most beautiful island in the chain.

The fiesta’s unpronounceable name―Tjóehátíe―means “The People’s Feast”,and officially it’s about celebrating the ratification of Iceland’s constitution. Unofficially,it’s about camping in the hollow of a volcano and going completely wild to live music:Glastonbury with ice and fire.

Heimaey itself would provide an interesting case study for a geography field trip. The walls of the volcano tower above most of the west of the island,though the last eruption―in 1973,I noted uneasily―blew one side of it away. What is left is a perfect volcanic cross section. Steep,grassy banks sweep down to the sea and provide a superb natural amphitheatre for the temporary stage erected in the hollow,facing back up the mountain.

Most students at the festival are more interested in biology than geography,though. Westman is billed as an endurance test of intoxication and,it must be said, copulation,which challenges the best of party and festival regulars. I had carefully selected a three-man All-Ireland team for a bold bid to become the first non-Viking descendants to emerge with credit from what is pretty much an exclusively Icelandic party.

A BUS leaves Reykjavik on Friday morning to take festivalgoers to the coast. It’s then a 2-hour ferry ride to Heimaey,and as the boat cuts through the swell of the North Atlantic,leaving an already isolated Iceland on the horizon,the bracing wind forces moments of clarity. We were travelling to the most remote place we’d ever visited,for a festival we knew next to nothing about. Another fine mess...

There was a bit of a free-for-all at the unloading of the luggage containers in Heimaey’s small port, but once all bags were recovered,I brought the team down towards the volcano’s crater,where a burgeoning camp site was spreading over any available flat greenery. Entry cost ￡85 for three days’ camping and entertain-ment. That’s cheap for Iceland―in a bar in Reykjavik the night before,I’d paid ￡27 for three beers, while that afternoon a stamp to send a postcard to Australia had cost ￡9.

Just as at a “normal” festival,the first bands appear on the stage at about 3pm,although,out here,time begins to melt like a Dali clock. There are 21 hours of daylight every day in an Icelandic summer,and the 8,000 people in attendance appear to have no need of rest.

Indeed,teams of “sleep police” patrol 24 hours a day,armed with vodka,to make sure everyone is making the most of the madness,and the entertainment is laid on from dawn to dawn. The bands are mostly Icelandic and Danish,but the quality and range of music are remarkable,from Sigur Ros,who provided the theme music for David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series,to some excellent reggae bands and a few comedy acts,whose quality is evidenced by the masses of doubled-over locals enjoying monolingual hysterics.

Other than those dancing directly in front of the stage,most people gather in groups on the grassy walls of the volcano for raucous picnics―fuelled,again,by vodka. In between bands,mass singsongs break out,echoing around the crater as groups link arms,sway and occasionally roll down the sides of the steep bank in a gloriously carefree drunken return to childhood. At midnight,the festival becomes the world’s biggest campfire song session,as an enormous bonfire is lit on a natural platform halfway up the hill,warming anyone still sober enough to feel the cold.

Of course,others find more natural ways to stay warm,and it is for this activity that the majority of young people come to the island. When dusk finally falls, writhing,conjoined shapes are silhouetted by torchlight against the canvas walls of most tents,and venturing too far up the steep slopes of the old volcano is like walking through the middle of the mountain-goat breeding season. Iceland’s womenfolk are famously beautiful (it has the highest proportion of Miss Worlds per capita) and notably uninhibited. Glastonbury with fire, ice... and Bond girls.

Rather unprofessionally,I can’t write with any great authority about all the highlights of the People’s Feast―keeping up with the Jonases was,on occasions,a challenge too far. One evening’s bonfire passed me by, as I’d passed out and rolled down the hill at some stage earlier in the night;another morning,I was rudely awoken by the sleep police and informed that I’d missed the amazing arrival of Arni Johnsen,a former Icelandic MP and folk singer who was imprisoned on corruption charges but had been released especially to sing at the festival. His ditty is apparently a tradition here,and a small thing like a jail sentence wasn’t going to prevent it this year. Arni was flown in by helicopter and winched down onto the stage. In an echo of the popularity that may yet await John Prescott,Arni’s “hero of the people” status was cemented at the previous year’s festival when he clouted a fellow reveller.

The climax of the weekend arrived on Sunday night with the lighting of a chain of red flares around the rim of the volcano―the catalyst for another outbreak of wanton snogging and celebrating. By this stage,I was unexpectedly sick of both and ready for home,a beaten man.

I hadn’t considered the after-party. I missed two ferries back to the mainland after being persuaded to take on one more day of vodka and sightseeing, featuring a restorative dip in the island’s geothermal pools and the most unerotic wet T-shirt contest imaginable. (Contestants stand in the corner of a pub and get blasted with a power hose.) The next day,as I finally traipsed to the ferry,I passed a pair of legs poking out from what appeared to be a rolled-up tent, then a man cycled past on a bicycle with wheels made from old trainers. Headed for the normality of the mainland,I shuddered at the thought of what I’d been through. As I leant unsteadily over the rail,Heimaey faded slowly out of my blurred vision. If I ever find the courage to go back, it will only be for the bird-watching.