TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC MOTIONS: Seen from behind the wheel of a new Land Rover Discovery Sport, Iceland reveals itself as a prog-rock Valhalla.
 After about an hour in the new Land Rover Discovery Sport, I feel the urge to pull on some tight leather pants, unbutton my shirt to the navel, and run wild into the misty mountains. This is not the typical reaction when driving what some would consider a soccer mom's SUV, but we are picking our way through a land straight out of a prog-rock music video, a land of ice and snow, from midnight sun where the hot springs flow. We're in Iceland, an island being created by the hammer of the gods right in front of our eyes, boiling up out of the earth like some visceral, primeval surge of lava and steam, and it is impossible not to be inspired in a tide of Viking testosterone and new-world wonder.
The day didn't start in such a bombastic way. It was pitch black at 10 o'clock in the morning, and just getting to the car was an adventure in itself as the overnight temperature had plunged deep into minus territory, rendering the snow and slush into hard-packed ice. Skittering across the car park, my only thought was, If I can barely stand up, what hope has a family car got of getting safely to Reykjavik without a few unscheduled visits into some fairly hard volcanic boulders?
Also, we're driving a car built by the people who are experts at off-roading, but we won't be doing any of that. Off-roading in Iceland is illegal, because once a car has driven over the loose volcanic surface, the tire tracks will never be eradicated, due to the slow growth of vegetation just south of the Arctic Circle. It's a bit like footprints on the moon.
Nevertheless, a day on roads doesn't like seem the simple commute it might be elsewhere. Around us, deep in the Icelandic interior, it was like Dante-esque vision of a Rick Wakeman concert: plumes of hissing steam, climbing from two kilometers beneath the earth surface, poured out of the flues of the Nesjavellir Geothermal Power Station sticking up from the black rock and snow, while the stench of sulfur filled the air. Yep, it's the end of the world as we know it. And it stinks.
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