Business in Egilsstaðir

You know how I can tell I’ve been here before? My laptop automatically joined the network.

Hah, it remembered the wifi password!

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Hah, it remembered the wifi password!

“Home is where the wifi is,” goes the saying. I guess this town is a little slice of home.

Before leaving the hotel I placed my camera on the windowsill and took a picture of myself against the blank hotel wall.  I could crop this down and make something approximating a passport photo if I had no other option.

In the hotel lobby I managed to harass the printer into spitting out the last two pages of my bank statement, then a tiny passport-size version of the photo I took upstairs.  The color was horrible.  This would probably not work…

I rode two doors down to the bank, and hit the ATM outside it. I extracted 12,200 in Icelandic cash, then marched into the bank and had the teller wire it to the visa processing center. I asked for a receipt, which I added to the stack for the application.

Next I rode over to the restaurant and bought some pre-packaged fish for eating on the road, and then went across the main street and down a block to the post office. Time to send some gifts to some nephews!

I drew a little card to go in the box, including an anachronistic horned bicycle helmet:

Maybe I really should find some goat horns and glue them onto the helmet…

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Maybe I really should find some goat horns and glue them onto the helmet…

My standard expression, of course!

Good luck on your journey, little package!

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Good luck on your journey, little package!

The package was expensive to ship, but nephews are worth it.

I also found a large envelope that was perfect for containing my visa paperwork. As I paid the bill I asked the woman behind the counter if she knew where I could get a passport photo.  She led me outside and began pointing at streets and talking in Icelandic, so I handed her my phone and she pointed at an icon on the map that was right next to my hotel.  It appeared to be the computer store I’d been looking at the other day.

I rode over there, marched inside, and repeated my question about passport photos to the clerk, a big bearded man in a smart red vest. He smiled and said, “come with me,” and waved his arm toward a door leading into the back. I noticed that he had a tattoo on his forearm reading “CANON”, in the same lettering used by the Canon photography company.

There was a full photo studio in the back room, with a neutral backdrop set up for taking passport photos. This solved my problem nicely! And no doubt it’s here because I was far from the first person to have this problem.

While the clerk powered up the hardware I asked him about the tattoo. “Yeah, I was drunk at a concert,” he said by way of explanation. “But this guy from Canon saw it on my arm and said he wanted my contact information, and then he sent me a whole computer in the mail!”

“Fantastic!” I said.

Snap snap, grin grin. Wink wink nudge nudge. “The photos will be ready in about half an hour,” he said.

I rode back to the restaurant and ordered a sit-down meal, thinking about how lucky I was to discover all these resources.  Free use of a printer, passport photos across the street, a bank of the same kind required by the consulate right next door – with an ATM – a post office across the way, and then at the top of the hill a few blocks along the way to my next destination:  The office where I need to drop off the finished application.  All within walking distance if I didn’t have the bike. Or dumb luck? Or thoughtful civic planning?

I scooted up the hill to the visa office with my envelope. There was nobody in line.

The paperwork is out of my hands now.

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The paperwork is out of my hands now.

Half an hour later it was submitted, and then all I could do with respect to the visa was wait. Maybe this office would sit on the paperwork for a few days before sending it to Reykjavík for evaluation; maybe not. Maybe they would reject the whole thing on a technicality. We shall see!

Back at the hotel I chatted with friends about American culture in Iceland. They were amused by my photos of the 50’s-style “Skalinn Diner”. Andrew pointed out that you’d actually need to look pretty hard to find retro American dining among the hundreds of restaurants all around the Bay Area back home, but it was there, in the form of Mel’s Diner and Fenton’s. Or you could go for the lowest-common-denominator modern version, with Denny’s and IHOP.

The conversation went kind of sideways from there:

I told James about this, and he got in on the act:

James and I got to wondering: Did Icelanders’ exposure to American radio extend to crazy DJs? Because that would be awesome. I would love to hear an Icelandic take of a crazy radio DJ.

So you want to stay longer in Iceland?

I get it. It’s a neat country. Also, if you get a visa extension for Iceland, you can travel all around the Schengen area with it.

It’s possible to apply for an extension without entering Iceland, by going through a consulate where you live. For example, back in my home near San Francisco, the Icelandic government has outsourced all their visa procedures to a company called VFS Global (on behalf of the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York.)

If you look online for “reviews” of that place, they are uniformly horrible. Calling them on the phone is a nightmare, and their website is glitchy. If you choose to deal with them you will be stepping directly into a bureaucratic swamp. That means you need to have everything perfectly prepared in advance, know their own rules better than they do, and never, ever be late for an appointment or a deadline by even a few seconds. Hooray!

I didn’t really want to put myself through that, especially knowing that the process could be derailed or delayed randomly, so I went looking for an alternate approach. I’m a US citizen, so your own needs may vary, but perhaps you’ll find this information useful.

Here is the Icelandic government’s official visa extension page, in English.

I didn’t plan to live permanently in Iceland, but I did have a job I could work remotely, so the best I could do was a “Long-term remote work” visa. That would extend my standard 90-day Schengen time, by tacking another 90 days onto the end of it.

It’s possible to travel around the rest of the Schengen area with this visa, but there’s a catch: You can only do that for a maximum of 90 days. So the idea is, the “remote work” visa gives you up to 90 additional days to stay exclusively in Iceland, during which your Schengen time isn’t depleted.

So if you want, you could spend all 180 days in Iceland, or you could spend 90 days in Iceland followed by 90 days somewhere else — France for example. But what you can’t do, is spend 89 days in Iceland followed by 91 days in France. That’s 1 day over the Schengen limit.

Since my plan was to cross Iceland by bike, which would take something like two months, getting this extension was still worthwhile for me.

Here are the conditions you need to meet:

1. You need to be making about $2000 a month, or have enough cash on hand to support yourself at that rate for the duration of your Iceland time. That’s steep, but not impossible if you plan ahead. (Official exchange rate: https://www.cb.is/statistics/official-exchange-rate/ )
2. You need to have a passport size photo (35mm x 45mm) of yourself taken and printed.
   • Thankfully there are a few conveniently located places where you can get exactly this. There’s one in Egilsstaðir, in the shopping center, next to the Arion banki. You can walk in and walk out a few hours later with three passport-worthy photos.
3. Applications need to be printed out on physical paper. In this day and age!
4. You need to include paper photocopies of all the pages of your passport.
5. You need to include a document confirming that you’re able to support yourself financially during your stay in Iceland.
   • I included a printout of my recent savings statement, showing how much money I had socked away.
   • I also asked my employer to sign a letter declaring that I was employed by them and had permission to work remotely, which I printed out.
6. You need to purchase health insurance that covers your stay.
   • Providers that meet the requirement:
     • https://work.iceland.is/working/icelandic-health-insurance
   • To apply directly:
     • https://minarsidur.sjova.is/radgjof/sala/?saleItemId=5
   • You will of course need to print out the receipt they give you and include it as proof with your application.
7. You need to pay the application fee of 12.200 ISK (about 100 bucks.) This is done by wiring money directly to the consulate via a branch of their home bank, and then including proof of that payment with the application.
   • Their home bank is called Íslandsbanki.
   • There are multiple branches in Iceland. There’s one near the East coast, in the same town as the District Commissioner of East Iceland.
   • The applicant’s name and date of birth must be included in the subject line of the wire transfer.
   • Once it’s done they will give you a receipt that you can include with your application.
8. Applications have to be submitted at the Directorate Of Immigration, which is just outside of Reykjavík.
   • They can also be submitted at district commissioner offices (Sýslumaður) around the country, for example the District Commissioner of East Iceland.
     • Note that this place is open to the public ONLY on Mondays from 9:00am to 3:00pm!

Since the extension can only run for 90 days post-application, you should submit your paperwork as late as possible during your stay, but not so late that the two week evaluation period causes you to overstay your current visa.

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The paperwork is out of my hands now.

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The paperwork is out of my hands now.

A word about printing:

Your best bet to get this done at a “print shop”, like this one near the capital city. Don’t rely on finding one in some small town while you’re out and about.

Your income justification letter:

Here’s a template based on the letter I used. Add your company letterhead and address around it, to make it more official.

It’s good manners to ask your employer and then provide them with a pre-made template all ready for their signature, so it’s as easy for them as possible.

The results:

In my case, I submitted my paperwork on September 13th at the government office in Egilsstaðir. I got an email from aritanir@utl.is exactly two weeks later on the 27th, asking me when I could come in to their office to obtain my visa.

This was a pretty decent turnaround time for a government office. Unfortunately I had already boarded the ferry boat that would take me out of Iceland, and had no way of returning to the country to appear in person at the office in Reykjavík. I replied to the email asking if there was some way to transmit the paperwork to me electronically, but they did not respond.

So, does it work? Yes, I suppose so. Didn’t do me any good, unfortunately. Without any proof that I could stay longer in the Schengen area than the usual 90 days, I just stuck to my previous plan and flew home in October.