Category: Iceland 2021

Friday, July 30

The name says it all: Myvatn, lake of the midges. Thank god that, unlike the no-see-ums that can plague us in Maine, these little critters don’t bite. They just fly into your mouth, eyes, ears, you name it. We of course both brought midge nets to wear over a hat, but do we think to put them in the car? Of course not.

We woke to sunny, cloudless skies in Sey∂isfjör∂ur…and I mean woke. That’s the main building of the Hotel Aldan behind me, with the reception and two restaurants. By the way, for you gear geeks, I’m modeling a, if I do say so myself, very cool “tech” Icelandic sweater by the iconic Icelandic gear manufacturer 66 Degrees North. What makes it tech? A layer of Gore-Tex Windstopper beneath two layers of Icelandic wool. Not for summer in New Jersey!

The rooms in our building—the “Old Bank”—had been modernized but retained a lot of their old charm. But this was also the first place we had stayed without blackout curtains. So when I awoke, I thought it must be noon…but it was 4 AM. Luckily we were both able to go back to sleep once we’d been startled by the morning light.

The drive over the mountain pass was even more beautiful in this light, and we were soon in search of a bit of breakfast in Edilsta∂ir…which we found in a charming, funky bakery filled with books.

The road toward Myvatn passed at first through rolling green farmland, but soon entered yet another vast lava plane, with utter desolation. Looking south, an unusual mountain comes into view. Sue described it as a tent, I as a cloche.

This is Her∂ubrei∂, called Queen of Iceland’s mountains and beloved of the locals. It, too, is an extinct volcano; the climb to the summit is technical.

Turning north, we headed for a deep gorge that bisects the plain. There is a mile-long path from a car park toward Dettifoss, a huge waterfall in the middle of nowhere. Looking at the surrounding area, it is hard to believe that there is water nearby.

But water there is…and lots of it. As we turned a corner and came down a small slope, we were greeted with a rainbow.

And then we saw the falls.

Depending on who you talk to, Dettifoss is either the biggest or the second biggest falls in Europe (the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen in Switzerland may have a higher volume / minute ratio, but they are not nearly as impressive). The power of the falls is so massive that it throws up spray hundreds of yards away; believe me, we felt it.

Another half mile up the gorge is a smaller but more beautiful waterfall, Selfoss.

We were on the “wrong” bank of the gorge to really see Selfoss. Here is what it looks like from the east bank.

Back on the ring road, we were now very close to Myvatn, but there were adventures in between. Just before crossing a low mountain pass, a road leads north into a valley dominated by the volcano Kafla. The Kafla system is underlain by a large magma chamber, producing a variety of geothermal effects above ground. We first passed one of Iceland’s largest geothermal power plants, but then the road rose up and on our left was a low rhyolite hill that we learned was called Clay Hill. The rhyolite from a previous eruption had been heated by geothermal heat and turned to clay over large stretches. A path leads through the lava field created during a nine-year period of eruptions beginning in 1975.

As we walked up through the rhyolite, we found active geothermal features: fumaroles, steam vents, and thermal pools.

The lava field was unusually interesting; the molten lava had flowed in relatively narrow bands, twisting their way down the hill.

At places you could see where the basalt lava had flowed over the previous rhyolite.

From the top of the hill there are splendid views of the main volcano, Kafla.

At the far left of this photo you’ll see what seems to be a large depression. That is one of the main craters, Viti, which has a small lake at its deep center. Vivi and Iggles might be tempted to hop in, but we think they’d find it a bit too hot!

Across the ring road is one final piece of this vast system, a geothermal area called Hverir. This is a readily accessible collection of boiling pots, vents, and fumaroles set against a brilliant rhyolite slope.

The video below suggests why you’re urged to keep your distance: the pools are not just hot…they contain sulphuric acid.

We reached our hotel for the next two days soon afterwards. The Fosshotel Mytvan is brand new and rather lovely. Our room is very comfortable and has a terrific view of the entire lake. Our room even has a balcony, but the midges got there first and seem to be enjoying themselves.

The restaurant has a huge wall of glass with a panoramic view of the region. From our table we saw not just the flattop mountains—volcanos with their lids blown off—that characterize the countryside around the lake, but, in the distance, one last glacier…an outlet glacier from Vatna that is so huge that it stands out from 80 kilometers away. If you expand the photo below, you can just see the glacier to the right of the dark hill in the middle.

Although they’re sitting just out of view, there were several very young children in the dining room, and of course we always imagine Nathaniel sitting near us!

So this was a truly Icelandic day: waterfalls, volcanos, and a glacier thrown in for good behavior.

Saturday, July 31

Another day with brilliant sun; although it only reached 54 degrees, many Icelanders were out sunning themselves on patios and balconies.

We started the day with a drive around the lake. The western end is green and rolling, home to an enormous variety of birds. The south end is dominated by “false craters,” 10-15 foot knolls that were formed when the lake was much bigger and deeper. Steam pushed up from superheated groundwater, forming these large pimples. The eastern end is where most of the action is. The lake itself and a number of small lagoons are punctuated by lava columns; basaltic magma had risen through what was then water and cooled in thin stacks.

A local couple has lovingly deforested a promontory extending into the lake; we would have loved to walk its trail, but without our midge nets it would have been torture.

Our next stop was a wonderland of lava called Dimmuborgir. We had intended to take a short stroll, but the area was so fascinating that we opted for a brisk two-mile circuit. Like the columns in the lake, these formations had been pushed up through the water and cooled. We wish the photos were better, but we were stuck with some unusually harsh midday light.

Legend says that these bizarre formations are actually trolls who have been caught and frozen in the light of day.

We thought that Vivian and Ingrid would have fun imagining what the trolls might have looked like. Here is a photo of a troll merging with the lava.

We had a couple of favorites.

Yes, Nathaniel, that’s your grandmother.

And here she is again in front of a formation called “Church” (Kirkja).

Leaving the trolls behind, we drove north through an increasingly verdant valley dotted with lovely farms. At the end of the road is the little port of Husavik, Iceland’s whale watching capital.

We were taken with the little seaman‘s church, with beams from a ship. Pay close attention to the altarpiece: Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead…in a lava field!

Neither of us had ever gone whale watching, so we signed up for a boat tour with fifty of our closest friends on the „Sylvia,“ an old traditional wooden ship. It proved to be a lot more fun than we had anticipated. The whale spotter / announcer, a young woman named Asdis, was terrific: extremely informative and very focused. We have no idea how lucky we were, but the boat followed not one but two humpback whales while they were feeding…for the best part of two hours.

The pictures below give a taste of the experience, but we have some really good video that is too big to upload to the blog. Let me know if you‘re interested, and I‘ll put some video on Dropbox once we‘re home.

we finished the day with a wonderful meal at Naustio∂, a seafood restaurant overlooking the town. Another great day.

Sunday, August 1

We encountered another lovely day; some clouds in the sky but plenty of sun! We had a relatively short drive ahead of us, with plenty of time to explore.

First stop was another…surprise…waterfall! But this was a good one: Godafoss.

It isn‘t called „God‘s Falls“ by accident. One of the early law speakers had been converted to Christianity and decided to make it the national religion. Once the decision had been ratified by the assembly at Thingvellir, the speaker returned to his lands and threw his pagan idols into the waterfall. Or so they say.

It was then a short drive to Akureyri, Iceland‘s second city (insofar as a population of 18,000 counts as a city). Diminutive it may be, but the town does have a certain urban flair, the kind that you find 40 miles from the Arctic Circle. There is a nice pedestrian area with lots of cafes, bars, and restaurants (this was Sunday morning; it got livelier as the day went on.

It has its own rather impressive little university; this is the original building. Like many Icelandic buildings, it was built in Norway, shipped, and put together and decorated on site.

There is some lovely residential architecture on the hill up to the Botanical Garden.

And then there’s the Botanical Garden itself, which Sue pronounced exceptional. The highlight for me was a bed with plants that grow only in Iceland…or high in the Himalayas.

We closed our tour with a cup of coffee and a piece of cake at the really exceptionally beautiful coffee house.

As you can tell, we were really taken with the little burg. And the Botanical Garden was the first chapter in our day‘s return to human culture.

The road north from Akureyri runs along the eastern side of the mountainous Tröllaskagi Peninsula that sits between two massive fjords. Although there were some nice views up the Eyja fjord, much of this journey was spent in a series of tunnels. The oldest one of these is one lane, and we were going the „wrong“ way, so that we had to pull over into a pullout every time we saw headlights. We popped out of the final tunnel to find the little town of Siglufjör∂ur at our feet.

This is now a charming little port that relies on tourism and, get this, biotech.

There are now about 3000 residents, but until about 1960 it was the herring capital of the world. Hundreds of boats fished the herring shoals along Iceland‘s north coast. Here is a historical photo of the harbor in the early 20th century.

The town‘s pride and joy is nothing other than a Herring Museum. And who would have thought that a museum could make herring fishing so interesting. But this award winning museum, which has preserved four of the original structures (including a salting plant and a factory for producing fish oil and fish meal) and added a splendid building to display old boats, was really beautifully done.

We were staying at our „splurge“ hotel for the trip, a really lovely place right on the harbor, the Hotel Siglo. I would put it on your list for your next Iceland trip. If you’ve watched any of “Trapped,” then our hotel, and even our room with its balcony, is in every other shot.

Monday, August 2

The drive from the far north to the Snaefellnes Peninsula in the far west took a bit more than five hours. The opening stretches, down the west coast of the Tröllaskagi Peninsula, included some spectacular stretches high above the Arctic Ocean. Much of the rest of the drive saw us rolling through surprisingly bucolic farmland.

The Snaefellnes Peninsula is a kind of Iceland in miniature: volcanos, a glacier, and lots and lots of water. Our hotel was in a place called Budir, which consisted of our hotel and an unusual black church sitting above the ocean. We threw our things into our room and headed out for a walk along the high basalt cliffs in the region. Starting out from the village of Arnarstapi, a path leads up onto the cliffs; within two hundred yards we were startled by a deafening racket coming from the ocean. We were soon above the biggest rookery either of us had ever seen.

This was only the first of many sites along the path that harbored bird life; we must have seen hundreds of thousands of birds of a number of different species. As we walked along we encountered several more areas with astonishing numbers of birds; some of the rock formations–or at least those not covered by bird dung–were memorable.

The sun was coming in and out late in the day, but we were occasionally reminded that we were walking right under the Snaefells Glacier.

About halfway along the path, we entered the vast lava flow coming down from the volcano that erupted underneath the glacier about 1200 years ago.

This particular flow had come all the way down from the volcano and right into the water. Some of the wild formations in the water are this lava, while others are volcanic plugs (small volcanos erupted under the water, and as the water cooled the magma, their core was. solidified).

This was a good walk after a day in the car…and a nice dinner at the hotel put an exclamation mark on the day.

Tuesday, August 2

The Hotel Budir is located, surprisingly, at a place called Budir, which turns out to be the hotel and a well-known church…well known because it is black and visible for many miles round about.

We packed up and left the hotel fairly early, hoping to grab a coffee and roll before we entered the national park. That proved a bit harder than expected…there are almost no services this far out on the peninsula. A very nice guy at a hotel buffet finally took pity on us and gave us a coffee!

The Snaefellesjökull National Park takes up the entire western end of the peninsula, all the land around the glacier. First stop was a short walk along the cliffs at a place called Londrangar; besides the “usual” phenomenal cliffs, this area boasts a number of volcanic plugs that tower above the surrounding eroded basalt cliffs.

During a quick visit to the park’s visitor center, I was given a lesson in pronunciation by the very nice young lady at the desk. I learned to produce a reasonable facsimile of the word for glacier—Jökull—but you wouldn’t believe the sounds that one has to produce. After the J, the letters seem to bear little relation to the sounds!

We had decided to do a short walk before heading to Reykjavik, and the walk from Djúpalónssandur Beach to Ditvik Cove more than fit the bill. The path down to the large black sand beach passes through a remarkable volcanic canyon.

The beach itself is lovely, but bears the mark of a tragedy. A British freighter, the Epine GY 7, was shipwrecked just offshore here in 1948; the seas were so rough that most of the crew was lost. The beach is still littered with the remains of the ship.

From the beach a trail leads up and through one of the massive lava flows from the volcano. Although the trail is only a couple of miles long, the treacherous footing makes it seem a good bit longer.

Ditvik Cove was an active fishing port in the day; the ruins of a number of fishermen’s huts are scattered through the lava field nearby.

Back at the car, we tried to check in for our flight, but were told that we could only do so at the airport…a sign of things to come.

The drive back to Reykjavik was easy; we passed under one long fjord through the deepest car tunnel we’ve ever seen.

Back in Reykjavik, we did a bit of mop up shopping for family and then had a drink while we waited for our very late table at The Fish Company.

As it happened, our last meal of the trip was one of the very best: Sue had a great, very inventive gravlax, I had the best seafood soup of the trip, and then we shared some sushi–some of the only sushi that bears comparison to what you find in Japan.