Iceland Day VI.

9-23-17 REYKJAVIK, ICELAND: We checked out of 1919 Hotel early and loaded on the bus for an early visit to the National Museum of Iceland before it opened to the public. I guess the Smithsonian, our tour sponsor, has connections. The museum tells the story of Iceland from medieval times to the present, mostly through the collection of artifacts. I found the carvings most interesting and assumed that there wasn’t much else to do in the long, dark winters.


carved and painted wooden panel.

Carved wood door from a church. In the upper circle a knight slays a dragon and rescues a lion who becomes his friend. The lower circle is an intricate pattern. It's suspected that originally there was a third, lower circle that was cut off when the door was moved to a new location. This is considered one of the best exhibits that the museum offers.

Carved wood mirror frame. The top image is very similar to the earliest gravestones in New England.

Whale bone carving depicts Norse or Christian myths.

Carved animal horn drinking vessel.

After the museum, it was off to the Blue Lagoon. The lagoon is a huge outdoor hot water pool. The operation is impressive. The entry fee gives you a towel and a locker opened with an electronic bracelet. You strip, shower, put on your bathing suit and then go outside through the cold air and rain and into the hot water. The color is from a reaction between the lava and the geothermal water. The water has been used by the next-door power plant before it goes into the pool.

There were about a hundred people in the pool and a long line of people waiting to get in. Reservations are required.

The water is chest deep requiring, for me, a crouch to stay warm or a cold shoulder. Included in the entry are silicon and algal facial treatments and a free drink from the full bar. The bartenders were wearing parkas as they served the patron in bathing suits. While in the pool, you can hardly see across it because of the fog, rain and steam.

After an hour or so, I was pretty well pruned and so got out, showered again, dressed and found Judy who had stayed dry at the Lava Restaurant. We all had lunch there.

After lunch it was time to go to the airport [KEF] for the flight back to EWR. The airport is just a hop from the Blue Lagoon. We had a last rainbow as we drive through the rain on our last bus ride.


Blue lagoon extends out in the distance and is scheduled to be enlarged.

People clustered around the bar.

Lava Restaurant, with lava piles outside.

Last rainbow on the last rainy bus ride.

A few final thoughts—Iceland has less than 350,000 inhabitants who host about 5,000,000 tourists a year, and the number of tourists is growing. Tourism has probably saved their economy after the financial crisis of 2008. There is construction everywhere in Reykjavik. The Icelandic krona is worth about a US penny. The language is Scandinavian and difficult to understand and speak. There are several strange letters. The island’s climate is fairly mild because it’s in the Gulf Stream even though it’s near the Artic Circle.

Iceland Day V.

9-22-17 REYKJAVIK, ICELAND: We headed back to Reykjavik in the tourist bus after a last lecture from Mike Neufeld of the Smithsonian. Lunch was at a hotel when we were in the city. We checked in at the 1919 Hotel in the historic district. There were tours of the new performing arts center and of the Northern Lights Center offered, but Judy and I opted to walk around on our own. The hotel was near the waterfront, so we walked uphill to the cathedral, stopping at every clothing store on the way looking for a particular kind of sweater. The cathedral is very modern, very tall and at the top of the hill.


Guardian of the Sweaters

The Cathedral is modern like much Scandinavian architecture and design.

Lief Erickson guards the Cathedral.

Cathedral organ. I'd love to hear it in action.

Cathedral Nave.

After a peek at the inside, we walked down hill toward the lake in the center of the city, City Hall was built in the lake. I should mention that the city is on the southwest coast of Iceland tucked into the upper corner of the Keflavik peninsula. It rained off-and-on during the walk. We found ourselves in the upscale embassy district with prosperous looking houses.


The siding and roof are of corrugated metal.

Slate roof and stucco walls are unusual.

A landmark in the city. The only onion dome we saw. It's a private house.

These row houses have metal roofs, skylights, and very typical windows, as you can see from some of the other houses.

The lake was full of water birds, all quite tame.


Lake, City Hall and waterfowl.

Black-headed gull, non-breeding phase.

Graylag goose shaking off the rain. Check ou the serrated, tooth-like beak.

Mallards, above and below.


We continued downhill to the harbor. There were coast guard boats, giant cruise ships, big cruise ships, fishing boats and small boats offering whale watching, puffin watching, orca watching, northern lights watching and the big, green glass arts center. The coastguard is the only military force on Iceland.


That green box behind the ships is the arts center. There are construction cranes everywhere.

The rocks show that there is a big tidal excursion.

Watching options.

The farewell dinner was at Apotek Restaurant. It lasted hours and we were offered small tastes of traditional food, some of it raw, including whale, puffin, cod, lamb, salmon, but not horse. We staggered back to the hotel.

Iceland Day IV.

9-21-17 HELLA, ICELAND: We got an early start after the usual breakfast buffet. Back on the road our Icelandic guide, Haflidi, filled us with stories of Icelandic myths and folktales as we headed for the beach. Haflidi has taught us Icelandic culture, history, theology, geology, language, idioms, ecology and economy during the many bus rides. Today we are in ‘super jeeps’, backcountry vehicles for fording rivers and moving on soft sand.

Our first stop was on the black sand beach on the south shore. It was a long drive of a few miles through progressively thinning vegetation to the black, wind swept, flat shore next to a wreck of a wooden boat, half buried in the sand. Two-foot breakers rolled in blowing spume at us. The sky was partly cloudy, but there was still some scattered rain. A few miles off shore a bunch of black, rocky islands were intermittently visible though the fog and mist. These are the Vestmannaeyjar, an archipelago that has a new volcanic island developing to the south, recently risen from the ocean named Surtsey. We saw the 10 AM ferry heading out from the mainland and doing a bit of rolling.


The Westermann Islands, Atlantic surf, spume and rain.

Jeep behind the wreck half buried in the black sand.

The ferry heads out in the rain.

The large island in the center of the group has an excellent harbor and the only permanent settlement. The harbor was threatened with closure by lava from an eruption in 1973, but the local folk pumped ocean water from boats onto the burgeoning lava to cool and solidify it and re-direct the flow away from the harbor, keeping it open. Even so a quarter of the town was buried in the lava.

We headed inland and passed the Skogafoss, another dramatic waterfall, where the group split in half, some going to the Skogar Museum. Judy and I went with the part of the group that explored the Thorsmork valley. The valley is between two glacier-capped mountains and composed of black basalt rocks and gravel that is being pushed around by braided streams. The road is two ruts and crisscrosses many streams. The jeeps are four wheel drive vehicles with valves that can be opened from inside to lower the tire pressure for softer spots. Our jeep actually had six wheels and held about twelve of us.

The first stop was at a glacial valley. The glacier has retreated far up the valley leaving behind freshly exposed basalt. Photos at the site show the previous extent of the glacier. The basalt is just starting to be colonized by mosses and a few grasses. A low-lying tongue of the glacier has been washed out underneath leaving an ice cave at the bottom with a stream running out of it. Deep pits, kettles, are scattered at the foot of the glacier. They were gouged out by the ice, which melted and seeped into the ground leaving a dry hole. In a nearby spot the basalt had a huge rift being drained by a small stream. The blue color of glacial ice can still be seen in parts of the glacier.


Hikers heading for the glacier.

The main glacier above and a tongue of the glacier lower down with the ice dave at the bottom.

The ice cave and some blue ice still present.

That huge fissure is tectonic, not erosional. The mosses and a bit of grass have started colonizing the recently exposed terrain.

The kettle pits dot the foreground, this one is ten feet deep.

We drove further up the valley crossing and re-crossing the streams. In places the moss and shrub growth was fairly extensive. A lot blueberry bushes were deep red in color. There were innumerable waterfalls coming off the volcano to the south, Eyjafjallajökull.

We ended up in a national park near the northern mountain, Bláfell. We were at an off-road hotel and restaurant, Húsadalur, in the center of the valley where we had an excellent lunch with choice of lamb or fish and a bar available. There was a landing strip nearby and a couple choppers landed while we were there.

From there we all did hikes after lunch that were not too difficult, about 1.5 miles over a ridge in the center of the valley. This area is in a park, and because sheep are forbidden, re-forestation is underway. There were a couple of caves in the lava formations, one about ten feet up a face with hand and footholds cut into the rock. Fall colors were on display, and as we approached the end of the hike a snowy Eyjafjallajökull appeared across the river.


The trail has much more vegetation than the glacial valley and good color.

The cave up high on the exposed face with carved pits for access.

Coming down from the first hike with river, mountain, glacier...

Waterfalls draining the glacier.

We did a second hike after everyone caught their breath, but only up a stream bed with good fall color. On the way back down the valley we had a nice rainbow that followed us for about 15 minutes. There were rainbows nearly every day in Iceland. Since there was a lot of rain, whenever the sun came out from behind a cloud there was a rainbow somewhere.


Second hike. The Icelandic flag has blue for the ocean, white for the glaciers and red for the lava.

Our jeep coming to fetch us after the second hike.

Our last stop was at the big local waterfall, Skogafoss. It drops hundreds of feet over a cliff, makes a big roar, and soaks everything nearby with mist. It’s possible to walk behind the waterfall, which I did along with dozens of others, all taking selfies except me. Then it was back to the hotel to dry off.


Skogafoss and another waterfall. There are people at the base.

Underneath the falls.

Many soggy tourists.

The topper was an aurora appearance about 11PM that lasted half an hour.

Iceland Day III

9-20-17 HELLA, ICELAND: We checked out of the Ion Hotel after breakfast and a second lecture about the Aurora phenomenon. Our first stop was for pix of a lakeside church that we had passed earlier. Judy had asked for a pic stop, and we did so on this occasion, the first time we were back in the neighborhood, also the last time.


The little church on the edge of Thingvellir Lake. The green field is a pasture for a flock of sheep, a metaphor?

We motored on to the crater of an extinct volcano, Kerid, which is fairly close to Reykjavik and has been the site of music concerts with the performers playing on a barge in the lake at the bottom. The attendees ranged around the amphitheater-like caldera. The caldera is red and black with green vegetation and the water is blue/green. We skipped the walk around the perimeter because it was raining hard. Judy did walk almost all the way to the lake at the bottom of the crater.


Concert venue.

Back in the bus we went on to an ancient church, now rebuilt that figured in the Reformation and religious wars that ended up with Iceland as a Lutheran country. The beheading of a Catholic bishop apparently speeded up the rate of conversions. The church is at Skalholt. We saw relics in the basement and left via a dark tunnel to the outside. There is a reconstruction of an early house/church on the site. It is wood construction with a stone foundation and a sod roof.


The church at Skalholt now is smaller than the Reformation Era cathedral, which, we were told, was the biggest in Europe at the time.


The primitive house/church. Watch your step and head going in and out. That's Judy in the black parka.

Modern stained-glass window over the entry door.

Moving on we stopped at Fridheima, a large greenhouse complex growing tomatoes with a modified hydroponic technique using grow lights. They use bumblebees as pollinators. They harvest tomatoes when they’re ripe and get them to the Reykjavik markets the same day or the next morning. They have a restaurant serving tomato soup and their own bread and basil. We had an excellent lunch and were very impressed with the whole operation.


The tomato vines climb up strings hanging from the upper supports.

Lunch time. Those green plants on the tables are the basil for the tomato soup.

After lunch and at the same place, we visited the stables where they raise and train Icelandic horses. The horses are a small breed, but quite strong and are five-gaited. We saw a demonstration of the gaits even though it was still raining.


Sweet face got a nose rub from me.

The rider/trainer showed the smoothness of the gait between and trot and canter by carrying that beer stein around the ring without spilling any. I thought the horse should have gotten the beer.

The last stop was at the Secret Lagoon in Fludir. A natural basin gets water from hot springs where the water temperature is at the boiling point. It’s mixed with the adjacent river water, which is glacial runoff. The temp in the pool is in the nineties, and is a popular bathing/soaking spot. Some of us went in, Judy and I watched, most folks basked in the water without much swimming. We walked around and saw the river and the hot springs and a cute, tiny geyser.


The basking pool is steaming away.

The round pool in the foreground is one of the hot, 200°F, springs. The river is just beyond the spring and cold with glacial melt and rain runoff. At the top of the pic is another greenhouse, this one growing mushrooms. The mist is a mix of steam from the hot spring and fog from the river.

From there it was on to the Hotel Rangá, our home for the next two nights. Dinner was salmon and mushroom soup.