Reykjavik, Iceland

The legs are mine; those are bruises. The caption that accompanies this photo is Erik’s quote of the day, uttered with genuine sadness:  “Spider Shark only lived one day.” Spider Shark’s life is so short because she will never again try crossing a wire by the same method that so impressed Erik, looking, apparently, like a spider. (Shark is one of, and the most popular of, my nicknames.)

So how did I acquire these rather painful beauties? I might as well start at the beginning … the guidebook said Glymur Falls was the tallest in Iceland. It wasn’t a far drive from Reykjavik, and though you must hike several kilometers to see it, we had until about 1:00pm before we needed to head for the airport (from the trailhead) to go home. So we decided to spend the morning before our rather important flight undertaking a hike that others had described (online in blogs) as “challenging,” “not for the faint-hearted,” “dangerous,” etc., as well as taking more time than we had. (Because that’s the way we roll …) So we were aware of the cable-wire river crossing, that if you wanted the full view of the falls you had to take the path that crossed the river, and I warned Erik that when we reached it, I might wuss out.

It was a cold (about 32 F/0 C) and very windy morning, and when we arrived at the crossing, it was clear that falling in an icy river and getting wet in this weather would be extraordinarily unpleasant.

We hemmed and hawed, both of us feeling nervous about it. I didn’t know it at the time, but Erik was apparently feeling even more trepidation than I was. I have an unfortunately dainty and flawed build in much of my body (I often tell people I was built to be a couch potato), my hands in particular regularly suffer from tendonitis and are very wimpy. My primary concern was having the strength in my hands to make it across the wire. But I knew I would regret turning back, so I stood patiently at the river’s edge until my courage built up to a sufficient level, then said, “OK,” and clung onto the wire. After I was across, Erik followed.

The bruises come from my rather ungainly method of crossing, hooking and unhooking my legs from the wire, moving them one in front of the other in a way that Erik exuberantly insisted looked like a spider crawling across the wire. “You look just like a spider! That’s so cool!” This way made me feel the most secure because I didn’t have the strength to just lock my legs around the wire and pull my body weight across with my hands. It was a bit of an uphill haul crossing that direction and honestly, I barely made it. It actually took more courage for me to cross going back home because I knew then how difficult it would be for me. But that direction was downhill and it turned out to be easier. The sorest part of Erik’s body ended up being the muscles in his arm because of what he said was his “death grip” on the wire while crossing.

As we predicted, it was worth the unconventional river crossing. Once we climbed uphill to the top of the plateau, we had marvelous views of the valley to the ocean.

And we encountered numerous small frozen waterfalls along the way, which are wonderfully enchanting with their frozen shapes and the blue tint like we saw at Gullfoss and on the glacier.

The cliffs oozed water everywhere, now frozen. I’m sure it’s lovely in summer, but truly I think it’s more of a uniquely magical place in winter with everything frozen, taking up far more space than running water, creating glassy shapes, and standing out boldly from the rock. Sometimes it looked like frosting on a cake.

So … steeply uphill across snow and skree and frozen rivulets, fighting a wind that sometimes almost knocked me over. (Are we having fun yet? Well, actually yes, we are in our way.)

To be rewarded with a full view of the waterfall from top to bottom. The lighting was (again) miserable, and I can’t claim to have captured much of its essence, the colors are funky, but there is my shot at it. This is the first view we came across of pretty much the whole fall (disappears a bit near the bottom into the narrow box canyon). You can pick out the thin stream of still-running water far to the right in the bottom third. The photos I’ve seen of these falls in summer show a fairly narrow strip of water falling down all silver and shimmering and obviously lovely. But look how wide the fall is in winter, with the spray frozen onto the rocks all around. I'm really quite a champion of these winter waterfalls. In case you wonder about the consistent blue hue, it comes from the glacial water and the color comes from "glacial flour," basically sediment in the water. It always has a kind of cornflower-blue tint, sometimes darker blue, and sometimes almost a sea green. You'll find this in any large body of glacial water ... rivers, lakes, waterfalls. I don't know what causes the change from bluish to purplish at these falls.

You can ultimately hike all the way to the top of the falls, but we didn’t have the time, and had already succeeded in getting perhaps the most rewarding view … the entire length. One particularly fun feature along the trail is a tunnel you have to walk through, with one entrance from the top and two exits, like the eye sockets of a skull, at the bottom.

The other point of amusement this day was while we were driving around trying to remember where the trailhead was, we met the fastest little dogs I’ve ever seen. We had found the trailhead another day when it was too late to start a hike, and thought we remembered the route without consulting the map. Turns out we were wrong, but it was pretty much worth it to have gotten temporarily lost for the pleasure of witnessing these dogs. We clocked them running beside us at about 55 km/hr (34 mph). They chased us on our way in for a long time. After we finally lost them, it wasn’t long before we realized we were on the wrong road and had to turn around. Those dogs knew we would be coming back and they were literally waiting to ambush us as we drove by again, springing from the bushes in the ditch and chasing us maniacally.

We changed clothes back at the hotel, though we had checked out they let us dress in the changing rooms in the spa, as the hotel was right on the way to the airport. Arrived with plenty of time to check in, so we finished off the last of our duty-free beers in the truck with the radio on. Turned the car off and politely popped the hood and reconnected the battery wire so the rental people could start the car to move it back to their lot (we were to park in the public parking and they’d retrieve it).

Making our way through the Reykjavik airport, both on arrival and departure, was the quickest, smoothest international airport/flying experience I’ve ever had. I would almost say it was a pleasure, but I can’t bring myself to go quite that far; it was still an airport.

One more post to come with miscellaneous photos from the road.

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This was a day in which we started out early but with no particular agenda. We looked at the map and decided what was reasonably accessible to us, and decided to head for the north. Owing to a mention in the guidebook, we aimed for the town of Blönduós as our first destination.

We arrived there a bit peckish, right around lunch time. The town is printed in large letters on the map, generally indicative of a sizable place. But everything is on such a small scale here, and it’s all relative, so in fact large letters on an Iceland map indicate only a small town.

We drove around through a little cluster of buildings and noticed one was a guest house advertising meals. It looked just like a regular private home, and I felt a little odd just opening the door and walking in. In a small front room a handful of tables were arranged, so we seated ourselves. Ended up having a delicious lunch. The lady proprietor told me even though it wasn’t on the menu she could make up an omelet. As I normally live on eggs for breakfast at home, when she said that, my mouth watered, having been subsisting on instant oatmeal for the past week. A shot of the thriving metropolis of Blönduós: 

We had decided we might drive around the peninsula which this town was at the base of. We selected a town on the far end as a destination to put into the GPS unit that came with our rental car to see how long it would take, but the GPS would not secure a signal. So we decided to ask the lady how long it would take and if it was a worthwhile endeavor. She was Polish and decided her Icelandic husband would be better suited to answer the question, and so called him out from some other room. Initially annoyed with the GPS, we were ultimately grateful for its weakness, as it did us an enormous favor by forcing us to ask the proprietor and consult our paper map.

The man clued us in to the real draw of the local area, for some odd reason neglected in the guide book, which was the wild seals and also orcas. And these were to be seen around a different peninsula that we hadn’t considered touring. Well, when we heard “seals,” we obviously changed plans to go try to find them along the coastline.

After thanking our hosts perhaps overly profusely, we got in the truck, turned the key, and found the battery dead as a doornail. Nothing at all transpired when the key turned. Flabbergasted at this turn of events, Erik went back inside and asked for jumper cables. The man sent somebody else to find a jumper cable “kit,” as he didn’t have any. We waited only a short period of time and soon a fellow drove up in a truck, and in the process of hooking up the cables noticed that the wire to the positive terminal on the battery had come off. He fixed that up quickly with a wrench and we were good to go. For the rest of the trip, though, the wire came off every time we drove. So each time we started the car up, we had to first pop the hood and Erik would reconnect the wire. But we were so thankful that happened to us where it did, as we might not have noticed that wire ourselves and freaked out if the car didn’t start when we were in the middle of nowhere, as we often were stopping to take pictures or investigate a point of interest indicated by a sign on the road. Most of Iceland, for the record, is "in the middle of nowhere."

For example … we stopped at a sign indicating ruins, photo below. We would have had to walk for ages in bitterly cold wind to find a house and hope someone was home to help us. (we opted to travel per our modus operandi, without a cell phone) They were ancient ruins from the 900s AD, their function somewhat contested. Their location on a high bluff seems to me like evidence for the theory of a fort.

Some scenery along the empty roads in the north.

I didn’t get many photos of the horses we rode earlier in the trip. Though we passed many herds while driving, it was difficult to capture them in focus through the car window … getting a picture of a huge mountain while moving is one thing, of a small horse while moving is another. So I asked Erik to stop near a herd and I got out of the car and walked toward them to get some close-up shots. With my 250mm lens on, I didn’t have to get very close physically. But as soon as I got in the range I wanted, the horses came up to the fence like they wanted some attention. I couldn’t resist them, so I walked over, and sure enough they all wanted to be petted. I hadn’t thrown a coat on or anything, I didn’t anticipate being outside long. So I stood there shivering and petting all the horses. They are seriously the sweetest, gentlest creatures you could hope to meet. 

And their shaggy manes and thick-furred ears are so pretty. The ride-master (as I call her) told me their hair continues to grow longer as they grow older, so if you see a particularly shaggy horse, it will be an old one. A lot of the horses have their manes cut short in the front … I would presume these are the ones that are ridden the most. 

This fella, though, needs a hair cut. Look at how beautiful his ears are, outlined in black. I love him! (or her … didn’t look to see which)  

These two seemed to be particular pals, standing next to each other the whole time and nuzzling one another in addition to me.

Such small horses (more like the size of ponies) in such a large and dramatic landscape of looming mountains somehow makes them even more picturesque. And their long shaggy manes were always blowing in the persistent wind, giving them an almost heroic presence, standing bravely in the arctic weather. When I import my Icelandic baker to bake their delicious bread for me each day, I'm going to have him bring an Icelandic horse for me to keep in the yard and pet each day. 

We were wondering aloud to each other how we would spot the seals or know where to look for them when we saw a little sign on the road with a blue icon of a seal. Bingo! We parked at a farmhouse and followed a rather lengthy path … I was beginning to wonder if the path went on forever and there were no seals out today, when finally I could see a small hut on a rise. Just before reaching the hut, I heard some barking noises just like seals make. A worm of excitement crept up my neck ... I don't know if you get these, but when I have a sudden knowledge that something I've been greatly hoping for is imminently about to happen, I get this peculiar feeling in my neck.

I looked around, almost frantically, and spotted them just off the shore, lounging on rocks and clumps of seaweed.

The hut is a little viewing hut with a couple pairs of binoculars and everything. Really nice to step into now and then to get out of the wind. There were some seals very close on the rocks, some further out, and some swimming playfully in the water.

I like this guy because of his flippers ... first he looked like he was scratching one with the other. Then he just held them together, one on top of the other, looking so prim and proper like a human might sit with their hands folded. 

We watched them for quite awhile, but eventually the cold got the best of us and we returned to the car. We decided to get adventurous and take a “highland” road to make a loop going back home rather than simply retracing our steps. Our adventure was cut short after about 10 kilometers, though, by a rope with a neon piece of material around it stretched across the road. It seemed pretty obvious we were not to continue. Slightly disappointed, we traced back to Reykjavik the way we’d come. But the elation of seeing the seals in the wild did not wear off. 

Here's a little secret about myself: sometimes at night when I'm in bed but can't fall asleep, I picture all the animals I've seen in the wild as a way to entertain myself in the darkness. Now I have sweet little seals to add to the reel.

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It may not have been clear from my posts so far, but we are stationed in Reykjavik for the duration of our stay. As I booked this trip because of the great deal offered by Icelandic Air, it was a package with restrictions … a limit on how many days we could stay and had to stay at one of two specified hotels the whole time in Reykjavik. This actually hasn’t restricted us at all, but should I have the good fortune to return to Iceland, I would want to travel around the island and get to all the nooks and crannies, and move camp each night. But for this trip, a single home-base worked perfectly fine, there is so much to do within reach of Reykjavik.

So we decided to stay “home” on St. Patrick’s Day and spend another day in the city of Reykjavik. Slept in late. We had already scoped out where we wanted to end the day, at an English pub we’d found the first day that had advertised 300 isk Guinness and Kilkenny (my favorite Irish beer). This exchanges to around USD$2.50 a pint. That, my friends, is a darn good deal.

But first we made our way around the old town in wickedly cold, strong wind to see the last couple sights on my list … going to the top of the tower in the church for city views. Sufficient to call it The Church because it’s the tallest thing in the old part of Reykjavik by a long shot, and it’s the one thing you can see from miles away. Locals will direct you around town using that feature as your compass (walk toward the church, walk north of the church, etc.) Here are some views ... such a pretty city, I think.

Next I wanted to check out the “culture house” which is the former national library where there was an exhibit on ancient manuscripts, some of the collection is on loan from Denmark. That was a worthy experience for me. Icelanders are very keen on their sagas, or “eddas,” which are epic tales kept alive mostly by a very strong oral story-telling tradition. Sometimes they’re written down and illustrated. Their illustration style, which is fairly consistent, is unique and reminds me somehow of drawings in old fairy tale books … almost a subtle comical element.

In addition to viewing the old books, there was a room showing the Icelandic manuscript production process … how they made the paper-thin sheepskin pages (yeah, they’re animal skins, not plant-derived paper), how they made the ink dye of various colors and quill pens, insights into the life of a scribe and the physical ailments they tended to acquire, etc.

The old manuscripts have been a source of animosity between Denmark and Iceland regarding their ownership. A few decades ago, Denmark repatriated several of them to Iceland. The ceremony was recorded and you could watch it on a TV. The solemnity with which it was conducted gives you an idea of how seriously these items are respected and treasured in this culture. Here’s a photo I snapped of the television screen, showing the presentation the Danish made to the Icelanders of the largest manuscripts. Imagine having those things on your bookshelf ... a little light reading in bed before going to sleep, perhaps.

Unexpectedly, the top floor of the building contained a modern art exhibit. Though some of it was a bit too avant-garde for our little minds, we enjoyed it and were subsequently inspired to visit the national gallery to see their art exhibits. We felt the national gallery was a bit of a disappointment, but it was a small entrance fee, and of course that’s just our personal taste. My favorite part was looking out the upper level window at the swans gathered on a partially-frozen pond. And kind of a crazy thing we saw, was this guy striding across the pond, at first glance looking like Jesus walking on water. The ice didn’t appear to be very thick at all, and this illustration of faith in it rather impressed us.

And here's the kitty cat of the day, citizen of Reykjavik.

Then to our pub where we were crowned with St. Patrick’s day Guinness hats and beads while I swilled an undisclosed number of Kilkennys. One thing that amused me that I’ve never encountered in America and probably wouldn’t … I think we’re a little uptight about this kind of thing … every time I went to the Ladies room, there were men in it. They were just employees working … refilling toilet paper, getting bar supplies from the storage unit that was accessed through the full length mirror, which was actually a door, etc. But nobody paid any mind to anybody else, just business as usual; once one of the guys was chatting with one of the ladies telling her how Guinness is a very low-calorie beer (true), and that if she were to be on a diet she should drink Guinness. She was close to busting some seams on her leather pants … I wondered if he was giving her a hint or just unaware that’s a pretty stupid thing to say to a girl. She didn’t seem put out.

And THEN … we were walking back through the city to go “home,” when I looked up at the sky and noticed what I first thought were airplane contrails. But as I studied how they moved yet never dissolved, and then discerned a pale green hue, I began to suspect an aurora. A minute later, a girl from across the courtyard (we were walking in front of The Church) shrieked into the night, “Look, it’s the northern lights!” (in English) Goosebumps rose up underneath my sweaters and heavy coat and scarf.

Let me give a wee bit of back story. The Northern Lights is something on my Top 10 list of things to see and has been there for ages. When I saw this great deal to Iceland, though I’ve always wanted to see the island, the first thing that went through my head was “northern lights.” So it was a huge motivating factor in booking this trip. We’d been in Iceland since Tuesday morning, it was now Sunday and we were leaving the following Tuesday night. We had checked the aurora forecast (solar flare activity) every day to find disappointing numbers of 1 or 2 out of 9, meaning very quiet on the sun, and hence no lights. So I was quite surprised to see those lines above the church. We hurried back to the hotel and asked the front desk staff about it. We said we thought we’d seen a trace of them and wondered if we drove out of town if we’d see them better. (we already presumed this and had done so the night before with no luck, but decided to double check) The guys said, “Yes! It’s the best forecast of the year! You should go out.” This seemed highly improbable to me given the “2” on both aurora forecast websites. “They just changed it,” the hotel guys said.

So we grabbed some camera gear and extra clothes and bee-lined to a place we’d already scoped out in our driving as a good candidate for watching – a ski area not too far out of town. And there, I got to cross off another item from my list, lucky little devil that I am. That makes 5 crossed off of my Top 10. Green lights on St. Patrick’s day could hardly be more appropriate. I can’t really gauge Erik’s reaction to and assessment of the experience because I was so overwhelmed by my own. I squealed like a pig in excitement (no joke, I really did) and was jumping up and down outside with glee. It was so cold that we spent a lot of time inside the truck … the lights sort of come and go – they’ll be filling the sky very brightly and morphing quickly into discreet shapes and lines, and then they sort of dissolve into a general green mist. Sometimes they wavered almost like a curtain of light in the sky. During those misty times we’d sit in the car waiting for them to build up again into shapes and then go outside.  I can see why people get addicted to tracking them … such a tiny little taste, I definitely am not satiated. My photos didn’t turn out well, as I was woefully unprepared for the shooting conditions and got frustrated trying to operate the camera, so I just gave up. Honestly, it's one of the few occasions I'm not really even bummed I didn't get photos, because they can't remotely capture the feeling of having this light fill the sky above and all around you. (Though now I'm super inspired to see them *again* and be better equipped to photograph them!) But here are a few glimpses anyway of what we got in our cameras. The big white thing is the moon. 

So here’s what happened:  it turns out that on Friday an unexpected large flare (coronal mass ejection) happened on the sun but it took until Sunday to reach Iceland, and the forecasts hadn’t been adjusted. It arrived during the daytime, unfortunately, but fortunately we caught them just as darkness fell, so we had the maximum time available to see them, which turned out to be only a couple hours, before they faded away. We talked to some folks the next day on our travels up north who described an incredible display, illustrating that the further north you go, the more intense. But I’m just pleased as the fruitiest, sweetest punch that I got to witness them at all. Mission accomplished.

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I’ve been through longer tunnels ... in South Africa we spent 12 minutes on a train in complete darkness in a tunnel. I think it was the lights inside this one that made me so aware that I was traveling underneath the ocean for 6 kilometers. While Erik was preoccupied being confounded by the GPS that appeared ('twas an illusion) to work far underground (“that’s not possible!” “GPS’s just don’t work underground!” “it’s impossible!”), I was preoccupied with thinking about all that weight of the water above me, waiting to crush me in an instant. This tunnel was taking us across a narrow finger of ocean so we could access the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. We thought we would check out the national park centered around a volcano in the middle of the peninsula. That didn’t work out, in the end, but no matter. It was a beautiful drive. Here is the Snaefellsjökull volcano looming ahead of us.

I’ve taken more photographs out the car window and through the windshield while driving (well, as the passenger being driven … I’m not one of those people multi-tasking while driving) than on any other trip by like an order of magnitude. The landscape is so striking. The more so because of the snow that fell on our first full day here, the day we walked the glacier. The black volcanic rock in contrast with the white snow is just lovely. Particularly when you throw in a bright blue sky. 

I think the little gate in the left foreground is so random and cute beneath the massive black cliffs. 

Much of the flat land in the country is covered in lava fields … huge stretches of lava in the slow process of being broken down by moss and weather into soil. The shapes of the rocks in this process of decomposition are absolutely fantastical. I could have spent a whole afternoon just romping through lava fields and marveling at their crinkly craggly convoluted uber-trippy shapes. 

Here’s a close-up of some of the more advanced plant life on this particular lava field. 

I like how the church in this photo looks like it’s in a diorama. I think this look is due to the two rocks in the foreground. With my 250mm lens on my camera, I couldn’t get past a large foreground; at first I was frustrated and switched to the G9. But in the end, I actually rather like this diorama effect.

This is an old volcano, rather small that was then cut into to quarry the rocks. Erik is walking up the remains of the quarry, along the edge of the volcano’s caldera. From here I snapped the photo of the clouds … they were very interesting during our stay in that they moved into an area with a defined line, quite like an army would, at least in the ancient days of battle. Seldom, if ever, was there a gradual building of wisps or cottonball clumps, just this advancing line.

The landscape is dotted with tiny little churches set at the bottom of huge mountainsides. I asked one of our hotel staff about the churches, as there are so many and they are so itty-bitty, I wondered if each one had a minister. Apparently, one minister might have as many as 8 or 10 churches under his direction. Nearly all Icelanders belong to the national church, which is evangelical-Lutheran. I don’t even know what that compound label means, but that’s what the sign said in the big church in the middle of Reykjavik. In about 1000 AD the ruler of Iceland at the time decided that for the harmony of the country, all citizens should follow the same religion, and so all Icelanders were mandated by law to be baptized into Christianity.

Many of the churches are only used for special occasions such as weddings, funerals, holidays, etc. I started referring to them as 3-, 4- or 5-window churches, in reference to the number of windows along the congregation section (behind the steeple). Five-window churches are the big boys. 

All the graveyards we looked at contained graves spanning a large width of time. Usually dates on tombstones ranged from the early- to mid-1800s all the way up into the 2000s.

This is a church built in 1703 and rebuilt in 1848 through the efforts of a local woman who was adamant that its disrepair be remedied. For some reason, the church elders didn’t want the church rebuilt, but support grew with the local population and they contributed funds for its repair. The official church council of the country made a point to put a plaque on the new church explicitly declaring it was rebuilt without the support of the church elders. I think this is funny that they felt compelled to officially express their disapproval.

What I think is so charming about the insides of these tiny churches is that they even find room for a choir loft. The choir is probably only the neighbor, Thor, and his wife and two cousins. I wish I could witness a service inside one.

After driving through the middle of the peninsula over a high pass and around the whole coastline, we headed home. When the sun sets behind the ocean, it’s a giant disc. I've seldom witnessed a sun so sharply defined in shape, just this crisp disc, like a monstrous penny thrown out from one of the volcanoes onto the horizon.

I had brought a couple beers with us from our duty-free shopping spree sitting in our hotel mini-fridge, figuring we’d find a spot at the end of the day to enjoy them. We found this little half-frozen waterfall just off the highway down a nondescript dirt road, where we looked out across the deep blue ocean. The water here is always the prettiest color. Though the sun had already set, dusk lasts forever here … the time between when the sun goes down and when it gets dark seems inordinately long. So we sat in the dusk enjoying our Icelandic beverages, toasting the end of another lovely day.

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