Day 3: Monday
This day was all about Jökulsárlón. A glacier lake at the foot of the glacier Breiðamerkurjökull, it is filled with ice floes calved off the glacier, and is otherworldly. Just shortly before we got to the main entrance, there were a couple of small pullouts along the road. Gwen saw something through a low spot in an embankment and told me to pull over. So I did. We climbed to the top of the embankment and it was a “holy shit!” moment. We walked around on top for a while, climbed down, and walked along the water’s edge. Then we drove the rest of the way to the main entrance and walked along the water there too. We wandered quite a way along the shore, until we were out of earshot of everything, and sat down to listen to the sound of ice melting.
The lake is one of the most extraordinary visual experiences of my life. Any description would be inadequate.
We eventually made our way back, and saw a Duck tour putting into the water, and a couple of tour operators with inflatable boats taking them out without passengers. Back at the snacks-n-trinkets shop, we had surprisingly good cappuccinos. Then we drove down to the point where the lake opens into the ocean and walked along the beach.
We headed back to the hotel, and stopped at Dveghamrar, the “Dwarf Cliffs.” These are columnar basalt formations that have some kind of dwarf-related folk tale to go along with them.
Day 4: Tuesday
This day was mostly about our trip to Vatnajökull National Park, where we did a fair amount of hiking. We saw numerous waterfalls, including the famous Svartifoss, which is ringed by another columnar basalt formation. There were extraordinary views of mountains, glaciers, the plains below. After we did some hiking at altitude, we decided to see if we could work our way around to a glacier tongue at ground level. That wasn’t in the cards (it might have been possible, but would have taken a long hike), and the weather started turning from sunny to blustery, do we headed back. We did get to see some ptarmigans, which were surprisingly indifferent to our presence. Apparently they are capable of flight, but the one that wanted to get away from us just ran straight ahead. Not the smartest bird.
So far, the only wildlife we’ve seen has been avian. No mammals, hardly any insects, even. We might have seen scat from some kind of mammal while hiking, but that’s it.
Day 5: Wednesday
This day, when I am writing this installment, has mostly been a travel day—we’re going to a different hotel about halfway back to Reykjavik.
Our first stop was at Dyrhólaey, a high rocky outcropping on the ocean that in warmer weather is an important nesting ground for birds. And there were plenty of seabirds wheeling around the there today. Mostly we looked at the rocky islands offshore, and the crashing waves.
We stopped next what is apparently the country’s best museum of handicrafts, in the town of Skógar. It has been a good day for indoor activity, because it’s been the first really rainy and cold day of our trip—we’ve been lucky enough to have pretty agreeable weather. We spent a goof while there, marveled at the hard lives of people who lived here not that long ago, and congratulated ourselves for having central heating and modern building materials. The museum had a cluster of old dwellings surrounding it, including several turf-covered homes, and the one thing that stood out is that none of these had any kind of heat source—no fireplace, no Franklin stove (in most of them, no stove period).
Our third stop was at Skógafoss, a big, thundering waterfall. We were able to approach close to where the water hits ground level, creating a spray that rises about three stories, and then we climbed to the top on a staircase provided for that purpose. Between the rainfall and the waterfall spray, I got pretty wet (Gwen wisely wore her rainpants). We were not far from our destination for the day, the town of Hvolsvöllur. Which is where I am writing these words.
Aside
I am continually intrigued by the idea of a country whose total population is less than that of St. Louis’, making it barely equivalent to the 60th-largest city in the USA. But despite that, it maintains all the mechanisms of a modern nation-state: it has its own currency, national government, diplomatic corps, road network (despite having one of the lowest population densities in the world), etc. And despite the obvious influence of American popular culture, the country has its own language, literature, music scene, movie industry, etc.
Of course, things are different. There are national highways that are gravel roads. Highway 1, the ring road that encircles most of the country, is frequently interrupted by one-lane bridges that have no traffic-control measures other than the common sense of motorists. None of the national parks that we have visited charge any admission, or even have a way to keep people out if the government decides to start. Some sites are on privately held farms, and tourists are apparently welcome to let themselves in–we climbed over a stile into a sheep pasture to get access to a waterfall.