Postcards from Iceland

8/17
We're off to Iceland. We've been there before. We're going for more awesome scenery and deep culture. The scenery is courtesy of plate tectonics: As Eurasia and North America separate, they form the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Iceland is the MAR above sea level, thus the volcanoes. Culturally, Iceland has been a democratic society since 930. People get along, and one civilizing influence is the Hávamál, a 1000 year old poem giving rules to live by. The Hávamál is the Tao of the Norse. Enjoy it with us.

8/18
It's great to be back in Europe, though we're not even 50 km onto the plate yet. The white building is our B & B tonight, located near the red symbol on the map. The snow and glaciers looming above are on the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Recall, it erupted in April 2010, spewing ash clouds that interrupted air traffic in northern Europe for 6 days. Will we get a decent night's sleep, or lie awake worried about the next round of lava bombs? Have you ever experienced jet lag???

8/19
Iceland has a problem: Large glaciers on active volcanoes. Volcano erupts; melts glacier; water rushes to the sea. In 1996 an eruption along a 1+ km fault below the Vatnajökull ice sheet created an enormous lake under it. After a month the water lifted the glacier, releasing 50,000 m3/s of water, moving at 9 km/h; it emptied in 36 hrs. House-size icebergs wiped out two bridges - we drove an hour over black gravel between them. Such jokulhlaups occur several times a century.

8/20
Want a 1000 year old ice cube for your drink? Stop by Jökulárlón, where the Breiđamerkurjökull glacier conveniently calves bergs of all sizes and shapes. When they're small enough to float free, the current carries them to the ocean. The intense blue results from the glacier compressing the air out of the ice. Stripes indicate past ash falls from volcanoes. Birds and seals are common, but the best sights are the patterns of light in the ice.

8/21
We've spent 2 nights in Seyᵭisfjörᵭur, a charming village of 650 at the eastern edge of Iceland. Located at the end of a long fjord, Seyᵭisfjörᵭur's was the center of last century's herring fishery. Houses from that time came from Norway in kit form. The steep glacier-carved walls on both sides of town mean two things: avalanches happen often (the bent steel from a factory destroyed in 1996 is a memorial) and waterfalls are everywhere (our B & B is above the red building). Cute isn't it? We put it together ourselves.

8/22
Iceland has lots of water and lava cliffs for it to fall over. So, waterfalls are ubiquitous. There are big falls and bigger falls that don't fit in one picture; falls you see from the front and from the back; falls you hike to that are so important they have understudy falls; falls complete with columnar basalt back drops; and falls for every wide spot in the road. One day we saw a falls that "blew up," meaning the wind caught it and vaporized it before it fell.

8/23
As we've mentioned, Iceland is the part of the Mid Atlantic Ridge above sea level - the place where the Eurasian and North American plates separate. Today we saw it! We didn't watch it, because its way too slow, but we walked over it (Krafla Volcanic System). Steam vented from N-S trending fissures. According to recent temperature measurements we were closer to the magma (2.1 Km below us) than we were to our parked car. It was fascinating and beautiful.

8/25
Iceland adopted Christianity by vote! At the Allthing (original parliament) in AD 1000, about half of the land owners wanted Norse Gods (Odin and pals); about half wanted Christianity. The speaker worried the issue for 24 hours in his tent. Emerging, he said he had a fair compromise. If everyone agreed to abide by it, he'd say it. They voted to abide. "Iceland will become Christian; all Norse believers will be respected." Adopting Christianity personally, the speaker tossed his Norse icons into this falls on his way home from the meeting.

8/26
Continuing our 2015 World Tannery Tour, we went to Sauᵭárkrókur to the Gestastofa Sútarans tannery to learn about fish skin tanning. (Morocco it was not!) Using a new process, waste skins from the food industry (perch, cod, salmon, wolffish) are cleaned, dried, softened, dyed and sold to the haute couture trade. Salmon skin from this family-owned tannery is water- proof (duh!), colorfast and washable, explaining its recent "world's best leather" award. They tan other hides and strange specialty requests!

8/28
We drove around Iceland's Westfjords; 86% of visitors don't, and that's a mistake. The road follows the edge of the fjords, so it's like a ladybug walking the edge of an oak leaf. But the scenery is gorgeous in the rain, in the sun, looking down the glacier carved fjords, or across the water at the farm on an island. Villages - Patreksfjörᵭur, ĺsafjörᵭur and Suᵭureyri - are charming, with tidy streets and houses pressed to the wall. Dolphins cavort, and seals laze. We just stared slackjawed.

8/30
Recall we visited L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, to see the Viking settlement from ca. 1000. According to the Icelandic sagas, Gudrid gave birth there to a son, Snorri Þorfinnsson. He is the first person born in the Americas of European parents. Snorri lived most of his life in Iceland, and is buried at Glaumbær. We agree with the designer of his monument that his Viking mother deserves as much recognition as he does.

8/31
One irony of ICEland is that hot water bubbles up all over the island. A sensible Icelandic response: use it. It's piped under the sidewalks in Reykjavik, under the floors in houses. And it's a daily national ritual to soak in it. We loved the thermal pools at Mývatn and Gamla Laugin (Secret Lagoon), which is Iceland's oldest (1891). So important is soaking, Hofsós, a town of 180, treated itself to a designer pool! Soaking makes for a great vacation.