Our trip Episode 7 (22nd August 2007)

Our trip Episode 7 (22nd August 2007)
Along route 1 we came across the waterfall Gođafoss (Waterfall of the Gods). It got this name as it is believed that the law speaker Þorgeir, in the year 1000 after he had been at the meeting of the AlÞing (parliament) when Christianity had been accepted as the National religion, passed this way on his return home. He pondered here at the falls for some time then threw all this wooden idols of gods into the falls, so that is why they have been so named. Or so the sagas say: With this attraction being just beside route 1, the route around the Island there was a crowd of people here. We have travelled very little along this route.
And so we continue with churches. It seems that every village thinks theirs is special, but some are more special than others. This next one I’m about to mention is up a narrow valley that leads back up onto an Icecap. There was once a monastery here back before the reformation when the whole country was Catholic. Now, instead of a monastery there is an Agricultural college.
This church is built of red stone cut in shape and size about that of a concrete block. These stones were quarried from a hill right behind the village. The only red stone work now to be seen is on the front of the church and around the side doors, the rest is painted white but I’m not sure if there is stone or something else beneath that paint.
When we entered we were met by a very friendly woman who conducted us on a tour of the church and pointed out many things of interest. The Altar piece is from around 1520 and was presented to the church by the last Catholic bishop. It is made of Cherrywood and oak and has hinged wings so that it can be closed like a box. It is painted both inside and out with religious themes. The bible on display was the first translated into the Icelandic language and printed in the village in 1584. It is in remarkably good condition. It is also the main reason the Icelandic language has survived, if this had not been translated then they would only have had bibles in Danish and so everything else would have been in that language too. An alabaster altar piece made in Nottingham in 1470 now hangs on a side wall; it used to hang over the entrance to the chancel. In a separate bell tower hang 3 bells each one from a different year between 1784 and 1885.
I asked the lady what language Icelandic is most like and she really couldn’t tell me, what she did say was this; the Norwegian, the Swedes and the Danish all claim that they cannot understand Icelandic, yet these are the languages that it is derived from. I expect that in its way it is a bit like English with its Greek and Latin derivations but still a different language. Most of these Icelandic names I have no idea of how they are pronounced, they are just a jumble of consonants with a vowel of two thrown in for good measure. In their good sense most of these people have learnt English so that they can communicate with the rest of the world, plus it makes it easier for tourists.
I must at this point add a note on the lovely toilets we had encountered over the last few days. They are always very clean and heated with a sink with hot and cold running water, just the opposite to those composting ones that stank terribly and were bitterly cold in Norway.
We went up to a remote village, Siglufjordur, to see a herring museum; it was closed despite a number of signs stating its opening hours. It may have been due to a funeral that was in progress as we had to wait on the far end of a single lane tunnel for the funeral procession to pass. The Icelanders have wiped out the herring in their waters; they overfished it back in the 1960’s till there was nothing left. They are not good at protecting anything. Even with their current fishing quotas the fish stocks are dwindling, quotas are too high apparently. The little game bird the Ptarmigan is endangered and can only now be found in certain places and if one strays from the protected area then it’s likely to be eaten. Some of the duck species are still hunted along with the puffins and eggs of several species. Should some poor unsuspecting polar bear arrive on shore here by mistake then it is promptly killed. Whaling for both scientific and commercial purposes takes place. Here and Norway and Japan are all hunting whales and now they seem to be decreasing again in numbers in the North Atlantic.
When we were camped at Siglufjordur our neighbours in a motor home invited us in for breakfast even though we had just finished ours. They were an elderly couple and were part of a large group of motor homes all travelling together. They lived not very far away really and could easily have made a day journey to this place but instead had made it into quite an event. Would not like to be stuck behind this lot of motor homes on these narrow roads: Neither of this couple spoke any English whatsoever so our conversation was very limited; must be the only people in the country not to speak any English at all: still it was nice of them and they offered us some lovely sandwiches and a local pastry something on the lines of a doughnut but with a twist.
Some of the campsites have really good amenities and others offer only a simple toilet. Sometimes there is a clothes washer and dried available for use at no extra cost, it’s just there in a separate room for use by all. In some of the showers there is a hair dryer hanging up to be used if necessary. The heating is always on, well, its not really warm enough for it not to be on but in lots of places a camping site would not have heated amenities. Hot water is another thing there seems to be in ample supply.
The city of Akureyri is one of the largest population centres in Iceland, around 15000. It sits near the head of a fjord and for some reason has a quite mild climate. So much so that there are many large trees in the gardens and everyone has a lovely colourful flower box or two out front of their homes. There is even a lovely botanical gardens founded in 1912 by a local woman’s group. Here, we saw plants from many different places including New Zealand. They try to grow anything they possibly can so plants from either high latitudes or high altitudes can be found here. There are lovely flower gardens full of annuals and perennials and in full bloom still. They are very pretty with pansies, petunias, snapdragons, and a whole array of colourful bloom. Really large spruce and other conifer trees from North America and Europe and another tree that I am familiar with but can’t put a name to, and nowhere could I find one with a name plaque. Most of the plants did have name plaques but not all the trees. The plaques gave the Latin name, the local name and usually, but not always the country or origin.
The big church here was designed by the same man who did the one in Reykjavik. It has a bit of a similar look about it. Some lovely stained glass windows inside and a model sailing boat hanging from the ceiling: This reflects old Nordic traditions of a votive offering to protect those at sea. The central stained glass window in the chancel was once in Coventry Cathedral in England and survived WW2 bombing.
Yet another church we saw was built in the Romanesque style. This time I had to go in search of the key and eventually came back with it. This church is painted white with trim in maroon; it has a small onion dome on top. Inside is quite simple with a gallery upstairs that looks down upon the nave and altar. No fancy stained glass here just plain windows with a couple of red panels. The rounded ceiling is patterned in squares just as you would expect to find in a Romanesque style. There were just 2 bells in the bell tower.
Out side the famer had cut the pasture and was raking prior to making silage bales. The short summer season is nearly over here now, the migrating birds have mostly left, and there are not as many tourists about, apparently. To me, there seems to be plenty about still, hire cars everywhere, especially ones like our little Toyota yaris, when we park it we often come back and find that it has multiplied, nothing unusual to see 3 or 4 all the same colour parked side by side. Just have to watch and see which one’s lights flash when you press the key. Then there are the foreign cars that have come over by ferry, plenty of 4WD’s both hire ones and foreign ones, and motorhomes. And of course there are the cyclists: Out in droves they are; some are alone, others in groups from 2 to 6 all loaded up to the hilt with gear or towing little trailers. Up and down the mountains they go, nothing seems to slow them.
We took a whale watching trip from the small town of Husavik. We just made the last one of the day, 5pm departure on what had been a beautifully warm sunny day, the very warmest we’d had here at 17C. Just after we left harbour a squall came across then the sea mist came in and we could not see very far at all. About 40 mins out of port they put a zodiac out with a crew of three to go in search of any whales but they had no success. I suppose there were about 40 passengers and we were all on the open deck of an old oak fishing vessel. There were plenty of warm clothes supplied in the form of bright orange waterproof and wind proof coats with hoods, warm wool lined overalls, wool caps, mittens and blankets so no one need be cold. We sat out there keeping our eyes peeled for any sign of movement for three hours in total but the only thing we saw were jelly fish. One of them was about 3ft across. I had not realized that jelly fish lived in such cold waters, I asked the captain the water temperature, he said approximately 8C on the surface, that’s the warm gulf stream, and much colder below, some arctic current. No, Lyn is not about to leap in for a swim here. It was fairly rough with about a 3m swell so the little boat was pitching nicely. Only a couple of people were seasick thank goodness. We had some lovely hot chocolate and a cinnamon roll on the way back but no sight of any whales. It was after 8pm when we got back into the harbour and the sun should have been still shinning as I’m sure it was above the thick cloud. Our tickets were endorsed so that we could use them at any time in the future for another trip because we hadn’t seen any whales or dolphin. We went along to the campsite just out of town and found that several of the others from the trip were camped there too. The next morning we went back for the morning trip at 9am. The weather hadn’t really looked much better but there wasn’t a low sea mist so visibility at sea level was much better.
This time there were many more people and we were on a bigger boat. As soon as we left harbour the sun broke through briefly and the cloud started to lift, soon we could see the headland across the bay. Within a few minutes we saw some white beaked dolphins. Not that Lyn could actually tell anyone what they looked like, all I saw were bodies, fins and tails, no real detail. There were at least 3 of them, one was a baby and at one point they passed right under our boat, we were barely moving at the time. Mothers with young don’t often come that close to the boat.
Some way further out into the bay and we could see the small island of Flatey where there was once a fishing village, now some of the houses are used as summer cottages but no-one lives there permanently any more. While we were all looking at that suddenly a whale blew, then another: We got some really good views of them, the length of their bodies and their flukes (tails) as they dived. These were hump backed whales, and each one has a different pattern on the underside of their flukes, judging by that there were at least 4 different whales around us. They came within 10m of us many times and crossed right under our bow. As the water is quite shallow in this area, about 200m they did not dive for more than 5 to 7 minutes then they would come up again, always in pairs it seemed, blow 3 or 4 times then dive again. They were great to watch. In the meantime the sun had come out and it was quite a nice morning, the sea almost flat. We were really pleased that we had waited and gone out the next opportunity, most people had not been able to do that.
While in the town we visited the Phallological museum; yes you have it right, its a museum of penises, now you are all really wondering just what the hell I’ve been drinking up here, but I tell you this is real, its a real museum in a real town, and we paid a real $10 ea to visit it. In all there are 257 specimens from 90 species, including trolls and merman. The troll one being of stone and well, I’m not sure just what the merman one was made of but it was green. They certainly come in a variety of shapes, long pointy ones, short pointy ones, some are quite rounded, some have bends and other have twists, bit like a cork screw. There were large ones from large mammals like whales and elephants, some from everyday domestic animals like bulls, horses, pigs, dogs etc, and the smallest I saw was a hamster, not very impressive at all. One horse penis had been smoked and was ready for eating, apparently it is quite the normal thing to do here, or at least it was in earlier centuries. Some were dried and made into lamp shades, others had been mounted on plaques and hung on the walls. There was a judges gravel made of wood but in a phallic shape. After all that when we went outside again the first thing I looked up and saw was the church steeple, another phallic symbol!
We have been lucky with bugs. I had expected them to be bad like they were in Canada and Siberia but we have had very few, now we were to plunge right into them at lake Mývatn. At this place they were some little bug that looks a bit like a mozzie but doesn’t bite, it just loves to get in your eyes and up your nose. It was so thick in places that all I could see was a black cloud. I think we have missed the other bugs it being a bit late in the season. Fortunately for us they seemed to be in just a few places right near the lake shore and amongst the twisted dwarf birch trees, blueberry bushes and tundra tufts. Earlier in the season they would have been much worse.
This is an area of much volcanic activity, not all of it in the dim and distant past either. The Krafla volcanic area erupted in a fissure several k’s long just before Christmas 1975, and is expected to do so again at some point in the not too distant future. There is a walk around this fissure and over the last lava flows. There are some small steam vents puffing away and fluoro yellow sulphur crystals have formed here and there from the steam. Sometimes it is most odd how lava flows, in one small area it has completely missed a small steep slope, its gone over the top and along the bottom but missed the side; red soil and some plants are growing nicely there. The lava seems mostly of the crinkly aerated aa type, but there is some of the thicker more ropey pohoehoe type. In a dip there is a small pool of milky turquoise coloured water and a couple of glugging mud pools on the edge with the strong smell of sulphur all prevailing. I could have spent hours wandering around here, I just loved the place but the weather very quickly changed and started to rain; by the time we got back to the car a couple of k’s away we were quite wet and cold.
In another area there are some pastel shaded hills; they are this colour from the small steaming vents that are scattered about the hillsides and in the gullies. The sulphur from these vents colour the soil so that you get soft pinks and fauns as well as the bright fluoro green of the sulphur crystals. Below these hills there is a small area of bubbling mud pools and more steaming vents. Here the fumarole gas (hydrogen sulphide) smell is overpowering. To me it smells quite like ‘pigs in mud’, a piggery smells much the same. The mud is thin and a murky grey/green colour and it is bubbling away quite nicely, some pools have really big glugs while other places have small ones.
We climbed up the scree slope of another crater Hverfell. Only about a 20 minute climb and from there we got a good view over the little town of Reykjahliđ and Lake Mývatn. Inside the crater was another small hill. We walked right around the top; about 3 k’s and got a good view in all directions. In the distance behind the pastel coloured hills we could see a high stream of steam. Later when we were at the Krafla area we found that this steam is coming from a bore hole that was drilled to supply the geothermal power station, but when the drill hit the steam pocket it was so strong that it exploded and parts of the drilling rig were discovered up to 3k’s away; no one was injured. It takes 17 bores to supply the geothermal power station, that one bore if it had been tapped successfully would have done the job by itself.
Another area we ambled about is called Dommubirgir. It is an area of lava pillars and caves. It is believed that the pillars are all that remain of what was once a dome covered lava dam. The lava dam burst, the dome roof collapsed but the pillars left standing were the vents and they had hardened before the dam burst. They are some of the most odd shapes imaginable and you can imagine all sorts of things from their shapes. We saw a stone troll, very appropriate for Iceland as they have many great myths about trolls. Very deep cracks in the lava too in places, would be quite easy to just disappear down one, so you have to watch were you walk. Considering it is only about 2000 years old it has broken down quickly and vegetation has become well established in some parts. There are plenty of the dwarf birch trees and some other plants, blueberries too.
Around the church in the village is a far more recent lava flow, from 1729 when the crater behind the church erupted. Lava came to within just a few metres of the church, then parted and flowed around it, the church was not damaged. The pulpit in the church is carved with a representation of that eruption, it is really nice. That lava flow now has mosses and some grasses growing on it, I have seen lava flows much older that look more recent because nothing is yet growing on the lava.
After our time exploring this fascinating area we drove up to the Jokulsarglufur National Park. This is the ‘Grand Canyon’ of Iceland, though I’m not sure why as its nots the deepest canyon in the country but the deeper one is only accessible by 4 x4 vehicles I believe. Anyway, here we saw one of the most famous waterfalls in Iceland, Dettifoss, sometimes touted as the Niagara of Iceland and it bears very little resemblance to that overrated falls. It is 100m wide, 45m high, and has 193 cubic metres of water per second going over it. Now what would that quantity of water do for our water crisis! In the spring melt the water volume increases considerably. There is another, much wider falls upstream 1.5k’s, that one, Selfoss varies from 6 to 12m high and sort of runs along the stream some way, not straight across. Yet another falls is 2k downstream, Hafragilsfoss, are 27m high but not near so wide. More falls are further downstream but unless you go hiking along the canyon you cannot see them. The canyon averages 100m deep and around 500m wide.
In one area at the northern, downstream end of the canyon there is a horseshoe shaped area and within that there is some lovely forest thick with birch trees, dwarf birch and lots of blueberry bushes. It is also home to a wide variety of birds but of course Lyn only got to hear them they didn’t stay still long enough for me to see. I did see the wigeons (a type of duck) on the little pond below the cliff. The fulmar (a small member of the albatross family) nest in the cliffs, approximately 1200 pairs: when the young leave the nest they have to walk to the coast as they are too fat to fly. They then live on the sea until they are light enough to fly. There are warning signs for motorists to look out for these youngsters, but, despite it being the right time of year, we didn’t see any.
In another area in the canyon we saw some basalt pillar formations. One especially odd, where the basalt pillars are horizontal, not vertical as is the most common. Basalt columns are formed at a 90 degree angle to the cooling lava, that is why they are normally vertical, horizontal ones form from intrusions or dykes (don’t ask, look it up on the internet then you will be as wise as I am, lucky you!). They are all usually hexagonal, the basalt columns that is, and they can be of varying thicknesses. In one cave we were looking at them end on and they looked like a lot of stone blocks, 6 unequal sides, mortared together; some had squiggles as decoration on the end. It was only when you looked at the side where bits had broken off that you could see they were horizontal columns laid one upon the other. When you stood in this cave it sounded as though the river was all around, like your ‘surround sound’ audio systems.
Another cave not far away was also made of the basalt columns but thinner ones, horizontal too, but looking as this line of exposed rock it appeared as if it had been pushed for either side and so made a wave pattern with only one end pushed high enough to form a cave under it. On a hill just around from the cave there was other rock on top of the basalt columns and high up on the side it looked as if someone had plastered a few square metres with plaster ½ a metre thick, mosses and lichen clung to this ‘plaster’ but the whole piece could fall off at any time, it was most odd.
Across this canyon there is a lava flow that is much older than the canyon itself. It is believed that the canyon formed in just a few days with water cutting right through that lava flow, some gigantic flood caused by a volcanic eruption under the ice.
© Lynette Regan 24th August 2007