A Land of Ice and Fire

Full disclosure: Iceland is a wonderful place. Seriously. Go visit.

You might think that with a name like ICEland, we'd be ready for the cold. You might also think that we wouldn't plan a 500km drive on unfamiliar roads right after a late night flight that only lasted 4 hours, 3 of which were spent not sleeping. If you thought such things, you'd be wrong.

The idea originally was that Iceland would be a nice place to visit if things worked out, so it went on the list of countries to visit if it's not out of the way. It turns out that the cheapest way to get from Halifax to London is via Iceland, and so we decided to make a week of it, driving around what's called the 'ring road', and catching up with some of the sights.

The first day is a haze, so there aren't any photos. Primarily because I was driving, Anna was sleeping, and we didn't stop anywhere along the way, except for me to snatch an hour or so snooze. Also the weather was atrocious, and neither of us felt like braving the elements for a picture of fog.

Vatnajökull is a ridiculously large glacier that covers more than 8% of the whole Icelandic landmass. There are a bunch of volcanoes underneath it. We decided to see one edge of the glacier as it flows towards the sea, into a lagoon. Behold, Jökulsárlón:

Thank goodness for those jackets.

There were a whole lot of people there, just hanging out, taking photos. Also there were a whole lot of birds:

Arctic Terns (I'm pretty sure). We'll get back to those in a sec.

A Skua contemplating the meaning of life. Probably someone else's life.

Some sort of duck, and her friends.

Another one of the lagoon, just because.

The lagoon is visible from the main road. It flows into the ocean a couple of hundred metres downriver, so icebergs that are small enough float down the river into the ocean, and are promptly washed back on shore.

They're kind of slippery. And kind of large.

Anyway, back to the arctic terns. There were heaps of them, filling the skies as they swooped down to catch little fish in the river, then flew back to their nests, which were just sitting there in a field by the car park. I wondered idly how they protected themselves from predators, if they're all nesting there. Walking back to the car we found out.

Nathan, if you're reading this, you may want to skip the next paragraph.

It turns out that they dive-bomb. Not actually dropping things (that'd be silly) but more like kamikaze pilots. Birds started making angry sounding noises at us, and flying towards us in a threatening manner. Our stroll back to the car park became a run, as innumerable terns attempted to see who could swoop closest to our heads. Despite our waving arms, one managed to get through our defences and took a nip/scratch out of my scalp. I suppose being a taller target, I was the one to get that particular souvenir. No photos of that, you'll be pleased to hear.

The next day we drove to a little town in a fjord called Stöðvarfjörður. What are those fancy letters there that look like a cross between a d and a t? We had the same question. Apparently it sounds like the th in them. The other fancy letter that they use is the þ seen in words like þingvellir. It's also a th sound, although it's a th as in thistle.

This is what much of the coast looks like. Rugged as.

Struggling to eke a living out of the land.

There are countless waterfalls dribbling over the edge of the plateau, most nameless.

The weather was pretty terrible, if we're honest, at least for this part of the trip, so apart from driving, and injuring myself on the head again, we didn't do much, until we got to Akureyri.

We stayed in this room for a couple of nights.

Because of the way we'd scheduled our itinerary, we backtracked a bit. Here are the highlights of the north of Iceland:

Goðafoss. (foss means waterfall. True story)

That lake is actually a powder blue colour. Also, not for swimming in.

F road.

We took one of the F roads to try to get to see one of the larger, more spectacular waterfalls, and it took us an hour or so of this driving through terrain like this. It would have been spectacular if we could see anything.

At the end of the road, we came out next to a place called Ásbyrgi. The guide said it was a horseshoe shaped canyon. Boring we thought. We were wrong. It also had biting insects! And sunlight (finally) which warmed our hearts and bones as we wandered along a path, past vertical rock walls and spindly trees to this spot:

Tiny people for scale.

Bigger person for scale.

The thing about Iceland is that during the summer, the sun never really sets, only goes into an extended twilight, and sort of comes out of it again at 'dawn' at around 2am. We decided that there were enough sunlight hours to see that spectacular waterfall we'd driven along the F road to see.

Because it had been raining for a while, the trail to the viewing area was damp.

I was there, see?

Here's one from the drive back, just showing how strange the landscape really is. I kept thinking that this is what Mars will look like if it's ever terraformed, with all the stunted plants and rocky scenery:

This will have to do for the first instalment - stay tuned for more Iceland soon! Hopefully.