Ísland - Iceland

ÍSLAND - ICELAND

It was quite late when we touched down in Reykjavík. Greenland is two hours behind Iceland and three behind the UK. Lucy was reluctant to take off her Greenland badge as she loved it so much, and pretended that she couldn’t find the Icelandic one. But I knew where it was.

Lucy’s Second Capital City - Reykjavík 

Although she had a two-night stop-over in Iceland on her way to Greenland, she considers that to be part of the journey to Nuuk where her ‘Capital Cities Adventure’ began. So she is counting this visit to Reykjavík as her second capital city. I hope you can understand her logic. 

The statue of Arnarhóll Arnarhólstraðir looks out over the harbour

According to the Book of Settlements he and his crew were the first permanent settlers in Iceland. He called it Reykjavík, Smoke City, after the steam rising from the hot springs. This is Lucy’s fourth visit to Reykjavik and I wrote a lot about it in her blog when she did her ‘Viking Cycling Adventure’ two year’s ago. www.lucysgrandvikingtour.blogspot.com so I won’t repeat what I wrote then. She also came here in January last year to see what it was like in the winter. So what she has done on this visit is take photos of things and places that she has seen in contrasting  weather conditions. 

Sólfar, Sun Voyager - Late Spring - May 2019

In the Summer - August 2017

And in the winter - January 2018.

 She needed her Icelandic sweater and I’m not sure why she wasn’t wearing her hat. Maybe she took it off for the photo?

Skogafoss, Skeiðarársandur, Jökulsárlón and Seljalandsfoss

Friday 31st May 2019

A 14-hour bus trip along the south coast and back.

Lucy learnt a lot about the geology of Iceland during the day and we stopped to look at waterfalls, volcanos, glaciers, and a glacier lagoon. 

The sun came out for our first stop at the waterfall Skogafoss, one of the locations for ‘Game of  Thrones’. 

The glacier, Skeiðarárjökull

Another stop was at Skeiðarásandur, a vast outwash plain of sand deposited by the flash floods after volcanic eruptions melted the glacier, Skeiðarárjökull 

The waterfalls were frozen in January and the countryside looked very different when it was covered in snow.

Jökulsárlón - The Glacier Lagoon

Jökulsárlón - The morning sunshine didn’t last long and it was very cold and windy at the lagoon but we sat and watched seals swimming past. 

There was also a colony of arctic tern nesting near the lagoon. They have one of the longest migratory routes of all animals, flying up to 90,000 kms each year. When winter begins in the Arctic, they fly south to the Antarctic, so  they have two summers each year and experience more daylight than any other bird. Each bird travels an estimated 2.4 million kilometres during its life. 

Driving back to Reykjavík 

On the journey back to Reykjavík we went through the narrow strip of farming land between the sea and the mountains on the South Coast. I was told that the green houses in this area produce salad crops for Reykjavík and are heated by hot water from the geothermal springs. They are also grow barley here. There is also a fertile area in the north where hay, potatoes, and turnips are grown. But little else is grown here and most food stuff has to be imported. 

After the bleakness of Greenland it was strange to see farms, green fields, wild flowers and sheep grazing by the roadside. 

Although this fertile strip only lasted for about 30 kms out of a round-trip of over 760 kms. Much of the rest was covered in ash and debris from volcanic eruptions. And looked like this. 

One of the sheep told Lucy that the farmers let them and their lambs loose for the summer when they roam freely in the highlands for about 4 months. Jim has told me that this is called transhumance, the moving of livestock from one place to another grazing ground in a seasonal cycle. As winter approaches farmers on horse back round them up, herd  them into a central compound and sort them by their tags. 

As we drove along I reflected on how different this road had looked in January. Then there was only about 3 hours of daylight instead of the 21 hours that we have now. 

On a four-wheel drive bus going back to Reykjavík on the same road in January 2018

Lucy’s last day in Reykjavík 

Saturday 1st June 2019

Lucy was shattered after the long bus journey yesterday and the plane on Thursday, so she had a very leisurely last day in Iceland. After lunch at the Skiline Bar overlooking the bay, she strolled around to re-visit some of her favourite places and had an early night. She had to be up very early in the morning to get the bus to the airport for the flight to Norway. 

She went to sleep dreaming about how lucky she was to have seen both the Midnight Sun last week in Greenland and the Northern Lights when she was here during the winter last year. 

Aurora Borealis - Northern Lights photographed when we were here in January 2018. 

When she was here in January she drove out of Reykjavík late at night with Dagmar, who she met in 2017. She swam in a naturally heated lagoon, looking up at the stars and surrounded by snow covered mountains. Then she  had a traditional Icelandic meal and finished the night by watching the aurora borealis. 

She really is lucky. 

Next stop Bergen ........