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| Lowering Prinsendam's Gangway - early morning sun... |
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| Akureyri, Iceland |
Iceland - Land of Fire and Ice – is our next landfall.
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| Wide Valleys and Table Top volcanic mountains |
Trivia Facts…Iceland is about the size of Portugal; it has
330,000 Humans Inhabitants; 100,000 Islandic Horses, and about 500,000
Icelandic Sheep.
Humans, sheep and horses are all interrelated – (within
their species of course) and ‘pure-bred’ since a thousand years, making for unique
gene pools for scientists to study.
The Capital is Reykjavik, on the south-western Peninsular of
Iceland. The language is Icelandic, which has barely changed since the time the
great Viking Sagas were written over a thousand years ago. It is an independent
country and does not belong to the Eurozone. It elected the first ever female
president in the world, Vigdis Finnbogadottir. It does not have military
forces.
We docked in Akureyri, which means ‘field of sand banks’ –
akur ‘field’ and eyri ‘sandbank’. However, a large protected harbour gave rise
to a prosperous fishing industry since Danish Merchants settled in the 17th
century. Before that, Norsemen had lived here, with Viking Halgi Magri (the ‘skinny
one’) being one of the first in the 9th century. It now houses
18,000 residents, and thus is the second largest town in Iceland, with
Reykjavik, the Capital, being the larges.
It lies at the shore of the Longest Fjord, named
Eyjafjordur, in North West Iceland and is surrounded by bald mountains up to
1500 meters high. Albeit only 60 degrees south of the Arctic Circle, the
presence of the Gulf Stream keeps temperatures at a moderate level, with
summers reaching 25 degrees Celsius, and Winters boasting an average of 0
degrees Celsius. That does not mean balmy – as it snows AN AWFUL LOT! It should
be named Greenland, as the valleys are a sea of green meadows. Trees, the few
which grow here, are small, giving rise to the local saying: If you get lost in
an Icelandic Forest – just stand up.
After Iceland’s economic crash of 2008, which brought the
little country almost to its knees, all ‘red’ traffic lights in Akureyri were
converted to heart shapes, in order to cheer the populace on to a better future
(which seems to be actually happening as we speak).
The great outdoors beckon – winter and summer: Hiking,
cycling, skiing, whale watching, soaking in thermal hot springs, glacier and
volcano walking, horse riding and aurora borealis watching come to mind. Lots
of naturally heated pools in Icelandic towns; people go for a dip in the pool
and other countries go for an afternoon café or pub visit – one socializes
there.
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| Main Street |
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| 3200 Organ Pipes and 120 steps to get to them.... |
The town itself is quaint an easily walkable, except for the
120+ steps one has to climb to get to the modern House of God, which towers
above the City.
Many houses called ‘stone-tins’ are clad in metal, a mix of copper
and iron laid over wood, have survived weathering of a century.
The town seems to have a lively restaurant scene, using many
local ingredients (Iceland is self-sufficient in meat and dairy), not the least
of which are local trout and bacalao (halibut), and local lamb.
I am not so sure
about Hakkar (?) which is ‘rotten shark’. Apparently meat of this particular species
of shark is toxic when fresh. The resourceful Icelanders solve that problem, by
burying the meat for 8-10 weeks, then hanging it to dry for several months,
which gets rid of the toxicity and adds a nauseating odor of ammonia instead…If
they don’t drown everything in Bearnaise sauce, they will wash it down with a
CocaCola, Iceland being the number one consumer of that brand of pop.
After a leisurely lap around town, I joined a little group
to take a mini bus to ‘the hinterland’ and enjoying a first taste of the
wonders of Iceland. Just studying a map of Iceland, awakens curiosity to
explore this relatively small Island bursting at the seams with spectacular
scenery, deep fjords, glaciers, volcanoes, geysirs and aquamarine thermal
pools. And the scenery changes continuously, as it has since the first volcanic
outbreak giving birth to an infant Iceland erupted.
First stop: Godafoss Waterfall – translated into Waterfall
of the Gods. It has – like everything in Iceland – a saga behind it. The Viking chief, when faced about 1000 years
ago with a choice whether his people should stay within the pagan faith with
Thor, and Odin and Freya and a host of Norse Gods, or convert to Christianity
he went into a retreat and thought things over. Vikings being very smart
people, he decided that their economic bread was buttered better if they joined
the Christians. To show his determination, he took a statue of Thor and flung
it into the waters of Godafoss Waterfall to be forgotten forever. But he
relented only subject to three conditions, which were granted by the
Danes: The Icelanders may continue to
worship their Norse Gods in private without being molested, they may continue
to eat horse meat, and they may continue to abandon newborns, if their addition
to the family would endanger the family’s ability to survive the harsh local
living conditions.
Even today, the ‘state religion’ being Lutheran, Icelanders
are somewhat ‘commercial’ about their religious practices and do not take
churchgoing to seriously. I gather, some of the earlier conditions are no
longer followed, either.
From Water to Lava – next stop Dimmuyborgir Lava
formations.
Iceland sits astride the joint of the North American and
Euro-Asiatic Tectonic Plates, which drift apart about 2 cm per annum – enough
to make Iceland a ‘hotbed’ for volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. A visitor
learns that there are a host of different kind of ‘eruptions’: under water,
under glaciers, fissures, gas, mud, magna, steam, silica ashes….and the list
goes on and Iceland experiences them all.
Dimmuyborgir is a sample of red hot magna forming a lake of liquefied
rock over a water filled depression. When the upper and lower strata of the magma
solidify quickly, leaving the middle section liquid, the underlying water heats
up tremendously and pushes steam vents through all the lava and magma layers to
relieve pressure. The magma around the steam vents solidifies quickly as well,
leaving lava spires. After the still liquid magma disperses through
breakthroughs in solidified lava, it leaves unique lava formations behind
between the spires. Well, it’s easier to look at the pictures, than to explain
it.
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| How it looks like...compare to bottom drawing above.... |
Of course there is another Saga connected with this area,
one that claims that the ‘Yule Lads’ live here. These are thirteen notorious brothers,
whose parents, old Gryla and younger Leppaludi, were vicious trolls living in Lake Myvatn (of
blue lagoon thermal spring and pool fame). The thirteen brothers left home to
become independent here in Dimmuborgir. They would go out into surrounding villages
just before winter solstice (Yule Tide – Christmas) one at each different night
before December 24th, and the last one on Christmas Eve, and play
tricks on kids. If the kids were good, they would leave a small present in the
best shoe the kid had put on the windowsill for that purpose. They would leave
a raw potato if the kid was not so good. Sounds familiar? The names of the
thirteen lads are unpronounceable. However, locals get into the act nowadays,
and horridly dressed up Yule Tide Lads are creeping around town in droves
during the 13 nights before Christmas.
Not enough Lava yet? No problem, Iceland has lots of it. We
visited Mount Namafjall, site of Hveric (boiling) mud pools and listened to the
infernal burbling of a planet with indigestion – the sulphur odor emerging from
the innards ‘down below’ is overpowering.
A short stroll around Skutustadagigar pseudo craters showed
more evidence of ‘underwater eruptions’ with the remaining real lake being
alive with dozens of species of ducks and other water fowl.
And a quick glance into a ‘fissure eruption’ allowed a
glimpse into a ‘sub-fissure’ cave, location of a geothermally heated pool,
finished the short day – which surprised us with welcome warm sunshine – most
of the time….
But, with all that lava around, little flowers peek out from
between lava rocks…there is life!
