Day 9

We camped at Akureyr, on the edge of the village of Varmahlio. The camp sites are shady and rimmed with hedges and the bath house is super clean. A rafting guide scarecrow stands sentry at the outdoor wash up sinks. There is a blow up trampoline bag in the yard, sort of like a bouncy house without the walls.

We had a good conversation with the young manager of the family run campground and learned that out here in the country, neighbors car pool the kids to school instead of using school buses as we do in the United States, and they are paid for their services. When I asked what most folks grew and ate, he said that rural Icelanders eat lots of sheep and a few root crops. Mostly cool weather, short season crops. Only people with greenhouses grow things like beans and cukes and tomatoes. The people furthest out mostly heat and power their homes with small hydro-electric generators powered by the waterfalls at each farmstead.

Many Icelanders can heat their homes using hot water piped in from the big volcanic steam plants operated by the government water association. Taxes pay for this hot water heat and they are high, at 46%. With a scarcity of trees, wood heat is not an option. In the past people burned peat or driftwood but mostly just bundled up in woolly layers. It does not get as cold as you might expect in the winter, with lows hovering around the freezing mark, but the winds and damp can make it feel colder. They get more cold and snow in the North than in the south, but it can also get warmer up there in summer. The Gulf Stream comes close enough to even things out in the south.

There is also good cell phone service just about everywhere and very few landlines, since cell phones came into use before they had ever gotten to running phone wires. We almost always had good service and fast data available with our Google Fi cell phones on our trip and we paid nothing extra.

Glaumbaer, Day 10

In the morning we walked the paths around camp and then drove out to the Glaumbaer Museum.

Glaumbaer is a huge, rambling collection of turf houses that you can walk through with lots of history, old tools and stone or dirt floors. Every small room had a specific use and it is easy to imagine living there, with the muffled quiet of the thick peat walls and slanted sunlight coming in through the tiny windows cut into turf grass roofs.

The only room that was heated was the kitchen and that only by the open cooking fires. It must have been very smokey in there, but snug and protected from wind. There is obviously an art to laying the sod that has withstood so many years of weathering.

Hedris, the docent up at the tea room, in a newer building made of wood, was very friendly and told us her history of growing up in the area. She worries that people today do not understand how to fend for themselves by growing and building their own homes, gardens and sheep.

Skagi Penninsula, North Iceland, Days 9 & 10

We drove on to Kalfhamarsvik, which was a thriving fishing village until 1936, when the Spanish Civil War caused them to lose their main buyer of cod. The harbor was too shallow for the bigger ships that were used after the war, so the entire village picked up and moved to deeper waters, leaving just the sod walls behind. Currently there is a working lighthouse perched on top of some magnificent basalt columnar jointing.

There are markers naming the families at many of the ruins and a feeling of recent history follows us on our walk.

Further down the road we come to the Sato Craters and the remains of the volcano that blew them into existence.

Onto the remains of a Viking fortress at Burgavicki, after a very long drive down a pot-holed gravel road , Rt 717. At the top of the fortress we found one of the many compass markers in Iceland. It shows you various points of interest and the direction they lie in.

On the way we stopped to look down at Hvitserkur rock pillar, one of the iconic places you always see in photos. Tourists were doing the usual dangerously stupid things, scrambling down steep, loose cliffs. The afternoon sunlight was turning the long grasses into golden waves.

In the middle of nowhere, we saw a sign for the Vastnessnes Peninsula Restaurant so we stopped and had a fresh trout dinner before finding our stop for the night. The menu was written on a big chalk board, the bread was homemade and as usual, it was a bit pricey, but good.

We camped for the night in a field at Illugustras, a farm where we followed a winding sheep path to watch some seals fishing and playing at sunset. Sheep, sheep, and more sheep trim Iceland’s grass among the rocks.

Besides the farmhouse, there were a couple of toilet/ sink rooms and a sweeping view over the ocean. The two bicyclists we passed earlier in the day lay exhausted in their tents nearby. Biking in Iceland is hard work with rough roads, wind and rain. When we got up in the morning, the slanting sun lit up something shining bright white out on the water.

When I zoomed in with my camera, what I thought was a ship, turned out to be an iceberg. My first! It was very far away and I hoped to get a closer view as we traveled around the fjords later.

We drove along the edges of the fjords all day and think we saw a Minke whale in Hrutafhordur. Jeff finally found a wool sweater he liked at a shop adjacent to a small knitting factory in Huammstangi. They sold mostly cheaper, machine made sweaters but his was hand knitted by a local woman. There are many sweaters sold in Iceland that that are made of wool locally sourced, but then they are manufactured in China, and they do not fit well, so be aware. The handmade ones are much nicer and worth the extra money, especially when you can help local folks earn a living. There are not many opportunities in the hinterlands otherwise.

When I mentioned to the the shop keeper that I saw an iceberg, she told us that sometimes Polar bears will ride in on them and that local fisherman always sail out to check before they get too close to land. They had been watching three different icebergs over the last few weeks. If they spot a polar bear they will shoot it before it can swim to shore because by the time they arrive, they are sick and starved and will kill anything they can catch, including people.

The ocean currents and wind tend to push icebergs into the fjords and each village hopes to be the one the bergs stop at because it brings in more tourists and money.

We spent the rest of the day driving in and around more fjords on one lane gravel roads, steep tracks with “M” turnoffs for passing. There are no guardrails and in some places it was a sheer drop on Jeff’s side, causing him to occasionally flinch. I was glad I was driving.

Jeff had made a list of interesting places, so we stopped at Holmevik Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft. The necromancer pants are creepy and it was a strange place but still worth a visit. I liked the book of Runes, where I found my newest favorite symbol, the Helm of Awe. I made some out of clay when I got home. We need all the help we can get in the States right now.

Our next stop, the village of Drangsness, where we saw a loon and a bunch of seals and then, the best part, three hot tubs, in the narrow strip between the road and the fjord. The tubs were three different temperatures and were filled via pipe from the local hot spring. We changed and showered across the road in the shower rooms and made a dash in the cold wind to immerse ourselves. Ahhh… There were very few cars going by and only one other couple soaking as we relaxed in the free hot water. They were from Hungary, on their honeymoon, and agreed that Iceland is clean and well run.

After our nice hot soak, we drove, and then drove some more, through a Mars like, desolate, rock strewn landscape. We finally pulled over at an overlook on the knife edge of Kambsness Point, high above Sodavik. We could see a cod farm far below in the fjord and low clouds oozing around craggy hills. It was windy up there. It seems there is always wind.

When we made our way down into the village, on the far side of the fjord, we found a little campground overlooking a shrimp packing plant on the water below. Next to the camp we found a playground with a cool little zip line, built in memory of an avalanche event in 1994 which took out some 20 houses, killing 14 people. Only one other couple was staying in the campground that night and the 7 degrees C (46F) felt colder once the rain started falling.

The shoe box sized diesel heater in our camper van did a great job when it was cold and damp outside. All we had to do was push a button by the sink and a little electric fan under the passenger seat started up, along with the sound of a tiny 12 volt diesel fuel pump pulsing to life. Click, click, clicking away. In just a couple of minutes the van was warm and we could shut it back off. I would rather snuggle into blankets than listen to the snores of a fuel pump.

Tuesday Day 11, Sudavik

The little Sudavik Arctic Fox Museum a few blocks from camp was our first stop of the day. They have two live foxes in a pen outside that were not thrilled to see us, staying curled up like dogs in the cold. We sat on a couch and watched an Artic Fox video and then wandered around the displays. I had thought all Arctic Foxes were white, but it seems there is a genetic difference between the white ones, that live on snow pack, and the brownish grey ones, with their more rocky, shore habitat.

Back on the road, we came to a sudden dark hole in the hill ahead of us, which turned out to be a 6 kilometer long tunnel through a mountain. I am not fond of tunnels and the drawings of a man running back away to safety along the walls was not helping. Midway through, we came to an intersection with another road and the running wall man switched directions to lead us out.

Emerging back into sunlight our van climbed up the next steep, rock strewn hill (no trees, remember?) called Hrafnseyrarheidi. (Just try and pronounce that.) Pausing at the summit, we got out in the fog to stretch and look around. Two other couples stopped, one who just happened to be from our neck of the woods, in West Virginia , and the other from Wisconsin. They told us that a hurricane Florence was on a track right for our home. We tried not to worry, but kept checking the weather app on our cell phone after that. Luckily, it mostly passed us by and our house and critters were fine.

Hiking up the Dynjandi waterfall later, we passed a girl on the trail dressed in a really strange fur costume with a shimmering blue dress and an Arctic Fox mask. A whole entourage of photographers was with her. I wish I had gotten a picture. She was bizarre. The biggest waterfall was way up near the ridge, wide, but very shallow. The day turned bleak, rainy, cold and grey. We didn’t see any sheep, just a few too many people.

Going around the end of yet another fjord, Sodurfirdir, we stopped at a hot pool, but the tame, blue concrete pool close to the road was too cold and the wild spring up from it was too hot, so we just ate lunch and hoped for a better one later. A local couple, also stopping for lunch, agreed.

We drove on to Bildudalur and the Sea Monster Museum/ Tea House , where I found a random, beautiful blue , cap sleeved Icelandic wool sweater knitted by a local woman named Hedrus. I paid cash of 162 ISK so the crafter would not have to pay 25% tax to the state. We had a nice hot cup of tea and a biscuit then toured the tiny museum. The interactive monster map that operated like air hockey was cool.

Talknafjordur was our next stop. They have a good hot pool that the locals all use, way down a dirt road, tucked into the hill side, overlooking the fjord. There were three small, square concrete pools with three different temperatures. It was very basic, but there was still a shower/ changing room at the side. The water was perfect in the medium pool and even better in the hotter one after we warmed up. We talked with a guy from Faroa Island who works at the nearby salmon hatchery, raising fry to stock the local fish farms. The girl with him also worked there and will not eat fish. The one hot spring feeds the school, the library and the town pool, but there is not enough to heat the houses. Most towns seem to have geo-thermally heated community pools, but when this village drilled, hoping for a larger supply, they got 70 degree air and no water.

The museum in town used to be a packing house for green beans and chick peas shipped over from Europe for packing and then back out for selling, which seems bizarre to me. Next door to it there is Icelandic Minerals, a Calciferous Red Algae processing plant that makes feed supplements, vitamin pills and water filter materials from seabed deposits of dead algae . It has replaced a fish processing plant which shut down due to various fishing quotas instituted since the 1970’s. Often controversial, the sustainability of the fisheries has improved but individual fisherman have issues with large corporations taking over and many people had trouble adapting to the changes. It is complicated.

That night, we had dinner at the Hopid Restaurant while a major soccer match between Iceland and Belgium played on all the TV screens. The place was packed with soccer fans and looked better inside than out. I had delicious smoked trout that looked like salmon, with roasted potatoes and salad, covered in green and red peppers and cukes. Icelandic greenhouses grow a lot of cucumbers and they show up in everything, including the sub sandwich we ate yesterday from the gas station.

We ended up camping in the parking lot of an old grocery store where a kitchen and shower area had been carved out of one tiny corner and some computer geeks worked out of a tiny room next to it. Very strange place, but it worked just to sleep. Ran into the honeymooning couple we had met in a hot spring earlier.

Day 12- Bird Cliffs of Latrabjurg

In the morning we drove out past the Salmon farms, down a narrow gravel road carved into steep cliffs, to what was supposed to be a red shelled beach but which turned out to be orangey sand. We were amused to see the farmer take a busload of tourists on a hay wagon tour of the beach, taking the scenic route around the tidal pools. He also had some really sweet looking wooden camping hut rentals, made of heavy tongue and groove 2 x6 pine. We walked on the wide beach, looking for shells and enjoying the solitude. The tour group was way down the beach away from us.

Coming through a tiny fishing village on the way, we slowed for this guy holding a speed limit sign- not that we could have gone fast even if we wanted too.

Our next stop, the Latrabjurg bird cliffs, are a major attraction during Puffin nesting season, but during September they are beautifully serene. It started out cold and foggy but the wind drove the fog away and the sun colored the sea a shimmering pewter. Good rain and wind gear are essential for a good time in Iceland. It is not rainy continuously. The sun comes and goes all the time, but the wind is pretty constant it seems.

See, just down the road is sunlight and blue sky!

We got back in our van and drove around the end of many more West fjords, stopping at stone trolls, old churches, remote farms, and eventually at Vatnsfjordur Nature Preserve. We were hoping to get in a soak there, but there were too many people, all from Spain, crowding the hot pool below the road.

We headed for a campground at the Laugar Hot Spring instead, on the hill behind what used to be an all girls school. The campground facilities were mostly closed up but we parked to use the hot pool, a round, stone laid pool sunk in the hillside up from the dormitory.

There was one Israeli couple and one Tasmanian couple in the water already when we joined them for a nice soak. They took a group picture and we all compared our countries and our Iceland experiences until almost dark.

We still needed a place to camp for the night and were hoping to stay at a place near an old Viking settlement outside Buoardalur, but we found it was no longer a camp, so we ended up at the campground in town, in the front yard of a daycare center, under horrible dusk to dawn lights. The absolute worst campsite so far. There were way too many people and they were all loud. We had gotten used to having almost no one around.

Day 13- Snaeffellsness Penninsula

The next morning we went back down the road where the Viking Museum was and just missed getting a look inside the cool sod hut. It was closed for the season except for a special tour group that was just leaving. We could not convince the guide to let us through. He said he had another job that he had to get back to. We and a couple from Scotland had to settle for walking around and reading the information plaques about Leif Ericson’s father (Eric the Red) who was apparently disliked by everyone that had ever lived near him. It was cold and windy and we did not stay long.

Onward to Snaefellsness Peninsula on Rt 558, and a detour on a track through a lava field with cinder piles covered in mosses, red lava and cool formations. I love that mosses and lichens are the first beginnings of making soil.

We drove through Kirkfell Village but the fells was too crowded to even stop, with police directing a traffic jam out of it. We kept going until we saw the Helissandu Maritime Museum. They were friendly and willingly talked about the displays and we enjoyed tea and scones with them. Outside we did a walk through boulders and looked into a little soddy building.There were whale bones and some round boulders that you had to be able to lift before you would be allowed to go to sea, in olden times. We were not able. Instead we meandered through the village and came across an old warehouse that had been totally covered in beautiful hand painted murals. What a great way to make some seriously ugly empty warehouses come to a meaningful life.

We continued on, expecting to see a glacier at some point, but the clouds hovering on the hills kept it well hidden. We hiked out a sheep path to the beach through huge round boulders and found bits of old steel shipwrecks. We finally caught a glimpse of the glacier on the way back out.

Hellnar Beach, down the road, was too cold and windy to even consider getting out of the van, so we drove on to Arnarstapi, where there is another giant troll rock sculpture. It was very windy but the pathway around the sea arches and then the little protected harbor around the side are worth getting out for.

Jeff had wanted to maybe visit Song Cave but it was way down an “F” road so we were not allowed to drive it in our rental van. The road did look pretty rough. We went to Reynaulds Canyon instead, which is a crevice in a high rock hillside with a skylight in the ceiling and a stream coming out through it.

The wind was seriously stiff as we searched for a campsite and we drove until 8:45 that night looking. Finally found Snorrastadir Farm. The kitchen barn was big enough for an army to camp in and it was the most expensive night so far at 50 ISK. We were glad we were not in a tent as the wind was likely to blow them away.

September, Day14

Snellfesness Glacier appeared from under the clouds as we drove away from our camp in the morning, the coldest windiest one so far. We stopped in Borgarnes for gas and groceries and toured the Settlement Center Museum, which had good sculpture and artwork depicting the Epic Saga. They hand you earphones and send you on by numbered stations to listen to each telling along the way. There was a great dragon sculpture outside over looking the harbor.

We drove North on Rt 1 and East on 52 to Deildartunguhyer (just try and pronounce that!) where there is a humongous boiling hot spring and power generating station. Next door was a fancy Spa and a commercial greenhouse that was not accessible.

I really want to see inside a greenhouse as I am interested in how they heat them here. I searched google for geothermal greenhouses and found one, where I bought some strawberries, but they were just single pane glass with steam pipes the same as we had in the U.S back in the 1950’s. I am hoping for state of the art greenhouses. Seems like with all this free hot water they would have hydronically heated floors.

There was a spa near the power plant and an another off-limits greenhouse, but I am happier with wild hot springs and not paying big bucks for fancy stuff.

Reykholt and the Snorri History and Research Center came next. The museum was a good place to learn background stories and they had a nice round, stone-lined hot pool and a greenhouse on the grounds, but the public is not allowed to soak or visit the greenhouse. The doorway in the hill leads to a tunnel into the original mansion where the museum is now. As we walked the gardens, we could see hot vents all around the area, up and down the valley.

Next stop, Hraunfossar Falls, where, for close to a km, horizontal layers of water emerge all around the cliffs through the volcanic rocks, falling in sheets and falls everywhere. The pools down below are a gorgeous blue and the wind just kept coming.

Back to Hamrar, where we saw mini steam plants in peoples backyards. We were going to see trolls of some sort in Fosston but it was just too windy, so we drove on looking for a campground for the night, finally finding one way down a gravel road near Saurbaer, on a lake. We were the only campers there. We were greeted by border collies and a caretaker who was surprised to see us, being off season. This was the clearest, coldest night so far and there were no lights of any kind to disturb the night sky, so we were hoping to finally see the northern lights.

It got cold fast as the sun set and when it got full dark I went out to check for the lights and actually saw them! I rousted Jeff out and he stood out there with his camera taking pictures for a good long while. The lights were easier to see on the camera than with our eyes for some reason. It was too cold for me to stand out there long, so I watched through the window, huddled in blankets. They were just wispy cloud looking apparitions floating around over the hills ever now and then, not really colored much at all. They were still cool and I am glad we finally got to see them. Northern lights were on my list!

In the morning there was frost on the ground and a bunch of chickens were pecking outside our door. We packed up and drove around yet another fjord, where the U.S. Navy once had a barracks and anti submarine station from WWII. It is amazing, some of the out of the way places we have found U.S. military installations.

We continued out a wide gravel road in search of a waterfall where I dropped Jeff off and circled back around because it was too crowded to park. I explored a quieter place down the road and came back for him.

Next stop was the Cave People site, where smooth lava had been carved out of a hillside to make a little house where people used to live. There was also a Lava Tube tour starting from there but we did not go on that.

After wandering around the strange smooth lava layers, we drove out through Pingvellir National Park again, but it was really crowded today and we did not stop. It was like being down on the Cades Cove Loop in the Smokies on a bad day. Glad we saw it earlier.

Finally found a greenhouse in ReykholtI that we could tour, the Friedheimmer, where they have a restaurant and pub right in the greenhouse. Beer! We wandered around looking at the way they grow tomatoes on long strings, using imported ( from Holland) boxes of bumble bees for pollination and steam pipes running around exposed on the walls and across the floor. I am so disappointed that in Iceland they do not design greenhouse to be efficient. Single pane glass, exposed steam pipes, High Pressure Sodium and Mercury Vapor lamps. They have not had to learn to be efficient since their heat heat is free and is basically just waste heat anyway. I had imagined that they would have modernized more. At least this cold bleak country is able to grow some of their food using their natural resources.

We partook of some tasty, premises grown, tomato soup, beer and fresh bread at the bar while we were checking the facilities out. Fascinating even though it is not state of the art.

Next place was supposed to be the Kenio Crater but it was too windy and the rain was driving sideways so we did not stop. Drove through Selfloss and Eyarbakka to the coast where it was even windier, 5 degrees C and raining hard. Not fun to drive in. Kleifarvatn Lake had huge waves and blue water surrounded by smooth black lava banks. We stopped at the mudpools but it was not worth getting out in that weather. We continued on to Grindavik, which had no campground, and it was so windy when we were trying to walk around the steam vents that we had trouble staying upright. It was a very short visit. I am not into being blown into a steam vent.

We drove the coast road looking for a camp gound and stopped at a little roadside park where the Eurasian and North American plates meet. Still trying to find a place for the night, we stopped for a bathroom break at a Bonus grocery store that had only one toilet and no paper and really grundgy facilities. The Vogar campsite was too dismal to even think about so we kept going.

We ended up at the Hafnarfjordur Campsite at 7:15 P.M. There is a shower and we will be able to get cleaned up and packed in the morning before heading out to the airport, which is not far away. It is a good place to spend the last night. We could not believe any planes even flew today with the wind we’ve had. Glad we weren’t on them.

Iceland has had the coldest, wettest summer in recorded history this year, according to the locals, although more extreme than what we have experienced in West Virginia. It has been so wet in Iceland this summer that they were able to export hay to Germany and France for the first time ever, while they experienced a drought over there.

We drove about 2300 miles on our trip through Iceland and did not even venture into the city of Reyjavik. We enjoyed meeting all the people we came across and imagining what it must be like to live in the more isolated places during the winter months. Icelanders are a hearty people and friendly. We had a wonderful time exploring all the wild places and I am especially fond of all the hot pools. And the sheep. And the soddy huts. And the waterfalls.

I highly recommend visiting Iceland by caravan if you get the chance.