Iceland 2015

Being an account of my most excellent Icelandic adventure, 2015

Tom Browne, 12 July 2015

Start of the adventure

The whole thing started in late 2014 while planning for my 60^th birthday. I was inspired by my friend Lorraine’s 60^th North of 60° escapade, while wanting to stay on solid ground and avoid polar bears. At that point, the furthest north I had been was on my way to Piteå, in a taxi at an interchange on the E4 near the airport at Luleå, which Google places at 65° 35’ 13” N. I decided to look for supported treks in Norway, perhaps including Nordkapp  at 71° 10’ 21” N. (The northernmost point in Europe is actually Knivskjellodden, 1500 m further north at 71° 11’ 8” N and accessible via a relatively modest hike from the Nordkapp parking lot). Why supported? This would force me to interact with people over a multi-day period, and save me having to find my way alone over unfamiliar terrain with a full pack.

Somehow I couldn’t find supported hikes in Norway, but came across an interesting one in Iceland. So I took the plunge and booked a week-long hike through deserted inlets to the home of the queen of the faeries, here, managed by Fjallabak, here, leaving Reykjavík June 21.

Adult supervision

Lorraine, my long-time cycling buddy, decided to join me in order to keep me out of trouble and provide adult supervision, a useful contribution given the 4 other hikers signed up at that point were Swiss ladies, and given the lack of any interest from any of my other so-called buddies.
So by early June I had made a last few purchases and loaded up the day pack with a reasonable assortment of contents, to see what it felt like. According to the bathroom scale, the pack weighed 16 pounds with the camera. Add 5 pounds for 2 litres of water and snacks. It might be possible to reduce the weight in good weather, but on June 1 on the east coast of Iceland, there was light snow in the morning changing to sleet by noon, then drizzle in the afternoon, high of +6°C. So best to be equipped. At least I wouldn’t be suffering through the horrible +35°C humidex that Central Canada dishes out in the summer.

Departure

Beginning with a drink in the lounge, I arrive in Reykjavík via Halifax on Friday at 05:30 local, 01:30 EST; I get to the hotel by about 07:30 via the comfortable but slow Flybus service. The hotel has a room available so I shower before heading out to meet Lorraine who has come via Toronto, landing Thursday evening and who thus has a few hours in a real bed under her belt – Saga class on IcelandAir does not include lie-flat beds as in Air Canada business class.  

Reykvavík, Part 1

Lorraine and I play tourist for a day and a half, explore some odd neighbourhoods, take pictures of interesting signs in front of restaurants, tour the Harpa concert gallery, visit an outdoor museum with a number of old homes that have been moved to this one location, tour a decommissioned Coast Guard ship (the Ođinn, a veteran of the Cod Wars with Britain), get a picture of the statue of Leifr Eiricsson in front of Hallgrímskirkja, and watch a moderately funny comedy show on How to Be an Icelander. Lesson 1: how to pronounce Eyafjallajökull. It’s easy: Eya is the location, fjalla (pronounced fatla) is mountain, and jökull (pronounced yokel) is glacier.

Interestingly, the suffix ‘-vík’ means bay; it also designates a location where one leaves or arrives, especially by water: a transit point or terminus. Such a person, who leaves or arrives via a vík, is properly a víking (with the first ‘i’ as in ‘vixen’, not ‘eye’), or traveller. So Reykjavík is Smoky Bay. Another example: Skaftafellsjökull. Skafta is the town and fell is waterfall; so this is the jökull feeding the waterfall above Skafta. Continuing on this theme, flót is a river (resembles flood), höfn is a harbour (resembles haven or havn: lufthavn, a harbour for airplanes), etc. Pretty simple once you get a feel for where the word breaks are. 

The hikers
Our guide, Estrid, picks us up and takes us to Reykjavík Municipal airport where we meet the other hikers before flying to Egilsstáðir on the east coast. We are a varied bunch:

·       Lorraine and I, the Canadians;

·       Three Swiss ladies, Marie-Claude, Elisabeth and Karen (a fourth dropped out at the last minute);

·       Ned, the Lutheran pastor, who has hiked with Fjallabak before; his daughter Grace; and Ned’s buddy Bryan the orthopedic surgeon, all from Wisconsin.

The Hike…

Gobsmacked. It’s really the only word for it. The scenery is completely gobsmacking. Each day involves climbing from sea level over a col to the next fjord, possibly with added cols on the way. Typical total daily elevation gains are 400 to 800 m; distances are 14 to 20 km. Mostly we stay in mountain huts, with a large kitchen and dining area on the ground floor and dormitory-style accommodations upstairs. And while we are slightly south of the Arctic Circle, which means the sun technically sets for 45 minutes or so, it never really gets dark at the end of June. I can't imagine December ...

After the flight to Egilsstáðir and an hour’s drive north, the driver drops us off and disappears over a hill with our luggage … we are on our own. To the left is a river, Selfljót, meandering northwards across a broad alluvial plain of black volcanic dust (Héraðssandur); to the right a 415 m ridge which we will climb. On the way up there will be fog and occasional snow fields, but nothing difficult. At the peak, the map provides a GPS waypoint of 65° 35’ 25” N which beats my previous record by 12” of latitude, or 371 metres. Statistically, let’s call it a draw. At Njarðvík we encounter Icelandic ponies in a corral. We are driven to Bakkagerði, a small fishing town at the head of Bogarfjörður eystri, where we will stay two nights in a dorm-style building with common dining and kitchen area.

 

Day 2 is a loop to Brúnavík and back, with two cols to cross, each about 350 m each. On the way we pass a puffin colony which sadly is in decline, as are most such colonies across Scandinavia, due to warming seawater and the resulting decline in their principal food source. Brúnavík, or Brown Bay, was a small farmstead abandoned in 1944; we will encounter many such abandoned communities. We also visit Álfaborg, a small hill on the outskirts of town which is known as the city or palace (borg) of the elves (álf), and home of the elf-queen Borghildur. No elves are in evidence but the area is certainly enchanted.

Day 3 is where the real fun begins. An overland hike to Breiðavík (White Bay) takes us through some spectacular scenery. I only wish I had a wide angle lens on the camera as selecting which mountain peak to use as backdrop is impossible. The wind is strong and Ned and Bryan manage to get a kite aloft. More fog and snowfields are encountered and Estrid’s GPS comes in handy; the trail markers are little sticks that get lost in the snow and fog. (Unlike Canada, there are no handy trees here that you could nail a fluorescent orange trail marker to.) I would not want to be up here alone unless I had much better maps and orienteering skills, and even then some of the snowfields lead through fog to precipitous drops, so local know-how remains critical. The weather in Breiðavík is gorgeous and I walk to the seashore, dodging calling cards left by the sheep who seem to run loose across the entire country.

 

The mountain huts built by the government are palatial, especially if there are only 9 people in space designed for 20; later in the season these could be crowded. Being first over the col means dealing with snow and fog, but also having the huts to ourselves. The Swiss ladies are indefatigable, helping Estrid make dinner with the contents of the boxes delivered by Skuli, our laconic local driver who somehow manages to get his Nissan 4WD (with enormous high-flotation tires, a full set of three locked differentials and a monster granny gear) across some other col with all our supplies and gear. I compensate for my inability to follow cooking instructions by leading the dishwashing brigade.

Day 4 takes us over another col to Húsavík (House Bay). Snow melt combined with very fine volcanic ash leads to a swampy mix that does not drain; I have never before encountered such steep swamps. I always thought swamps were flat, but apparently not so. Step in the wrong spot and it will suck you in to your boot tops.

For part of the day we climb up a steep 4WD track that had been recently plowed – apparently the snow is lingering later than usual this year. Approaching the last col, we see Skuli climbing through the plowed snowfields below us. He’s got the Nissan in a very low gear and is proceeding at somewhat less than a walking pace. Standing by the road, I witness a master class in getting a truck full of gear and food up a steep slope in deep, wet snow, as each wheel in turn tries to slip and is immediately curbed by the relevant differential; careful adjustment of tire pressures and keeping the engine just above idle without digging in do the trick. He eventually gets through the snow fields and passes us on his way to the col.

 

The last homestead in Húsavík was abandoned relatively late, in 1974. The hut is a good 50 m vertical or more above sea level, and the beach is at least a 6 km round-trip; no one takes the trip to the seashore as it has been a long day with more snow and fog in the high col, highlighted by stunning glacial lakes.

Heading up from Húsavík to the first col on Day 5, we are accompanied by André (spelling unsure) and his very well behaved dog. André is the warden for the hut for the week; this is a purely voluntary position and there is a waiting list – Estrid will finally get her chance in 2016.

The descent into Loðmundarfjörður is completely gobsmacking. The hut is bigger than the previous ones, and there is an old chapel with a list of pastors going back to the 16^th century posted inside. Ned uses the opportunity to recite John I: In the beginning was the Word. Estrid, Grace, Ned and Bryan strip to their undies and dip into a pool below a waterfall coming off the glaciers at 4°C; Grace and Ned run in, then right back out, but Estrid shows her Nordic style by splashing about for about 30 seconds accompanied by Bryan who apparently does this for fun while hunting in Wisconsin in the winter.

Our last hike on Day 6 takes us over another col into the town of Seyðisfjörður, where the ferry from Denmark and the Færoe Islands docks once a week. On the way down from the col, in a steep mucky part, I put my left foot on a rock that seems well supported, but which isn’t; I sink into it up to my boot top, topple forward down a steep slope and wind up on my back, head facing down the mountain, in more muck. As I topple, my right knee finds the only sharp bit in the muck, namely a newish piece of volcanic rock that has not yet been smoothed by glaciers. There is a gash, but fortunately it is only skin deep, no muck got in the cut as the pant leg didn’t tear, nothing is broken, and bleeding is quickly stopped.

Back at sea level we are picked up and stop in town for some sightseeing. I am cold and the wind has an edge to it, so I sit in the bus and chat with the driver. He’s worked on fishing trawlers and has dropped catches at processing plants in Harbour Grace and Saint Anthony’s; he once spent a month in Halifax while the refrigeration plant on the ship was repaired. He is planning a fly-fishing trip to Greenland. Fascinating what you can learn from locals. Then it is off to the airport for the flight back to Reykjavík … it’s over L. 

The Westman Islands (spellings vary)

The morning after returning to Reykjavik, Lorraine and I are on a flight to Heimaey, the largest and only inhabited island of the Westman Island chain, or Vestmannæyjar. First impressions after about 10 hours on Heimaey:

• If Iceland is an outpost on the fringes of Europe, Heimaey is an outpost on the fringes of Iceland.
• Hilariously, Iceland is called the ‘mainland’ here. This sort of makes my point, doesn’t it?
• Surtsey, which emerged from the ocean by volcanic action in 1963, is an outpost on the fringes of Heimaey. You can’t get there from anywhere, and not only because it is not allowed.
• In Heimaey they are proud of the fact that they have the highest average wind speeds in Europe? The World? All I know is that it blows like the dickens here.
• In 1973, a 2 kilometer-long crack opened up in the earth’s crust right across the east side of town, pouring out about a million tonnes of flaming lava over a 6-month period. It buried one third of the town, incinerated another third, and increased the land area of the island by a significant amount. It also covered the rest of the town in a foot or more of ash and cinder.
• There was enough geothermal heat from the 6-month eruption to heat most homes on the island for 8 years … they are now on bunker fuel.
• The lava almost choked off the harbor, but instead added a layer of protection … when I was down there that first afternoon, I had trouble standing up in the face of the gale entering the harbour channel, so I am having trouble imagining what it was like before.
• They got lucky: the night of the eruption, the fishing fleet was in port because of Force 12 winds which promptly died down, allowing the fleet to evacuate the entire population to ‘the mainland’.
• The breakwater protecting the port keeps getting washed away by the prevailing easterly storms.
• Being a volcanic island, there is no ground water, nor any wells. Fresh water is piped in via an undersea pipe from ‘the mainland’.
• All the houses have corrugated roofs held down with lots of #12 panhead screws with big flat washers under them.
• There’s no litter because if you drop something, it’s gone.
• There are whitecaps in the inner harbour.
• They have 3 or 4 calm days per year.
• In the early 1600’s, a bunch of Algerian pirates came here and kidnapped a bunch of Westman Islanders and took them to Algiers to sell as slaves.

In spite of all this, something like 4000 people live here, including a lot of families with kids. Granted there are no more Algerian pirates but it is hard to imagine why anyone would settle on a barren windswept island with no fresh water and a dodgy port. So why would anyone settle here? Answer: Fish, and the best port on the South Coast in spite of the wind. And boy is the food good which I am assuming puts it one up on the Falklands.

Reykjavík, Part 3

Back on the ‘mainland’, where the wind is not so bad, Lorraine and I tour an archeological dig in downtown Reykjavík that proves there was human settlement there well before the eruption of 871 which covered the whole country in a thin layer of unique ash, and which thus serves as a useful marker. There is no way of determining how much earlier than 871.

Then we took a tour bus to Þingvellir (Þ is the Icelandic letter ‘thorn’, as in Þór, the god known to others as Thor) which is where the Allþing, the first parliament, was held starting in 930. No, that's not a typo; they have had a parliament, continuously, for almost 1100 years. The location is spectacular, in a rift valley formed by the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates drifting apart by some large number of centimeters per year. Over 1000 years the drift is possibly as much as 1000 meters, and the landscape has shifted, but the Law Rock, where Njál would have argued his cases, remains. In 1000 these would have been substantially closer together and the valley floor at a higher level.

 

Vík and the South Coast

After a very nice dinner with Lorraine, I head off alone the next morning to Vík. Among my objectives is to find Bergþórshvoll, the farm named after Njál’s wife Bergþór, where Njál and his family were killed in the conclusion of a multi-generational inter-family feud documented in Njál's Saga. (Spoiler alert: everyone dies). Fortunately Icelanders seem to have calmed down since then, the broadswords and halberds are all safely locked up in museums, and they are all now all driving tour buses and providing wry commentary on Icelandic customs and foibles for wealthy tourists.

Vík is on the south coast in the shadow of Eyafjallajökull and its bigger, nastier partner, Katla. Fog and drizzle greet me, but this is the first poor weather so far, so I can’t complain. We had been told by a Reykjavík tour bus driver that in case of an eruption of Eyafjallajökull, or especially of Katla, one should look to the church in Vík for salvation. On arrival I locate the church high up on a ridge, well protected from lava flows or sudden glacial melts, so it appears the advice is more than merely spiritual.

 

Later that day, I locate Bergþór and her husband Njál, on, or perhaps more properly under, a grassy knoll overlooking the otherwise flat southern plains near the ferry landing from Heimaey at Landeyjarhöfn. I am not sure what lies under the knoll (ruins of a burnt homestead perhaps) but there is a B&B next door for the real keeners, and some really friendly lambs who tried to follow me back to my car. Immediately to the east is a small stream, issued from the volcanic mountains to the north. There are also a number of Icelandic horses, brought from Norway by the original Víkings and related to the ponies ridden by Mongols under Genghis Khan as they made their way across the Central Asian steppes to the eastern edges of Europe. No doubt the Víkings came across these in Ukraine or Moscow.

The next morning I hike up Skaftafellsheiði, the mountain next to Skaftafellsjökull. It’s a 17 km loop, 700 meter vertical gain, promising views over Skaftafellsjökull. This is a tongue off Vatnajoküll, the towering slab of ice visible from the highway that is Europe’s largest glacier. Vatnajoküll is also at the heart of Europe’s largest national park, Vatnajökulsþjóðgarður. (I had to get that one in somewhere). I start off in good weather with lovely views, and with the cloud cover seeming to hold above the 700 m level.

 

At about the 2½ hour mark, well into the 6 hour hike, a symptom of the old OCD rears its ugly head: I am suddenly struck by the worry that I had forgotten to turn off the headlights in the rental car. I figure that turning around would mean a) that the battery would probably still be OK after 5 hours, and b) that I would miss the views of the glacier on the descent. The alternative was to press on, with the possibility that the battery might be pretty poor after 6 hours, especially given the way modern cars are built to minimise weight – I can just hear the battery designer being told “why design a battery so some stupid tourist can leave the lights on for 6 hours? Make it 4 hours and shave 30% off the weight”. So I press on.

Towards the top there are a dozen small snow fields to cross, then the descent begins alongside a cliff side overlooking the glacier. There are plenty of opportunities for vertigo here, especially once the fog starts to drift in and the trail, on jagged rocks with a sheer drop to the left, is not obvious. After a while some drizzle starts up, the footing gets even worse and the visibility drops further. Thinking fast, I put on my Gore-Tex jacket, in a shade of Marine Rescue Orange carefully selected to assist Icelandic search and rescue teams. Unfortunately, the fog never really lifts so there are no decent pics of the glacier.

Oh, and the headlights? They were off. Clearly a lack of adult supervision …

I spend the next day exploring the coast and the huge fields of lava, rock and black sand that extend for over 200 km east of Vík. In one location it takes me 45 minutes to walk to the Atlantic over the sand blown out by Katla at some point in the past – the shoreline is now a couple of kilometres further out than it was, a bay has been filled up, and a promontory is now a lump of rock inland. The scale of it is all pretty mind boggling.  The only wildlife posing a problem is a big seabird that dives straight at me repeatedly until I change my tack on the return from the beach. No screeching, just heading straight at me, and I instinctively duck when he didn’t pull up.

The next day I drive to the glacial lake Jökusárlón, about 2 hours from Vík, but the parking lot is full so I head back, driving up little dead ends looking for historical or geological markers, and taking short hikes up promising trails. I discover where Ingólfur Arnarson is said to have come ashore in 874, and where he buried his stepbrother Hjörleifur Hróðmarsson after his murder by his Irish slaves. Said slaves escaped to the Westman Islands only to be tracked down by Ingólfur and made to pay, in typical Icelandic fashion, for their heinous behaviour.

A sign at the foot of the hill below Hjörleifur’s grave reads: 

which my Little Book of Runes translates as Baiarstatur, a word not recognised by Google. (Note the font I downloaded uses alternate versions for ‘a’ and ‘s’). Playing around with this, I can honestly say that

In contrast to the mountains, there is smooth black volcanic sand, lumpy lava looking like big piles of buffalo dung, sharp pointy stuff sticking up at weird angles, the whole bit, all of it covering large numbers of square kilometres. In one spot the local road runs atop the lava field; it is a 20 meter drop down to the farmlands. The south coast is subject to regular glacial floods, eruption or no eruption; all the bridges have been redesigned to direct flood water over the road (which is easier to replace) rather than under the bridge (which can wash the bridge away – in 2011 it took 2 weeks to build a temporary bridge). Cutting the main road involves cutting the country in two; with Katla 40 years overdue for a blast, this is a potential problem.

I am reminded of Middle Earth, and Mordor … forbidding cliffs with bizarre cave structures overlooking bubbling lava pits (now cooled since we are passed the Age of Middle Earth), black ash everywhere … Did Tolkien visit?

Home
I stop in at Víking World near Keflavík where they keep the Islendingur, the replica Víking ship that was sailed to L’Anse au Meadows in 2000 to commemorate 1000 years of Víking presence in North America. It is unfortunate that the only way to get here is by car; I am sure many people miss it.

Settlements near Reykjavík clearly date back well before 874, possibly to the middle of the 8^th century. It continues to amaze me that they made it across the North Atlantic (and back!) in flat-bottomed boats with a square sail and a simple rudder. The usual problems around longitude arise as well; if you know the date, and can measure the height of the sun above the horizon at noon, then you know latitude, but you don’t know longitude until you have a reliable clock set to a fixed time (Greenwich, for example) and thus know how many hours off you are. It was well into the Renaissance before anyone managed this; I think Simon Winchester wrote a book on the topic. Anyway having visited L’Anse au Meadows and the ship museum in Oslo, I suspect I am now an expert.

Back in Halifax, it is night for the first time in 16 days.

So what's the link with the bio-economy, you ask? Well, I toured a geothermal plant, which consisted basically of a steam turbine. Most of the country is on geothermal power, and a lot of it is on geothermal heat as well. I am guessing their greenhouse gas emissions come mainly from sheep.