Day 2
Elly awoke bright and early (4am) on the morning of Day 2 in
Iceland. She loaded up the
beep-beep car and drove the 40 minutes from Reykjavik to the airport to meet her
favorite boy in the whole wide world Arnsteinn.
Arnsteinn, son of William and Susan, son of John the brave,
was a handsome young man accustomed to traveling the world’s seas. He fearlessly made the voyage from
Boston in Vinland to Iceland in just over 6 hours, a Norse record for the
journey across the Atlantic. He
arrived to typical Icelandic weather: rain, wind, and cold. But with an adventurous spirit and willingness
despite adversity, he was well matched for even the barren landscape of the
Reykjanes peninsula.
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| Typical.... |
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| A random lighthouse at the end of a road we drove down. |
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| Arnsteinn and Elly |
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| Early art (the drawing of a man on the rock) and a church |
After driving around the peninsula for a while, our
protagonists decided to get out and stretch their legs with a walk down to the
sea cliffs of Hafnberg. This hour
walk through 13th century lava fields was about as exciting as it sounds…
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| So much basalt.... |
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| The cliffs are an important bird nesting area |
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| Please don't fall off the cliff! |
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| The Cliffs of Hafnberg |
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| Elly found an elf stool (people here believe in elves and other magical creatures) |
Iceland is a Hot Spot on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This means that the volcanoes here are
really active, and all the lava here formed the island in the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean in the first place.
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is the junction of two tectonic plates, the North
American plate and the Eurasian plate.
This means that Iceland is constantly getting wider, as the plates
spread apart and new lava fills the gap in the center of the island (of course,
most of this is happening underground, but the plates move a few millimeters
every year!). Anyway it is one of
the few places in the world (maybe the only?) that you can stand on both plates
at one time!
All of this volcanic activity means there is a lot of heat
very near to the earth’s surface.
Because of this, geothermal energy is extremely prevalent in
Iceland. It make sense really,
they are literally standing on a free renewable energy source! All of the geothermal also means lots
of hot springs! Nearly every town
in Iceland has a community pool heated with geothermal water. It costs about $5 to get in, and they
have heated water slides, a full pool, and then small hot pools of varying
temperatures. It made for a fun
afternoon stop!
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| A geothermal power plant |
Iceland has gone through many periods of warming and
cooling. When first settled in 874
AD it was actually much warmer, and there were not any glaciers on the island
(this helps explain why people would want to live here…). Much of the island was vegetated (it no
longer is) and there were some larger mammals and birds to hunt. Since then the climate has cooled
significantly and glaciers have grown to cover the majority of the
highlands. People hunted all of
the large fauna, and deforested much of the island, making today’s version of
Iceland much more desolate to behold.
During the last ice age (about 11,000 years ago), the entire area was
covered in ice but the volcanoes were still active. After the ice age the glaciers melted and the land rebounded
quickly, resulting in rapid down cutting by streams as sea level was redefined. Because of this, the island is covered
with beautiful waterfalls and gorges all over the place!
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| Evidence of glacial rebound -- high cliffs to the left and a flat expanse of land (previous sea level) before the ocean |
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| A beautiful waterfall! Legends tell of salmon with enormous tails that were powerful enough for the fish to jump this cascade. Today, none of these salmon can be found because of cross-breeding with a stock of salmon that were introduced to the area. Occasionally a fish with an abnormally large tail will be spotted and is thought to be a descendant of the original true breed. |
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| Seljalandsfoss waterfall |
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| Walking behind the falls |
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| A view from the other side |
After a long day of adventures Elly and Arnsteinn set up
camp for the night in Skogar.
They learned quickly the lesson of “if it is not CURRENTLY raining you
set up the tent.” Iceland seems to
have the same rule for weather as Alaska: If you don’t like the weather, just
wait 5 minutes!
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