Iceland: Waterfalls, glaciers, volcanoes

Our first sight in Iceland: the Blue Lagoon

The Germans have a saying Klammer auf, Klammer zu, open parentheses, close parentheses. We thought traveling to Iceland would make a nice bookend to our sabbatical, since it has some of the same features as New Zealand, waterfalls, glaciers, and volcanoes, but puffins instead of penguins, sparse stunted birch and pine forests instead of lush subtropical forests with towering ferns. Both stunningly beautiful.

Puffin in flight

Both have lots of one-lane bridges, but we haven't yet figured out who has the right-of-way here, whereas the signs in New Zealand made it clear. The words on this sign made me think of Irn-Bru, Scotland's orange soda drink. Well-paved two-lane roads with no shoulder, so it's hard to find a place to pull off to take pictures.

One-way bridge sign

Both have volcanoes on plate boundaries producing lots of black basalt, but New Zealand's volcanoes are caused by subduction zones while Iceland is where the mid-Atlantic ridge comes to the surface, where the North American and European plates are moving apart and new crust is being formed. Sunday we saw swarms of cracks in the earth where the crust is splitting in this fissure zone. We walked into the mouth of a lava tube. We asked somehow how to find it and she asked why we would want to go there. She described it as dark, wet, and dangerous. But a 1500-meter-long lava tube is a rarity.  We had to be persistent to find it. The maps and road signs were frustrating, especially if you wanted to go beyond the Golden Circle tourist route.

Öxará River flowing through basalt rift

Crack in basalt above the lava tube Vidgelmir

Both have dramatic black sand beaches with confusing names. And it turns out that both Maori and Icelandic names are compounds of simple words, so if you take the trouble to learn some of the little words (e.g. vik for port or harbor and foss for waterfall in Icelandic), it's easier to parse and remember the place names. But Maori has a surfeit of vowels, while Icelandic seems to specialize in consonants and lots of accents and little dots. Rich remarked that it's good that their word for waterfall only has 1 syllable instead of 3, since there are so many. At one point I could see 14 waterfalls at once, all rivals to Bridalveil Falls.

Sea stack and beach seen from Dyrhólaey

Ice on the black sand beach at Jökulsárlón 

Glaciers floating in lake: Jökulsárlón 

Glacier

Cliffs and sea stacks at Vik

It's hard to choose just one waterfall picture. It was pretty neat to walk behind the Seljalandsfoss, pelted with the mist and watching the water rebound after hitting the pool below with such force.

Behind Seljalandsfoss

 

Behind Waterfall Seljalandsfoss

Skogafoss

In both places, you see lots of sheep, but in Iceland there more horses than sheep or cows.

In both places, people eat lots of fish. We ate fish stew and seafood soup, both yummy, better than their names. Icelanders have a yogurt-like product called styk, very like quark. In both places, food is frighteningly expensive, but in Iceland pretty much all produce is imported. No buying local there.

Bakery Sign - Opid=Open



I'm posting this from Claremont. No internet access Monday night in Iceland. When I woke up this morning and looked out the window at all the trees, I felt glad to be home and excited to see old friends and family. John picked us up at the airport last night. Sarah is taking her 2nd qualifying exam today, so we won't see her till after her 3rd one of Friday. My cousin John and his wife Nancy are kindly bringing our dog Iona home tomorrow.