Part I

Text and collages: Alice Wolfsberg

See end of this section for translation possibilities.

Saturday, July 15. Coming to Reykjavik from the airport, one might think that there is nothing to see in Iceland but monotonous expanses of lava. It was total lava flow. Much of it was covered with a tundralike moss and some grass, but a lot of it is sharp lava sticking up. Every so often there is a pile of stones, a cairn, sticking up. I don't know the purpose of these cairns. Perhaps at one time they helped people find their way across the huge areas of black lava. When we got to the City of Reykjavik there were houses and lawns, and flowers. The houses were very nice and gave a definite impression of being well-cared for. We had breakfast at the hotel and checked out the sweaters in the hotel shop. We were on a sweater mission, to purchase and ship eight hand knitted sweaters before the Samvinn tour began. Thanks to a very friendly Loftleider Hotel staff, our room was ready for us by 7:30 A.M. We showered, rested a bit, and waited until the stores opened. We took a cab to the main shopping streets of Reykjavik and, armed with a street map and a list of good quality sweater shops, we went looking for good prices, careful workmanship, and interesting designs. It was drizzling -- hard. At The Handknitting Association of Iceland, a store with more than a thousand sweaters, our criteria were fulfilled. We chose eight sweaters and shipped them, one each, to our kids and their kids, except Andrew who didn't want a sweater. Actually, if you don't want a sweater in Iceland, there isn't much else!

Then with intermittent drizzle and rain we walked about on the shopping streets, looking in the windows and sometimes going in the shops. We had a seafood pizza, with lots of scallops, shrimp, and mussels at the Hornið, an Icelandic Pizza place. On our walk to look at the old city, we saw many ducks swimming on a large pond near the City Hall and the Parliament Building. .

Then with intermittent drizzle and rain we walked about on the shopping streets, looking in the windows and sometimes going in the shops. We had a seafood pizza, with lots of scallops, shrimp, and mussels at the Hornið, an Icelandic pizza place. On our walk to look at the old city, we saw many ducks swimming on a large pond rimmed by some lovely houses near the City Hall and the Parliament Building. The rain started coming down pretty hard and we "ducked" into the National Art Gallery to get out of the rain. We were very impressed with some of the paintings and sculpture, especially the paintings of Asgrimur Jónsson. We met an artist, a sculptor, from Boston, who said he comes to Iceland every year and told us that Jónsson was one of first real artists of Iceland who had trained in Europe. Before then painting wasn't considered an acceptable career. The sculptor told us that at Jónsson's house, which was part of the National Gallery, there were additional paintings. After we had finished looking at the museum, we walked a number of blocks to the house and saw the paintings that Jónsson had bequeathed to the people of Iceland and the City of Reykjavik. We had our first great fish dinner that night at the hotel.

.Sunday, July 16. After breakfast we got a cab and went to a little theater to see "The Volcano Show." The films were taken by Osvaldur and Villi Knudsen, father and son, and show scenes from the spectacular 1996 Vatnajökul Glacier eruption and flooding as well as Mt. Hekla eruptions of 1947-8, 1970, 1980, 1981, and 1991 and more. The second part of the show was the Heimaey eruption of 1973 with the evacuation of the fishing village and the eruption out in the ocean in 1963, which formed the island of Surtsey, more than 1 kilometer across and several hundred feet above the water level, where there was none before. Most impressive were the rivers of molten, explosive, fiery lava coming down the sides of the cone and going into the water. From there we took a taxi to the Perlan, which are domed hot water tanks at the top of the highest hill that they have made into a tourist destination, with a coffee and cake bar on one floor and a rotating gourmet restaurant at the top. On the ground level was a gallery exhibiting some pretty far out wood carvings. A geyser replica spurts water several stories high. We got sandwiches and Cokes at the cake bar and had lunch there. From that level you can walk out on the deck and get 360° of views of Reykjavek. Kurt had gone there at 5 in the morning, walking up from the hotel, because he couldn't sleep and took pictures in glorious sunshine, which we did not have during the day. It wasn't such a bad day, but it rained on and off, just like yesterday. In the evening we went Skólabrú Restaurant (Veitinghaus in the yellow pages) and had a menu of fish paté, cod with vegetables and potatoes, and an ice with candied nuts and seeds. We walked all around that area after dinner and noted a lot of rebuilding in the old town area.

Monday, July 17. The clouds sat low on the hills that are just beyond Reykjavik. Occasionally they opened up for some moments of sunshine and patches of blue appeared and disappeared when the gray rolled in again. It was not cold and pleasant for walking when it wasn't raining hard. We walked around the town and saw nothing in disrepair or down-at-the-heel. Shortly after 9 a.m. a small white bus pulled up, an "Iceland Symphony" placard in its window, and four of us from the Loftleidir Hotel got on. We made a couple more stops and picked up the rest of the group, which numbered thirteen, fourteen including the Gunnar Gunnarson, our knowledgeable, good-natured Islandic guide and driver. We were delighted that it would be a small group. There were 8 Germans, 2 Israelis, 1 Hollanderine, and Kurt and I, the only Americans. Information was given in German and English. Our tour was called Iceland Symphony by Samvin Travel. Shortly outside of Reykjavik we got out to see a small crater, Kerie, that was formed by an explosion of lava like Mt. St. Helen's. It was a very steep-sided crater with a small lake (pond) at the bottom. We went over a mountain and drove along the south side of the island, seeing much agricultural activity, lots of little Island horses, some sheep, a few goats, but so far no cows. These animals are all Islandic and have not been changed any by imported animals. No animals may be imported. These breeds were brought in by the first settlers over a thousand years ago. There were round bales of silage wrapped in white plastic, essentially air-tight, scattered and stacked on every farm. Not very much else than silage is grown in the open fields in Iceland.

Our next stop was at Skáholt where between 1056 and the 18th Century Iceland's first Christian bishop settled. Skáholt's importance began when Gissur the White railroaded the Christianization of Iceland through the Alþthing (parliament). His son Ísleifur was unanimously elected Bishop of Island in 1053. This church was relatively new with a huge mosaic of Jesus by Nina Tryggvadóttir on the wall above the altar and lovely stained glass windows that were fashioned to look like mosaics. Also in the church was a very early Bible, printed in the late 1500's in Islandic.

At Geysir, from whence the name of all geysers in the world come, there was a fairly wide area of steaming pools, bubbling mud, and one bona fide geyser named Strokkur. There were possibly others that didn't play very often, particularly the Great Geysir geyser which stopped erupting earlier in the century. Strokkur erupts with some consistency every eight or nine minutes. At the gas station lunch room at Geysir Kurt and I had hot dogs and French fried potatoes. Every gas station we stopped at served food and sold a limited variety of groceries.

At The Gullfoss (Foss = waterfall), we walked down a trail, encountering spray from the falling water, out to a point where we looked at one level of water crashing downward and upward to a level pounding down. The spray was considerable, and we all got drenching wet. Returning to the parking lot, we climbed a high set of steps and walked to a viewpoint to overlook the entire waterfall. It was a very impressive waterfall and a "must see" on just about every tour's itinerary, because it is relatively close to Reykjavik. Off the main road, we bounced along a black lava dirt road across the Lyngdalsheiði heath to Þingvellir, the most significant historical site in Iceland. The first parliament was established at Þingvellir in 930. We took a walk on a pathway to the site where the first parliament assembly was held. Kurt stepped off the path to take a picture of some cottongrass and sank up to his ankles in water. Further on this path is a point on the Atlantic rift where the North American tectonic plate and Eurasian plate joined. After dinner Gunnar got out his maps and had two sessions, one German, one English, to look at the geology and the ages of the rocks of Iceland and to note the rift going right up the middle. The youngest rocks are along the rift. The oldest rocks are on the eastern and western edges of the island. The North American plate is rising here and the California end of the plate is lowering. The two plates are pulling apart and more lava keeps coming up to cover the area which is being stretched and sinking.

Tuesday, July 18. We walked a little bit outside the Hotel Valhöll in the morning before breakfast. It was cold, windy, and drizzly. We drove out of the Þingvellir National Park to the south coast and on to the ferry dock. We parked at a black lava sand beach. Along the south coast the beaches are all black sand from ground up lava. Flying around were Arctic terns, Arctic Skua, Gulls, Terns and more. We boarded the Herjolfur, the ferry that would take us on a 3-hour sail to the Westmen Islands and Heimaey Island in particular. The Westmen Islands (vestmannaeyjar) were formed by submarine volcanoes between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago. In 1963 the world witnessed the birth of the newest island in the group, Surtsey, which kept spewing until 1967. We were supposed to get a great view of Mt. Hekla, Iceland's repeating volcano, but all the mountains were socked in. The sky cleared up after we left land and we had blue sky all the way across. As we came into the entrance to the harbor, we could see thousands of seabirds of all kinds and many, many puffins, standing on ledges, looking like little penguins. At the dock, there was a bus waiting for us with Gunnar who had flown over after parking our white bus at the airport. We drove around the town of Heimaey a bit on the way to the hotel.

We threw our stuff down on the bed at the Þorshamar Hotel, grabbed our swimming suits and towels, and first went in the bus to the Natural History Museum. There were examples of many birds that are found here, minerals, the few Icelandic mammals and a small aquarium, which is the only aquarium in Iceland. There were codfish, of course, and ocean catfish, as well as crabs, shrimps, lobsters, and what Lonely Planet calls a unique collection of bizarre Islandic fish. Some of us walked from the museum to the thermally heated swimming pool. Everyone must take a soap shower, nude, before getting into a swimming suit. (Boys and Girls have separate dressing rooms!) The water was "light" salt water, not real salty. Outside of the swimming pool were three hot tubs that contained thermally hot water. We swam for a while and then went to sit in the hot tubs. After our walk back to the hotel, Kurt went hiking up some hills of lava to see what damage had been wreaked. After dinner we walked up to a small theater and saw movies of the volcano here at Heimaey, which erupted in 1973, the terrible destruction that was caused, and how the people were evacuated and then came back to dig themselves out and rebuild. We walked further up the street from the hotel to see a house partially covered by lava.

Wednesday, July 19. In the morning we were driven around and stopped at a place above the town to climb a lava hill and look at the crater of Mt. Elja, the volcano that blew its top and filled the town with lava. We saw a marker on top of a high mass of lava which marked where the last houses of the town had been. At another spot we stopped to feel how hot the lava was less than a foot below the surface. We also saw steam coming from a vent. Our last stop was to see some puffins at their burrows on a cliff overlooking the sea. We noticed that many of the lava hills and cliffs had grass growing on them. We were told that efforts were still underway, now twenty-seven years later, to reseed and stabilize the hillsides. We left the puffins and went straight to the airport to catch our six-seater airplanes back to the main island.

We drove along the south coast and then headed north on the east coast. We stopped at two waterfalls, Seljefoss and Skogafoss. At Seljefoss, 62 meters high, we saw a waterfall that you could walk behind and take pictures through the water. Since we got soaking wet at Gullfoss, we chose not to walk behind Seljefoss. I noticed here that the birds, probably gulls, that sit on the ledges of the cliffs by the waterfall, like to fly through the mist and spray of the falls.

Beween Seljefoss and Skogafoss, we stopped at the faBrm of Eyja Þóra and Jóhann at Molknúpur, Hvolsvelli and saw their cows, their horses, their pig, and talked about farming in Iceland, partly that most aspects of agriculture are highly regulated. We learned that they are trying to decide in the Parliament whether to allow in another breed of cattle. We were served thin slices of smoked lamb on flat Iceland bread, and pound cake and doughnuts with coffee. Then we were given a little printed certificate on which we were to write our names as they would be in Iceland, "Alice Seymoursdottir and Kurt Gustavson".

After the farm visit we stopped at Skogafoss, another huge waterfall. At Skogafoss I saw exactly the same thing that I had seen at Seljefoss. The birds jumped off the cliffs at the sides of the falls and scooted right across the spray and then turned around and flew right back through it.

We drove to a special beach at Vik. Named one of the world's most beautiful beaches, we walked along a black lava sand path to see some bird cliffs. There were arctic terns and gulls. There were supposed to be some puffins, but I didn't see any. There was a beautiful rock formation with three pinnacles sticking up out of the water. According to legend the needles were formed when two trolls were trying to drag a three-masted ship ashore. When daylight broke, they turned to stone. We went back to Vik for a quick Coca Cola at a little cafe and noticed that one could send e-mails for a price. We sat down to type up a note for our kids and discovered that the Islandic keyboards are different from the ones we use and we couldn't figure out how one got an "@" sign. At last we got a short message typed up, when Gunnar came back to get us because we were to leave at 5:30 and it was 5:32. We pushed "Send" and asked to girl to make sure it was sent. Our kids said they got it. We drove along a vast black lava sandy desert formed by volcanic eruptions under the nearby glacier. This caused vast amounts of ice within the glacier to melt with floods of water washing down to the seal. This is a continued threat in Iceland and there was no road across these flood plains until 1974. We spent the night at Kirkjubæjarklauster. After dinner we walked out to see a floor-like formation, planed and smoothed by a glacier, made of supposedly six-sided vertical basaltic pillars. Most of them that I counted were four- or five-sided. Just down the road from the motel was a statue of two nuns, who were burned at the stake, one of them for giving herself to the devil and the other who spoke evil of the pope.

Thursday, July 20. We stopped at an area known as the dwarf's cliffs, mostly made of columnar basalt. They reminded one of Aztec or Mayan temples. We perched on different levels for a group photo. Driving along, we came across a group of Islandic horses trotting down the road, outside their fence. Gunnar was most distressed at this. Some of us got off the bus to help round up the horses and herd them back behind the fence Several people in the group did what they could to repair the fence. The beloved horses were safe again. We drove another short distance and got off the bus to look at the thick, spongy moss, small flowers, and fungi growing on the lava..

The lava flow here occurred two hundred years ago and covered 15% of the land. We were told that healthy moss was a manifestation of a healthy climate. While we were looking at the moss there were gnats or midges swarming around everywhere. They were very annoying. I used insect repellent and in this instance it seemed to be effective.

Our next stop was to visit a farm which is being preserved to look as it did fifty years ago. It is owned by a couple of brothers whose father had this farm. Behind the farm was the requisite waterfall and another one. There was a row of small houses with sod roofs, each having its own particular function. and a small chapel that has been here for one hundred years. The pieces of farm equipment standing around, were generally very rusty. The men of the group were quite interested in a 1953 Willy's jeep which was built in Israel. Gunnar played a hymn on the organ in the chapel.

The road to the Skaftafell Nature Reserve and the Vatnajokul glacier, the largest in Europe, went across a vast lava field that was laid down in 1996 and came from a volcanic eruption underneath the glacier. The area was flooded and one of the bridges we went over had been washed out. This lava was very fine lava and not bumpy like some we saw in the morning. We could see fingers or tongues of the glacier coming down to the lowlands. At the service center at the park we gathered for hike to the edge of the glacier. It was raining, not hard, but steadily. The glacier has been receding in recent years, and when we reached the edge of it, a torrent of a river was flowing at its edge. There was a persistent drizzle which kept our rain jackets zipped up, although it wasn't cold and we all got pretty wet walking to and from the tongue of the glacier. The clouds were low and the pictures we took at the glacier look like black and whites. Back at the bus, we hung the wet coats wherever we could, hoping they would dry out a bit before our next adventure. We drove up a winding dirt road, parked the bus, donned the coats, and headed out for a hike to the Svartifoss, a beautiful waterfall, cascading over colorful columnar basalt. The rain continued and the dirt path got slick. We reached the overlook for a view of the fall. Most of the rest of the group continued down the trail to the bottom of the waterfall. I waited at the top for a while in the rain, realizing that my rain jacket was water repellant or water resistant, but not waterproof. When the rain water started to come through unabated, I headed back to the bus, sliding several times on the slick trail. One knee went down, but I didn't really fall. On the bus all of soggy people were trying to dry out somewhat. The clouds were lifting more and more as we rode along and we began to see more and more of the glacier. The tongues of the glacier became apparent, one right after another.

We arrived at the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon. In pelting rain and blowing wind we bounced on an amphibious vehicle down a dirt road and into the water of the lagoon amidst numerous, interesting-shaped icebergs. I got very wet and a bit cold, but it was fun to see all the huge natural ice sculptures. The life jacket actually gave me some protection from the rain, where my jacket did not. We noticed that there were some icebergs that had the distinctive white and then blue color as seen on the post cards, but mostly it was gray, light gray, dark gray and pale gray. Back on the bus with its heater jacked up, we shed the rain gear, draping it wherever we could, and proceeded on. We then followed the edges of the east coast fiords heading north. We spent the night at the Hotel Höhn by the Hornafjörður. Fjörður = fiord.

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