Iceland

We started retirement journey #2 on September 4, 2012 by flying out of Dulles on Icelandair to Reykjavik for 2 days.  I now understand why it was so much cheaper to fly on the Tuesday after Labor Day.  Dulles was eerily quiet; there was not even a line at security.  The plane was about 2/3 full, and Ron had a full row of seats to sleep in.  The plane left at 8:40 pm and arrived at 6:25 am local time (3:25 EDT), so we did not have good night’s sleep.  The weather on arrival was 12 C, or about 55 F, and raining.  It continued to rain on and off all day with blustery winds strong enough to turn our umbrellas inside out.  I don’t think it ever got much warmer either, but that is the weather we expected out here in the North Atlantic at about 66 north.

We took a shuttle bus to our hotel, and we were very lucky that they allowed us into our room right away.  We were very hungry and we wanted to find an ATM so we went out fairly quickly.  There is a nice square a few blocks away that provided both.  We took a little nap in the hotel and then headed out to explore Reykjavik.  

Eventually we made it to the National Museum.  They had an interesting photo exhibit of a daring shipwreck rescue in 1949 of a fishing trawler – in December, with about 4 hours of daylight, rappelling down hundreds of icy feet of cliff.  It took about 5 days to get the dozen men off the boat and up the cliff, into farmhouses to warm up and be fed, and finally over to Reykjavik.  The rest of the museum was filled with interesting artifacts and commentary about the human settlement of Iceland since 870 AD.

After the museum we walked across a park and large pond and back into town to eat lunch at a vegetarian restaurant.  It was very pleasant and filling.  The music was all from the 60s!  Then we walked over to the Hallgrimskirkja (church) which is on a small rise and has a tall bell tower you can go up (in an elevator) in order to get a view of the city. 

On the walk back to the hotel, I bought a nice wool hat!  After another little break we headed out again to the Reykjavik Art Museum which had a big exhibit of an artist named Erro – 50 years of his graphic art.  He has an interesting way of combining disparate familiar images, like a cadre of the Red Army marching in Venice.  We had Icelandic beer at the English Pub and ate dinner at an Indian restaurant.  It stopped raining and started to clear up about 8:30.  After some more wandering around, we went to bed early.

Luckily, Thursday was only cold and windy, but NOT raining.  We might have become a little discouraged!  We booked an all day excursion called the Golden Circle Tour, which headed out at 8:30 am after breakfast in the hotel.  The tour bus was almost full.  There was some commentary about Iceland in general and Reykjavik (which means smoking bay because there is a geothermal area even within the city limits).  Iceland only has a population of about 320,000 and more than half live in the capital area.  I was surprised to learn that Iceland used to have quite a bit of forest in the low lands – mostly beech and no conifers.  But the settlers managed to cut down the forest fairly quickly.  There is only one native mammal, the artic fox.  There are quite a few fresh water fish like salmon and trout. 

We quickly got outside the city and into a very deserted area going up over some hills.  We were following along a large water pipe that was bringing HOT water into the city from a geothermal area.  All of the heating for buildings and hot water is provided from geothermal energy.  They don’t pipe in the hot mineral water because it would be unpalatable and corrosive.  They run it thru a heat exchanger with drinkable water and then pipe that into the city at 80 C.  Most towns have their own geothermal plant, so it is a fairly decentralized system.  Eventually we passed by the plant where this occurs for Reykjavik.

The main attraction however, was down the road at Lake Thingvallavatn, a very large lake in a large rift valley where the North American plate and the European plate are pulling apart.  There is a very steep escarpment on the west side, where we parked to get out, and another mile or two to the east where Europe begins.  However, even though the geology makes this National Park interesting, it is even more significant historically.  During the early days of settlement, this valley was central enough and hospitable enough the all the inhabitants would meet there once a year for a Parliament (the Thing), starting in 930 AD.  There is a tall Rock called the Law Rock, where all the laws of the country would be recited and new ones made.  There was a particular and important role called Law Speaker, because these laws were not written down for a couple of hundred years.  Sadly, when the country peacefully converted from Paganism to Christianity in 1000 AD, the laws became much harsher, especially for sins like adultery, and the position of women deteriorated.  

Next we headed over to another valley where the Gullfoss River tumbles over two precipices to make a spectacular waterfall.  The name means Golden and indeed the water looked orangey yellow in places because of the silt it picks up coming out of the Langjokull Glacier, which we could see off in the far distance.  Waterfalls are always exciting places.  I think it is not just the noise and action and sense of danger but also that all the ions in the air act almost like a drug.  

Nearby is a geothermal area where the very first Geysir was named in the 13^th century.  Geysir is a man’s name, and became the generic name for hot water spouts.  The original Geysir rarely erupts anymore because of an earthquake a hundred years ago, but a new one named Strokkur goes off every seven minutes or so in a 30 foot tall plume.  The water in the vent, which is about three feet wide, bubbles and roils and swells and subsides for a while and then a huge water bubble slowly rises two or three feet until it suddenly breaks into a tall steam plume.  Then all the water rushes back into the vent from the surrounding pool and the process starts all over again.

Next we proceeded down the Gullfoss river valley, a prime agricultural area, to the ancient seat of the Icelandic bishops called Skalholt Church.  It was here that the last Catholic Bishop, who resisted the Reformation, was beheaded in 1550.  A number of archeological digs are going on in the area, and there is a reconstruction of the bishop’s house, a typical sod construction.

The final stop was a geothermal power plant generating electricity for the island.  There was an interesting exhibit about the process.  80% of Iceland’s energy needs are able to be met from hydro and geothermal sources.  The only sector they can’t serve yet is transportation, but the guide said they were working on it.

We got back to Reykjavik at 5 pm, had a beer at the Dubliner pub, ate dinner at a Thai restaurant, and went to the Volcano House to watch 2 movies.  One was about an eruption in 1973 on the island of Heimaey which threatened a large and important fishing town.  The islanders had to be evacuated and about 400 houses were engulfed in lava.  However, the islanders managed to fight back by pumping huge quantities of sea water on the lava, cooling it quickly enough so that it did not engulf the fishing harbor.  The eruption lasted 5 months, and when it was over they also quickly rebuilt the village.  They are using the heat from the lava to provide hot water and electricity.  The second movie was about the recent 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull which so disrupted European air travel.  Finally, we walked around the old harbor area and back to our hotel.  We are up a 4 am tomorrow to fly off to Glasgow, Scotland.  We were worried to begin with that 2 days were not going to be enough time to spend in Iceland, but we feel like we had a very nice visit.  There are still things that we have not done in the capital, and certainly lots of other stuff that could be done around the island.  With one more day, we probably would have spent the day at a hot pool and spa.  So we are quite content.  We also found out on our tour that Icelanders are the third most content nation after Denmark and Costa Rica.