We have always wanted to go to Iceland. I found some cheap tickets and off we went for a weekend. Of all the places we've been in Europe, Iceland is one of the places I'd go back to in a heartbeat. The entire island only has about 500k people on it and almost 300k live in Reykjavik. The people are incredibly friendly and the scenery is breath taking. Since we were only there for a few days, we spent most of our time around Reykjavik and did the Grand Tour.
As you can see, it's July and we have our jackets on. You don't go to Iceland for the beautiful, warm weather. This picture is in front of the Tjornin Lake in the middle of Reykjavik. The town hall is to our left and there is a pretty park there. I seem to remember Erynn burning through a few rolls of film taking pictures of a couple ducks. Watch out National Geographic.
...and here you can see her in front of the town hall. The infamous ducks are just out of the shot, but she has her camera ready!
I believe roughly 95% of the population is Lutheran. This is a shot of the main church in town, and it was built within the last 50 years. It's actually quite pretty sitting on top of the only real hill in town, and it affords some great views from the top of the steeple. We went to the top and I nearly had a heart attack when the bell sounded. Much to Erynn's delight. The statue in front is of Leif Ericsson, the famous Viking explorer. The statue was donated to Iceland by the US government to commenerate his discovery of North America.
Here are the blasted bells that scared me half to death!
The harbor front was pretty cool. The entire economy is based on fishing and tourism. We spent a few hours wallking around the waterfront looking at all the fishing boats. Erynn is posing in front of a modern art sculpture remembering the Viking adventurers. The sculpture is a stylized version of the ships the vikings used and is called the Solfar Suncraft.
The North Atlantic is not the calmest of oceans. So I thought I'd lend a hand keeping lookout over the harbor.
Apparently if you're British, the sight of this will strike the fear of god into you. As I mentioned, fishing is a big deal in Iceland. The problem is that it is a big deal in Britain too. The British love their fish and chips made with cod. Since the British can't manage anything, they have depleted their own stocks of cod so they set out in the 50's to steal other people's fish. What ensued are known as the Cod Wars where the British were repelled by the fearsome Icelandic Navy. This is probably my favorite picture of the whole trip. I guess I'm the only one though.
Erynn will forever have a soft spot in her heart for Iceland due to the day we spent at the Blue Lagoon. The lagoon was created from the effluent of a geo-thermal plant. The water comes out of the ground super-heated and runs through heat exchangers to provide the town of Keflavik with all their hot water and electricity. Once the water is cooled a bit, they just throw it away into the lava field. In the 70's, a bunch of hippies started swimming in it, and someone had the bright idea to charge admission. What resulted was one of the coolest things I've ever done. Depending on where you are in the lagoon the water temp is either just above or just below body temperature. The water is blue because there is a lot of silica in the water, which reflects the blue wavelength of light. The silica is also known to be a cure for psoriasis. We just had a great time, and the only reason Erynn got out was beacuse it was closing.
We took a coach tour around to see all the major sights around Reykjavik in a day. With a short amount of time, it was a good way to see the major stuff. I particularly liked the Gullfoss, or Golden Falls, which Erynn is standing in front of in the picture. I've been to Niagara Falls and I enjoyed this more because it was more "raw." You could literally walk right onto the rocks as you can see by the black dots above Erynn's head. Plus, there wasn't a single tourist shop within 10 miles of the place.
One of the neat things about Iceland is all the geo-thermal activity. As a result, there are a bunch of greenhouses heated by steam that grow anything from coffee to bananas. On the coach tour, we stopped at one of the tourist greenhouses, The Garden of Eden, for all of us to buy souvenirs. The greenhouse also showcased some of the stuff they could grow included a man's face made out of grass.
This picture isn't really all that spectacular, but it is the original Geysir that gave them all their name. It was on the coach tour so I had to include it. The weather was really horrible at this point so we didn't stay around to watch it really erupt.
Skalholt Church is like Westminster Abbey to the British. It has been the center of the Icelandic Lutheran Church for over 1000 years. I guess there was quite the civilization around this church a long time ago, but not now. Now, it's just a chuch in the middle of a field.
Our tour guide got all emotional when he showed us this place. This is meant to be the "home" of the Icelandic culture. Pingvellir is the place where the original tribal parliament met. Iceland has the longest, uninterupted parliament in the world running over 1000 years. There were these little mounds all over, which were the remains of the cheiftan's grass houses used while parliament was in session. The flag marks the exact spot where laws were read aloud. The other photo is from the flag overlooking the valley with the Oxara River running through it.
Behind the Pingvellir there was this pretty little stream. People were taking lots of pictures, but then the tour guide informed us of what really went on. Apparently the little pool behind Erynn is where they drowned all of the women that were convicted by the parliament for capital offences. Interesting.
© 2002 Doug Rathburn