May 13, 2018

      The thin cloud layer that filtered the sun soon dispersed to a sunny morning with fluffy white clouds gathering after noon. The morning temperature was 8 C and there was a strong wind. Today the ship arrived at Reykjavík, Iceland, just after noon.  Reykjavík’s latitude is a bit further north than Fairbanks, Alaska. Reykjavík is pronounced Rake-a-vik.

    We walked on Deck 14 before and after Emile Baladi’s morning lecture about Iceland’s history. Iceland was discovered about 860 AD by Leif Erikson, second son of Viking Erik the Red. The first settlers at Reykjavik were led by Ingólfur Arnarson who was fleeing Norway with his wife, Hallveig Fróðadóttir and family, his foster brother Hjörleifur Hróðmarsson and his family and their slaves.  For the first few hundred years Iceland was ruled by Norway and then it became a colony of Denmark’s until independence in 1944.

     There is archeological evidence that Leif Ekrison also established a settlement called Vinland, now the UNESCO World Heritage site of L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, and discovered Baffin Island, Canada’s largest island. We will see L’Anse aux Meadows on a September bus tour.  Emile also spoke about the meeting of USA president Ronald Reagan and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev at Höföi House in Reykjavík, during October 1986 which ended the Cold War.  There is a statue of Leif Erikson in front of the striking Hallgrímskirkja church in Reykjavík.  It is a city landmark.  It took 40 years to complete, but the tower was finished in 1974 with the completion of the church in 1986. 

   We watched as the boat bringing on the harbour pilot apporached then had lunch in the Oceanview Café, which had a decorative Mother’s Day dessert presentation.  The ship was cleared for passengers to get off by 1 p.m.

    There was the usual line to get the stickers for each person for their assigned busses. Due to difficulties with the deck 5 gangway and some rain, which caused a slow descent from the ship, most tour starts were delayed. Our tour started 45 minutes later than scheduled. Our Excursion today was the six hour Golden Circle with Geothermal Bakery Experience. Reykjarvik, the original name, means Bay of Smoke, since the steam rising from the hot springs looked like smoke.  Iceland’s population is 350,000 with more than half the people living in Reykjavik. There is a road that circles the coast of Iceland which is almost 1300 km. A road sign indicated that it is 377 km to Akureyri from the outskirts of Reykjavik. We saw signs for Dunkin Donuts and KFC and our guide, Anda who is Dutch, said Costco recently arrived as has IKEA. She distributed maps of Iceland with a good map of Reykjavik on the reverse side so we could follow the tour route. Tuk tuk means Thank You in Icelandic. 

    Anda also explained that new born children have their names chosen from an approved list of Icelandic names. It might be a month before a child can be registered if the registrar does not approve the selected name.  She also explained about the surnames of Icelanders.  If a man and woman had a girl and a boy everyone would have a different surname. For example: Thor Bjornson, father, is married to Inga Johandur then, the girl could be named Anda Thordur and the boy could be Jon Thorson.  In order to find a person in the telephone book, you need to look up the first names and then find the person in the list of surnames for that first name.  The Icelanders who emigrated to Gimli did not keep the tradition.

    Vehicles drive on the right hand side of the road. The gravel roads in Iceland are surfaced with black lava stones. Running along the sides of highways were paths used by horseback riders and bicyclists. They are old trails from when horseback was the main transportation up until the 1920s.  They are black from the colour of the lava stones that cover the surface. The highways have large two lane roundabouts big enough for busses and container trucks to negotiate easily.  The highway speed limit is 90 km per hour.  The price of gasoline is 210 to 225 kronas per liter or about Canadian $2.62 to $2.77 per liter.

   The first place was Thingvellir (Þingvellir in Icelandic) National Park. Annually for over 800 years, beginning in 930 AD, the Icelandic Parliament, Alþingi, met on the plain near the waterfall.  Today the parliament meets indoors in Reykjavik.  The leaders from Iceland would bring delegations and set up structures of turf and rock covering the roof with fabric for shelter,  meals and sleeping. There is a waterfall and river here.  Across the river is the summer home of the Icelandic president, a white building with three peaked sections. The high rock wall of Logberg (Law Rock) was where the laws of Iceland would be recited from memory by the ruling chieftain. The laws were from Norway up to 1262 until Iceland was ruled by Denmark as a colony. In 1919 Iceland and Denmark agreed that in 25 years, Iceland would be independent from Denmark.  So, in 1944 the country split with Nazi occupied Denmark.  Also, Thingvellir (Þingvellir in Icelandic) National Park’s Alþingi is geologically where the North America and Euroasian tectonic plates are pulling away from each other at a rate of 2 centimeters per year.  There is a wide flat hardened lava field where the plates are separating.  As we climbed back up the trail to the car park the rain started and was accompanied by tiny hail pellets which lasted only a few minutes.

   As we drove through in the countryside we saw sheep grazing, some with new lambs, and Icelandic horses with their new foals. There are dairy farms in Iceland but we haven’t seen any cows.  Iceland is formed from volcanoes and, being close to the Arctic Circle, its vegetation is stunted.  In the past few decades the government has started a reforestation program, but there are no forests in Iceland like in Canada.

   The next stop was at Geysir Hot Spring. Here we walked through the area of geothermal activity, steam rising from air vents and some mud holes were bubbling hot. It was about a 200 meter walk from the parking lot to Geysir. This geyser spouts suddenly once about every four minutes.  We were lucky to see the plume that was about eight meters high each time. This geyser has been active for thousands of years. The geyser area is not as large as the sections around Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and different again from the geysers and hot mud holes near Rotorua, New Zealand. The steam was nice and warm on a cool, windy, drizzly day. The sulphur smell was hardly noticeable.

   There was more rolling countryside with inactive volcanoes rising not far away on the drive to Gullfoss waterfall. The name means Golden Waterfall because of its brownish colour from glacial sediment. It is a broad waterfall that has two level changes in the canyon of the Hvítá River. There are viewing places at the top and along its route to the bottom.  The wind was shifting the direction of the spray billowing up from the falls. We were able to get lots of angles of the falls.  There was a time over 200 years ago that the farmer who owned the land was asked to sell the rights to the waterfall so it could be harnessed for electricity. He refused and his daughter crusaded against its development for another 50 years and promoted it as a natural attraction.

   As we drove, some fields had 10 or 12 white swans just sitting in the fields, not close to any water.   The swans return to Iceland each spring.

   The final visit was at Fontana Bakery where we were greeted by a young woman who walked us along a lake shore to a small sand pit where rye bread had been baking for 24 hours in the hot spring water in a four liter pot covered in lava sand. We watched her dig up the lidded pot and remove it from the sand pile then open the lid and remove the plastic wrap to reveal a loaf of rye bread.  We followed her inside where she removed the bread from the pot and cut the loaf into pieces for everyone to have two or three samples of the rich slightly sweet cakelike bread made with no yeast or eggs.  There was butter and thin strips of smoked trout to place on the bread. Then it was back to the ship in drizzle and strong winds.

    It was after 8:30 when we met Karen and Peter for dinner following our 6.5 hour excursion.  Our selections were salad, baked chicken breast with mashed potatoes, cauliflower & broccoli or butternut squash soup, caprice salad and grilled salmon with mashed potatoes, cauliflower & broccoli.  Dessert was Tiramisu.

    Since there were evening excursions, there was just one show at 10:15 featuring Leanne Jarvis, an English singer who was a finalist on The Voice UK.  As I was composing the blog I noticed the Fuel barge leaving the ship, being assisted by a tugboat.

         Distance walked today was 13.84 km