Reykjavik

July 13, 2016  Reykjavik

Our last day, and no new herring preparations to report.  I guess we’ve seen them all.

I forgot to mention a stop yesterday (can’t access the photos because it was before the drowning of my camera).  Friðheimar is an amazing tomato farm, under glass, growing the most delicious tomatoes for the whole of the country.  Using geothermal heat, the enormous greenhouses grow giant vines with a minimum of soil—almost, but not quite hydroponic.  We had a delicious tomato soup there and toured the greenhouses, including a glimpse of the box of bumblebees released to pollinate the new flowers at the tops of the stalks.  Internet photo:

 Today we toured Reykjavik on foot, lucky to have a glorious sunny day with temperatures around 60 degrees.  This is a city of 200,000 if you include the surroundings, but feels like a somewhat bigger city because there are lots of tourists here at this time of the year.  We began by walking past the concert hall which is on the oceanfront.  It has four theaters, the largest of which seats 1600 people.  (All the photos today are taken with my iPhone and I must say, it seems to do very well):

  

The Parliament is modest, but then it has only one house with 63 members.  It dates from 1881:

 The original cathedral is adjacent to the Parliament:

Lilacs are just finishing their bloom here in mid-July:

 Nearby the parliament building is a simple black volcanic cone, about 6 feet high, a monument to civil disobedience.  In 2009, after the banking crisis, there were enormous demonstrations which ultimately brought down the government.  This monument was erected to commemorate those demonstrations, and just recently, after the Panama banking revelation, there were demonstrations again which resulted in the resignation of the prime minister.

 There are many statues in Reykjavik, including this very fanciful monument to an unknown bureaucrat.  Fully formed from the waist down, carrying a briefcase, he is simply a rock from the waist up:

  

We spent an hour in the Settlement Museum which had explanations of the Viking origins of Iceland and artifacts from the archeological sites which have been discovered.  We had wonderful tomato soup at a local restaurant, and then, while we walked the main street of town, our guide had arranged stops at multiple places for sampling foods: cheeses, meats (including a wonderful marinated goose breast), waffles, chocolates, etc.  It was a great and unusual lunch!

Iceland has a museum to its first and most prominent sculptor, Einar Jónsson, which we visited.  The sculptures are monumental, with figures which represent Icelandic themes, often from legends.  Here’s an example, which is titled “Dawn”.  It represents the end of a legend about a troll who holds captive a woman and competes with her all night, rhyming stanzas back and forth!  At dawn the troll turns into stone and the woman is saved:

  

Here’s another which we did not get to understand:

  

We then visited the main church, situated on a hill overlooking the city, the Hallgrimskirkja.  It took from 1937 to 1986 to build it, and it is striking:

 The inside is soaring as high as a medieval cathedral, but is very plain.  In the back, over the entrance, is an enormous organ, the centerpiece of the “International Organ Summer” held here each year:

This view from the tower shows the statue of Leif Erikson in front of the church and the main street of the city going from the church to the waterfront:

So we will have a farewell dinner tonight and then home tomorrow.  This will be the last post (unless there’s a story as we fly home).

More South Iceland; a camera event

July12, 2016  South Iceland

Morning herring report: a new one today at breakfast, in Iceland, mind you: herring pieces in a dill watery cream sauce.  Meh.

I will post the story without most of the photos today.  In a paroxysm of astonishing stupidity, I dropped my camera into a pool of hot water at the spa this afternoon.  I won’t tell the story, but Joyce will, I’m sure, if asked.  So all the morning photos are on the chip but inaccessible.  I used my iPhone camera for the end of the day and will do so again for the last day of the trip tomorrow.

Our first visit of the day was to another spectacular waterfall, Gullfoss, with a wonderful walk along the ravine carved out by the huge amount of glacier melt water.  This photo is from the internet, but looks just like mine, as the day today was glorious!  Bright sunshine and temps in the 60s:

 We then went to the Strokkur, a very active geyser, which is located in a steaming hot spring field with many vents.  The geyser spews every 3-4 minutes.  Another photo from the internet:

  

We then went to the Fontana Geothermal Spa for lunch and an hour-long soak in the hot mineral waters.  It would have been wonderful had I not boiled my camera.  Internet photo:

 We then went to the UNESCO World Heritage Thingvellir National Park where our geographer, David Silverberg, gave us a great on-site discussion of the meeting of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, and we could see, right in front of us, the valley formed by the pulling away of the two plates.  We began our walk up one side of the valley wall:

 Here is a kind of rock formed by what David described as “ropy lava” which froze in pushed up waves:

  

The rocky outcroppings on the wall of the valley has marvelous mosses and flowers:

So we stood on the west side of the valley, on the American plate and looked across to the Eurasian plate while David lectured:

Finally, on to Reykjavik where we’ll see the city tomorrow and then home on Thursday.

South Iceland

Monday, July 11, 2016  South Iceland

Iceland is fascinating.  A country the size of Kentucky with 330,000 inhabitants, it lies at the southern edge of the Arctic Circle but has a moderate climate because of Gulf Stream warming.  Icelanders love horses and there are more than 80,000 horses on the island, most used for riding but some used as meat animals.  More about that later.  The midsummer climate so far has been dreary, with temperatures in the high 50s/low 60s, wind and heavy clouds with occasional showers or drizzle.  This when the days are extremely long: today sunrise was at 3:30 AM and sunset at 11:33 PM.  It never gets dark, but is like twilight during the short night.  The blackout curtains in our current hotel, on the south coast of Iceland, are not close to perfect so the room is light all night long.  There is a heavy gnat presence when the wind dies down, on your face and in your nostrils and ears, but fortunately the wind is pretty brisk most of the time.

After breakfast this morning we traveled to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano.  Our guide laughed as we tried to pronounce it, telling stories of the visiting journalists who tried to broadcast the name when the volcano erupted in 2010 and wreaked havoc with air transportation all over the globe.  We boarded a huge “Super Jeep” (which actually is a Ford) with giant very soft tires and set off up the volcano slope. 

 Up and up and up we went, over streams, up boulder-strewn fields, and onto relatively soft snow fields towards the Myrdalsjokull Glacier.  At this latitude it takes little elevation to get into first sub-arctic and then arctic range. 

 Here’s our group on the snow field:

 The volcano erupted under the glacier and the damage was astonishing.  The evidence is all around and easy to see, especially with the aid of David Silverberg, our National Geographic geographer to point things out.  Life is hard for the flora up here, but there are lichens, mosses, and tiny plants which do survive:

 One of the most beautiful is rare at this altitude and latitude, but it does exist, the arctic thrift flower:

 The mountainsides have astonishing color!  This photo is not enhanced:

  

We descended the volcano’s slope and went to the adjacent beach, a full half mile deep shore of black volcanic sand with occasional grassy hillocks, overlooking offshore islands:

 Finally, we visited two stunning waterfalls, Skogafoss:

 And Seijalandsfoss, which has a footpath taking you behind the falls:

  

Tomorrow national parks, geysers, and ending in Reykjavik.  

Iceland

July 10, 2016  Iceland

Up early, transfer to the airport, fly to Oslo and change planes for Reykjavik.  With the two-hour time change, we arrived at noon, but one of our group had a bag not make it which delayed our leaving the airport.  We traveled across a volcanic moonscape:

 We arrived at the famous Blue Lagoon, a hot outdoor pool of incredible proportions.  We had lunch at the restaurant there, and then changed and went in.  It’s amazing—it ranges from warm to hot depending on where you are.  There’s a bar for drinks, and people in the pool with trays of white goo made from evaporated water which is supposedly good for your skin:

The air temperature was in the high 50s and the clouds dropped a cold drizzle on and off, but the water was wonderful.  Depending on your level of belief or disbelief, it cures whatever ails you.

Iceland is fascinating geologically.  It lies right on a junction of two tectonic plates, and is pulling apart at the very fast rate of 2 cm. per year.  As the island splits in half, magma rises up in the faults and fills them in, so much of the interior of the country is fresh volcanic rock.  The rock is covered with a tan moss, and fissures are everywhere:

 After getting cured of all our ailments in the hot mineral water we traveled to a geothermal power plant.  99% + of the homes in Reykjavik are heated with hot water from this plant, which lies about 15 miles inland.  In addition, the thermal energy is used to generate electricity.  Bore holes are drilled from 3 to 6 km. deep, and superheated water/steam under pressure rises at a temperature approaching 300 degrees C.  The water is caustic and so isn’t used directly for power, but rather is put through giant heat exchangers, where water from the water table, just a couple of hundred meters deep, is heated:

 The heated good water is split—some is sent to Reykjavik for use in home heating and home hot water:

 And some is used to power the giant turbines which are hooked to enormous generators.  There are six turbine/generator pairs, each of which generates 45 megawatts of electricity.  Here’s one:

The water from the water table is discarded into the sea, but the water from the deep bore holes which brought the heat and steam into the heat exchangers is pumped back deep into the ground.  It was a fascinating tour!  We drove up above the power plant for a panoramic view of this area, which is quite forbidding:

 The moss was so thick to walk on that it was spongy!  There were clusters of very pretty tiny pink flowers:

 Tomorrow volcanos, glaciers and black sand beaches.

Fjords, Trains and Bergen

Friday and Saturday, July 8 and 9; Fjords, Trains and Bergen

On Friday morning and continuing on Saturday morning we had a great two lectures from David Silverberg on the economy and social structure of Norway, outlining the constructs of Democratic Socialism.  If you are a native (or a legal resident), you benefit from the social contract which is broad and deep.  Education through university is free.  Health care is almost free (inpatient care is free but there are small copays for outpatient care).  The pension which everyone gets at age 67 is something people can really live on (it sounds like more than our lowest level of social security).  Taxes are enormous, both personal income taxes which top out at 47%, but also the VAT on everything.  15% on food, 25% on everything else.  Property taxes are relatively low, but there is an annual wealth tax on all your assets, both property and monetary.  Mothers and fathers get a combined one year of maternity/paternity leave at 100% of wages.  And on and on.  The wealth gap between rich and poor is much smaller than in our country.  There are negatives beyond the high taxes: waiting times for elective medical procedures are long and you can be denied very expensive care when you are old.  Etc.  But the well-being of the country, measured with issues such as infant mortality, life expectancy, happiness quotients, etc. is very, very high.  Very instructive.

After the Friday lecture we boarded the Sognefjord ferry for a gorgeous ride on a beautiful day, up the narrow Aurlandsfjord to the town of Flam.

  

In Flam we boarded the Flam Railway (“named by National Geographic Traveler as one of the top ten train journeys in Europe”).  The train ascends 2837 feet in an hour, going through 20 tunnels.  It really is amazing.  There is a bike path along the tracks, and a system by which you can take the train to the top, rent a bike, bike down the path, and turn in the bike to be taken back to the top.  We didn’t  do that.

There is a stop where you can get out to experience a stunning waterfall which makes a heavy mist so that you get a little wet:

 Many of the people on our train spent more time posing for photos (looking away from the falls) and taking selfies than admiring the falls.  This behavior is seen at all touristy spots and seems especially common with the large number of Asian travelers here.  The photo IS the reason to be here.

  

We changed trains at the top of the mountain and rode to Bergen where we checked into our hotel at about 8 PM.

Herring report for Saturday morning:  today's choices included a version we hadn’t seen before, herring with onions in some pink liquid, as well as the usual mustard herring, tomato herring, cream herring, etc.  I didn’t try it.

  

 Saturday morning we had the continuation of the Silverberg lecture, and then took a walking tour of Bergen, a lovely city, and a major seaport, founded and supported by the codfish industry.  The seafront at old Bergen (or Bryggen) is mostly restored and there are many shops and cafes in and behind the facades facing the fjord:

It was a lovely walk despite the rain (yes, it’s raining but at least it’s in the 60’s).  Bergen, we’re told, is the rainiest city in Europe. 

We visited the Hanseatic Museum where we learned about the union which was so important to Norway, trading fish for grains, spices and other European goods.  The museum houses renovated quarters from the days of the Hanseatic Union, and the life is hard to imagine.  The city burned down enough times that ultimately no fires were allowed in the buildings, so all winter people went without light or heat.  It must have been awful.

 Beds were short!  Only about 5 feet long.  Norwegians were not tall then, I guess:

We walked through the fish market, and at the time we were there (close to noon) the fresh fish was pretty much sold out, but the fish restaurant business was starting to boom:

After lunch we drove out to Edvard Grieg’s summer home: 

It is maintained as a museum, and has a number of his belongings.  Grieg was short—very short.  Here’s his Steinway piano with short legs (and correspondingly short pedals).  The wide, low bench was used by Grieg and his wife to play duets:

  

At the adjacent recital hall we heard some of Grieg’s piano music:

Final dinner tonight, and tomorrow about half of us continue on for the Iceland part of the trip.  More then.