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Published: September 14th 2021
British Embassy
On way to museum Iceland 2 - Day 2 of 22
Hi all
We usually like to accumulate a couple of days at least before trip blogging but..... we are hoping for something quite spectacular tomorrow so thought we would cover just our last 24 hours.
Last evening we headed towards the Old Harbour which has in recent years been turned into something of a tourist hub - supposedly. The site info boards certainly reinforce that, showing on the map many exhibitions eg Whales of Iceland, a dozen or more whale / puffin etc boat tours and a plethora of eating places along with various souvenir shops.
In reality at this time of year, in this kind of weather, it was actually quite deserted, and frankly wasn't much different when we were in the same area today. In the end last night we found a fish and chip restaurant on its edges and enjoyed that. The fish, in a batter which was more tempura rather than a more substantial English batter, was lovely and fresh.
A good night's sleep - quiet and dark room - and we had a reasonably early start for a good gander around Reykjavík. After a coffee shop
breakfast we spent the rest of the morning at the National Museum. Quite modern, logically arranged, very good exhibits and good English narratives.
We forgot to say yesterday that in school they are taught English and Danish. In fact English is widely used around the city, though it may be less so as we get into the countryside.
After the museum it was one of our wander arounds, mainly following the waterfront. Along the way we saw 1/3 of Iceland's navy..... Actually they don't have one. But they have 3 large Coast Guard boats, and presumably it was something like these that faced off against the UK Navy in the 1970s during the Cod Wars (if you don't know what these were I'm sure Wikipedia will enlighten but, in a few words, these were clashes between English and Icelandic fishing fleets brought about by Iceland extending its fishing borders out to 200 miles).
In fact in the museum they had an exhibit which claimed to be the "only weapon designed in Iceland". A towable cross between an anchor and multi-pronged device with sharp blades used to cut the trawl cables of UK trawlers.
Further around we
Iceland Church silver
From around early 1200s came to the Harpa Concert Hall - for classical pieces - orchestral, opera etc - not pop and rock (they use the football stadium on the rare occasion that major stars visit).
The windows are designed to represent fish scales, and they can be colour changed when lit up at night.
Not surprisingly fish plays a large part in Iceland culture, and they use all of it. We saw an infographic today that demonstrated this, from the actual fish fillets to
Fish heads - for soup
Fish bones - for calcium fertiliser
Fish oils - medical, tonics etc etc
And in fact we were in a shop yesterday that had handbags, key rings etc made from cured fish skin. They weren't, even by Iceland standards, cheap though.
Our final sea edge ramble was to the Sun Voyager, an iconic sight on Reykjavík's shoreline. A steel sculpture resembling a Viking ship. Intrinsically, it contains the promise of undiscovered territory and dreams of hope, progress and freedom. You can just see Mt Esja in the distance.
A little light shopping for the day tomorrow and we have had a leisurely evening, with BBC1 ?, back in our room
Figure from 1000
May be 'God' or may be an Iceland pagan god, but experts aren't sure ready for an early start.
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AndrewHL
Andrew Lisowski
Iceland Train
I didn't know there was a locomotive on display in Iceland. Where is it located?