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Published: November 12th 2022
Dear All
Greetings once more from my Nordic travels this summer. I am very much settled back in the UK now, but I am continuing to publish my blog entries after an epic summer adventure in northern lands. This entry relates my further adventures in northern Iceland, after having already seen a blue whale, mind-blowing rock formations and volcanic lunar-like landscapes. It was pretty amazing so far, and it continued to be. I was particularly excited waking up this Tuesday morning in the middle of August, as my driving was to take me to the city of Akureyri (pronounced "Aku-weh-ree"), Iceland's second largest. It had been a while since I was in a large urban area - Torshavn back on the Faroe Islands was probably my most recent sizeable one a week earlier, but at 13,000 people, it was hardly a metropolis. Indeed, this summer's travels turned out very much to be a trip in more rural and wilderness lands, and although I had loved every single minute of it, I was looking forward to just that little bit of urban grit. Admittedly there are only 18,000 people living in this small city, but it actually felt quite something to
be in a place with traffic lights, roundabouts, and quite a few other cars and people. Thus far, driving along Icelandic roads, you often see another car coming in the opposite direction every two minutes or so, and it is rare to come across someone going in your direction unless it's a slow vehicle you need to overtake. Often, I had had the whole highway to myself for miles and miles, and with my American Anthems album playing, it had been a thoroughly enjoyable country to drive in so far. I found each day to be really exciting, and I had really got into this "Road Trip" type of holiday - I imagine there'll be many more to come!
So on the Tuesday morning, I left Husavik and the cosy eco-hostel behind, and drove south to first visit another amazing Icelandic waterfall. This one was called "Goðafoss", or "The Waterfall of the Gods", which I thought was quite a cool name! (Hengifoss incidentally means "The Hanging Waterfall", whilst Dettifoss means "The Collapsing Waterfall"). The origin of the name Goðafoss dates back to the year 1000AD, when after much deliberation, Icelandic leader Thorgeir Ljosvetningagodi made Christianity the official religion of
Rainbow, Goðafoss Waterfall
Drive from Húsavík to AkureyriIceland, replacing Viking paganism. To confirm the decision, he threw his statues of the Norse gods over this waterfall, hence the name. Today it is a very pretty and attractive horse-shoe shaped waterfall, 100 metres wide and 40 metres high, and again I managed to capture it on camera with a perfectly-positioned rainbow hanging over it. There was a little bridge further down the waterfall valley, so it was possible to appreciate it from both sides - the side with the sun behind me was best I thought for photos, and it also created the rainbow, so I chose the east side on this beautiful morning as the waterfall flowed northwards.
After spending time appreciating this natural wonder, I drove on to Akureryi - and what a metropolis! I mostly met with Icelanders there, rather than other tourists, which was very refreshing as I very much enjoy getting to know the people and culture of a country rather than meet with fellow tourists, and I had not had much opportunity to do so thus far on my journey. While the tourist spots there are amazing and quite unparalleled, I rather missed getting to know the enigmatic Icelanders, and found
this to be an issue for most of my time there. With a population of merely 370,000 people, and an annual tourist figure of over two million, Icelanders were to my mind a rare species, and I often jumped at the chance to meet with and talk to one. I was better able to do this in Akureryi than anywhere else I think.
The city's location is just lovely, at the head of Iceland's longest fjord, the Eyjafjörður at 43 miles long, and surrounded on both sides by looming, snow-capped mountains - it was really quite stunning. I had arrived on a sunny day too, which made everything feel so cool and crisp. I parked up in the car park of a health centre near the city's famous Botanical Garden, and got talking to a nice (Icelandic) gentleman walking his dog there. My first visit in town was to this quite incredible Botanical Garden, home to around 7000 species of plants, including Icelandic and Arctic ones, as well as others from more southerly latitudes. It really is quite amazing how they are able to grow so many different species of plants up there, in one of the most northerly
Skjálfandi Bay
Drive from Húsavík to Akureyri botanical gardens in the world, and I enjoyed a lovely wander around it.
From here, I headed to the city's famous Akureyrarkirkja Church, designed by famous Icelandic state architect Guðjón Samúelsson and completed in 1940. Samúelsson is also famous for his Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavik, more on that in a later blog, and is noted for having created a very distinct Icelandic style of architecture, reflecting the rocky, mountainous and glacial landscape of the country. I found this really quite fascinating, and noted from the stark, bold and imposing structure of Akureyri's church that there was indeed something of the starkness of the country presented in its design. It stood at the top of a hill overlooking the city centre below, and very much dominated the landscape, just as the rocks, mountains and glaciers of the country dominate Iceland. I was impressed, and it was certainly a unique and new type of architecture to me.
From here I walked down the steep steps into the busy main street of town, called Hafnarstræti, and it felt really quite unusual to walk past people in pavement cafes enjoying coffees and lunch, a scene which I had not seen in a long
Goðafoss Waterfall
Drive from Húsavík to Akureyri time. It was nice to see that some people in these parts can afford such luxuries, and I didn’t spend any time at all in the whole of this trip in a pavement cafe watching the people go by, simply because it is sooooo expensive! I guess if I'd gone for a weekend or so I would have splashed out, but I had a marathon five-and-a-half weeks in such countries, and thus needed to stretch my budget out quite a bit (it still became the most expensive trip I've ever done by the way...!). I walked into the lovely harbour area, with awesome views out over the fjord on this gorgeous sunny and warm day, and sat down in a random sofa placed on the fjordside appreciating the wonderful place I was in. Along the way I had passed the city's famous traffic lights, which have heart shapes for the red light. The local council installed these after the 2008 Icelandic financial crash in an attempt to boost the city's morale and cheer up its residents, particularly during the dreary winters there. I imagine the winters certainly need all the cheeriness they can get, with only around four hours of
Me, Goðafoss Waterfall
Drive from Húsavík to Akureyri daylight a day deep in the depths of the cold, dark winters. This was difficult to imagine on this gorgeously sunny and warm day though, with not a cloud in sight. I then headed to the city's Vínbúðin shop to stock up on a bit of alcohol as my supplies were running low. Iceland is like the Faroe Islands and other Scandinavian countries, in that you can only buy alcohol in these state-owned alcohol shops, not in supermarkets, with each sizeable urban area having one. This was again another place with just Icelandic people in, and I used some of my very limited Icelandic phrases such as "hello" and "thank you" in the shop which I appreciated.
After this, I headed uphill to the city's swimming pool, which turned out to be an amazing outdoor complex with several pools, all heated to varying degrees, and a cold tub too. There was also a steam room, and two cool water slides which I tried out. The place was heaving with locals - I initially thought this was due to the amazingly sunny day we were having, but a local told me it is also this busy in the depths of
Eyjafjörður Fjord
Drive from Húsavík to Akureyri winter - nice! I got talking to a friendly Icelandic chap from Reykjavik, a music teacher who was on holiday there with his family. He said that he normally goes on holiday abroad in the winter to escape the cold and dark days up there, and he spends the summer in Iceland appreciating the warmer weather and longer days. I could understand this. I had a wonderfully relaxing time there, particularly doing the contrast between the 42 degree hot tub and the 4 degree cold tub, which was amazing! A sign next to the cold tub advertised it as "The Coolest Place in Akureyri", in English, which on this warm and sunny day I could well believe!
After stocking up at the local supermarket, and talking to my final Icelandic local in Akureyri that day, who actually lived at the very northernmost tip of the Tröllaskagi peninsula which the town sits on, and fuelling up, I drove onto my accommodation for the next two nights. This was an amazing place, one of the quirkiest I've ever stayed in, around 20 miles to the south-west of Akureyri. I'm so glad I booked it - it was an Air BnB place,
Eyjafjörður Fjord
Drive from Húsavík to Akureyri though I think no longer as the owners decided to travel the world for several years in a yacht a few months earlier, and allowed their house-sitter to enable their final few bookings, including mine, to continue - I was grateful for this! It was actually a room in a converted cow shed, on a farmstead in the middle of the pure Icelandic wilderness bliss, surrounded by forests and mountains, a pretty little river valley, and snow-capped peaks in the far distance. It was a basic and rustic accommodation, made mostly of bricks and corrugated iron, and a couple of insects here and there, but was still seriously very cosy and well-equipped - I slept well there. As mentioned, the Icelandic owners were sailing around the world at the time, and had a Parisian chap and his daughter looking after the place while they were gone. These two were staying in the farmhouse next-door, and were very friendly. Unfortunately upon arrival, I made quite a gash in my little finger whilst trying to close the heavy farm gate, which although I managed to plaster up, caused me quite a bit of pain for the next two weeks or so, even
after I had arrived back in the UK. The rather nice thing about this though (gruesome bit alert!), was that it also managed to cut off a small lump of dead skin I had had on the side of the finger for some time now, so in the end it was actually quite a welcome surgical procedure! After unpacking, I went for a walk up the nearby hill for some amazing valley views, lit up by the beautiful northern sunlight, and felt like I was in the middle of a beautiful and empty Alpine valley in Switzerland - it really was an amazing place to be!
After a wonderful night's sleep, I had an amazing second day in this part of North Iceland - I visited the Arctic Circle!! I walked across the Arctic Circle on foot up there, and had lunch in the polar region - this was really so special, and was my first time in the Arctic! I awoke at a fairly early 6.30am to make the hour-long drive up to a place called Dalvík, around 30 miles north of Akureyri, to catch a 9am ferry around 40 miles further north over the sea to the
tiny Arctic island of Grímsey. This wasn't a tourist ferry, which I very much appreciated, but a local ferry carrying cars and goods, mainly fish from Grímsey back to the mainland. There were a few tourists including myself, but it was lovely to be off the tourist trail for a bit. The ferry had nice seating upstairs, and the journey gave some excellent views along the stunning Eyjafjörður surrounded by snow-capped peaks all around. The skipper told me it would be a calm sea, which was a relief, and it became my first calm boat trip on this Scandinavian adventure. Although the fjord part of the trip was in fact calm, the rest of it was still a little rough to my mind, and the skipper later handed out sick-bags to the passengers. I think he meant it was calm by normal standards - once waves reach six metres high, they don't do the trip, and apparently they can get up to 12 metres high! So indeed, they were relatively calm waters! The ferry journey was three hours, and it was a blissful time for me to gaze out of the window on this, another gorgeously sunny day, at an
ice-blue Arctic Ocean and powerful Icelandic mountain peaks ringing the fjord.
Grímsey Island turned out to be a lovely, tranquil piece of paradise. The view back to Iceland was stunning from up there - it appeared as quite simply a solid mass of snow-capped mountains on the distant horizon, looking highly foreboding, and I was reminded again of what the first Vikings must have thought when they arrived in this wondrous country. Grímsey itself was very attractive, with gentle sloping hills, and a tiny village of 70 inhabitants called Sandvík, also home to the harbour we docked in. Contrary to popular belief (I think at least), the vast majority of Iceland is not actually within the Arctic Circle. However, the northernmost tip of Grímsey is, and hence this island is famous for being the only place in Iceland where you can visit the Arctic, as well as also being home to a staggering one million birds, on its tiny two square miles of land! This was really quite something! I could hear and see the masses of them as we neared the island, which was very much a spectacle for both senses! Disembarking the boat, I was a bit
concerned about the Arctic Terns, which make up a significant proportion of the islands' massive bird population. These “delightful” birds are shaped like an arrow when they dive, with long pointy beaks, and are notorious for dive-bombing people en-masse - I had already seen a few YouTube videos of them, showing something akin to a scene out of Hitchcock's "The Birds"! I did in fact on two occasions experience their wrath during my time on the island, as I felt them build up from one or two dive-bombers to around ten or so, but I felt they died down quickly again if I just continued walking and ignored them. I certainly had my hood up, and backpack and umbrella ready to put above my head too if necessary.
I first walked up to the geographic Arctic Circle marker, around a mile north of the harbour and just next to the island's tiny airport, whose runway seemed to be home to most of the Arctic Terns of the island. Apparently, when planes are due to land or take off, a large vehicle goes up and down the runway to scare the birds away, although they mostly seem to just come
back down and settle there once again - bird strikes are quite a significant hazard for planes arriving in the island, and I was happy to be arriving this time by ferry. This geographic Arctic Circle marker marks the point on maps where the Arctic Circle runs through, at precisely 66.5 degrees north, but apparently the actual line is in continual movement as the earth wobbles on its axis, and is currently moving northwards in these parts at a rate of 15 metres per year, or around a mile a century. Thus, in 2017, a new Arctic Circle marker was placed around a mile-and-a-half north of here, and thus marks more exactly where the true Arctic Circle is right now (although by my calculations, it should have actually been a further 75 metres north of there during my own visit!).
After taking a few photos at the first marker, straddling the line itself, I headed further north through my first region of aggressive Arctic Terns. This made me nervous, but I was sure as heck not going to let them stop me from visiting the real Arctic! I was heading to the second marker, to take even more photos
there. I had both Arctic markers to myself upon arrival, but shortly after a few other tourists from the ferry began to arrive, and I was glad that someone else was there to be able to take pictures of me. I then sat down on the northernmost tip of the island, with the sea waves crashing against the cliffs at least one hundred metres below me, and had my amazing picnic lunch in the Arctic!! I enjoyed this so much - not just because I had a pepperoni, cheese and taco sauce sandwich with a coke, but also because I was having an Arctic picnic! This felt amazing.
On my way back, I spotted a couple of puffins up-close outside their nests, along with lots flying, although a local lady said that most of the puffins had apparently left the day before. They only spend the summer on the island and in these parts to have their pufflings, while the rest of the year they just spend out on the sea! I find it incredible that they live out the winter simply swimming on the ocean! I still love these birds, they are still very much my favourite!
After collecting my "I've Been to the Arctic Circle" certificate from the local souvenir shop, I did a brief walk to the southern tip of the island this time, to a photogenic lighthouse, but didn't spend long there as the Arctic Terns were seriously gathering en-masse for me, and I didn't feel too comfortable with it, so I headed back. On the way there and back, I passed the very sad former site of the 19th century Grímsey Church, which was destroyed in just 20 minutes by a devastating fire started accidentally by an electric heater in December 2021. There were many workmen there rebuilding the structure as I passed by, which was encouraging news from this sad story at least. Just as I arrived back in "town" again for the return ferry, a cruise ship had actually anchored offshore and was ferrying its passengers onto the island on smaller boats. The place was about to become inundated, and I could see the locals readying themselves for the tourist dollar - one little boy had even set up a little retail outfit on a wooden board, with a sign saying "Roks For Sale" (sic) - cute! I actually felt sad
to see that mass tourism even reaches this remote part of the country, but I guess this is good for the locals as it boosts their economy when otherwise they would just be relying on fishing for a living. And at least I had my time on the island pretty much to myself.
I absolutely loved the three-hour ferry back again, it was so relaxing. After arriving back on the Icelandic mainland again, I drove back to my converted cowshed accommodation, and enjoyed a wonderful evening in surrounded by rustic glory. It was a very enjoyable day, with plenty of time spent contemplating how blessed I was to be travelling in this amazing part of the world.
The next day I was heading west, to the off-the-beaten-track Westfjords of Iceland, and I shall write up about my time there in my next one.
Until then, thanks for reading, and all the best for now!
Alex
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
True Arctic Circle...
did you calculate how many years it would be before the ball that marks the Arctic Circle would fall into the North Atlantic Ocean? Your trip is truly amazing!