The "Icelandic Experience"

Two crazy days that we've had over here... and we've seen some unbelievable sites. I don't want to make any superlatives because it's not fair to all the amazing things I've seen in the past, but these have been superb—fantastically beautiful and awe-inspiring.

We started a little later yesterday morning than on Monday, but we still got off to a rather early start. We drove straight to Þingvellir, the continental rift national park and also the former home of the viking parliament centuries ago. When you leave the plateau that Reykjavík is on and head into the rift, all the ground becomes igneous rocks covered with moss. These igneous rocks are just sorta scattered around the ground, so obviously it's not somewhere where it's that easy to just frolic in the fields.

At the end of the drive, we pulled in quickly to a rest stop to fuel up on collabs and kókó mjólks before setting off for some exploration. I think that my greatest accomplishment since coming to Iceland is this:

At the convenience store, I grabbed my kókó mjólk and set it confidently on the counter, with a friendly "hæ," and the lady spoke back to me in Icelandic. I freaked out momentarily, worrying that I'd have to shamefully blow my cover and revel that I speak English, but I heard the words "sukur skert" in her question, which means "sugar free," and I assumed she was asking me if I was sure whether I wanted the sugar free or the regular one. I also heard the word "blár," which sounds like German "Blau" (blue), and that confirmed my suspicion, as the sugar free one is blue. So, I answered confidently with a "Já" and she gave an OK and rang me up. So I have now passed for an Icelander, I suppose!

At the time, it was raining, but it stopped very soon after. Our first site was yet another waterfall, which Jon had seen on his last trip here. That being said, after all the rain we had, the waterfall was significantly bigger than his pictures showed it being last time, and what looked like the wooden platform that they had built for observation had been completely overrun with water.

As we walked further through the park, it began to hit me, just how beautiful this place is. There's something about the color scheme of the place, the dark green on igneous black, that really, really appeals to me. I feel like you don't get much of it other places, but this was one of the most awe-inspiring sights I've seen. We continued walking along, and made it to an overlook, from which you could see the Lake Þingfellir, which eponymously is next to the park. We then made our way down to the old president's retreat, Icelandic National Cemetery, and a small church that's a couple years old.

But this is where the attractions of Þingvellir really started: the continental rift. Yes, we were entirely in the rift, and there are few places in the park that can be definitively called "Europe" or "North America," but there are many fissures all around that can be called, perhaps just for bragging rights, a "plate boundary" (with the biggest of air-quotes around them...) All that is to say, there's just not one big crack in the earth, but it's a hundred little cracks all scattered across this few mile wide gap. The most famous one, Silfra, can be swam in. We considered snorkeling (you suit up into a dry suit, and form reports, it's not that cold...) but the timing just wasn't really working out, and we hadn't booked in advance. So, we just admired the fissure from outside the water and continued to walk around. And let me say, I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but Silfra is stupidly beautiful. Especially since we got the clouds starting to clear up right around then. It was at this point that I made the ambitious prediction that we'd see the Northern Lights. I just felt it, even though the cloud cover was starting to come back... Anyways, Silfra feeds out into Lake Þingfellir, and the water is so clear...

After grabbing lunch, we said a goodbye to Þingfellir and headed out further into the center of Iceland to see Geyser and Gullfoss—the final two attractions on the "Golden Circle" that we cared about seeing.

The English word "geyser" comes from the very specific geyer Geyser here, in Iceland. Years ago, it used to erupt very frequently, but nowadays it's been dormant since 2000. So instead, we saw the geyser just a few feet away called Strokkur. This one erupts every 4–8 minutes, so we saw several eruptions while we were there. The weather was quite miserable, with very, very strong winds and a moderate rainstorm to go along with it. It was super cool to see the geysers, and especially cool just to feel the steam and smell the sulfur coming out of the springs. Just something that we do not get at all back at home, but if you drive through the Icelandic countryside, you will be smelling sulfur every few minutes. Jon and I discussed whether you can taste it in certain foods and in the water, and in my opinion, it is definitely in the hot water (which is heated by geothermal heat), and is certainly not in the cold water, which comes from the glaciers. More on the cold water later, and I suppose, just water in general.

Here's Strokkur!

And finally, we headed to one last waterfall, Gullfoss, or the Golden Waterfalls. Again, very, very beautiful, just to be honest, getting a little repetitive on the waterfalls here...

If you can't tell by the pictures, the clouds were once again starting to clear up. And the drive home was so, so beautiful. We got sun, really for our first time since arriving, and we stopped on this outlook over the other side of Þingvellir to take some pictures of the stunning scene.

After the drive back through the park, I saw an awesome opportunity at the other end. Right at the exit of the park, there was this fissure that looked big enough for us to climb in, and most importantly, wasn't filled with water. We parked, probably illegally, for a few minutes to go explore and climb. Though I didn't break any ancient walls on this trip, I can now say that along with a 2000 year old Roman wall, I have now also climbed a continental rift. This little stop, though it wasn't planned, may have been the highlight of the day up until that point.

We got back soon after and dropped off the rental car before walking home. Leifur's mom made us a delicious cod and tomato dish, but it was, according to them all, not a real Icelandic dish. The original vikings settling Iceland didn't have tomatoes with them, I suppose... But it was still delicious and I had thirds.

The night was amazing, though. My gutsy prediction earlier in the day had come true, and even though the clouds came back after I had avowed that we'd see the northern lights, they left once more. And for good this time. We were all just sitting around, and Leifur's brother came in from outside, nonchalantly asking if we wanted to go see the northern lights. Jon and I rushed outside, and they were like "relax! There's no rush." See, that was my question about the lights. Do they just exist for a second or two, or do they stay for longer. Do they move, or are they static? So many things I just didn't understand. So here are all of my questions answered.

The lights are not static. They move around, almost as if blown by wind. Though the phenomenon lasts for hours, they come and go in strength. A band may be around for 20 minutes, but it won't be that strong the whole time. Green isn't the only color of light, but when you get a really strong burst, you may get pink and yellow too. According to the locals, pink and yellow don't occur that often in Reykjavík, however we were lucky enough to get some. Apparently they were unusually good last night. In fact, so good that an Icelandair flight on its way to the UK made a circle just to show off the view to all the passengers. While Jon and I were in awe, the rest of Leifur's family, aside from his youngest brother who was giddy to tell us all he knows about the lights, stayed inside as if there's nothing special. Which I found really funny.

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This morning we woke up early and got ready to catch our bus back to the south, to Sólheimajökull. We had paid a decent amount of money today, so we were excited (and nervous) to see if it would pay off. And boyyyyyy did it. The van came and picked us in front of city hall, and we drove the exact roads that we took on Monday to Skógafoss. In fact, we stopped at Skógafoss for a 40 minute break. Though I took no photos of the fall this time, as I had done it more than its due photographic justice last time, I really, really admired the view. I just stood watching it, and again, we got no clouds. I actually preferred the colors more when it was more rainy and cloudy, but the warm sun was certainly a bonus.

What's funny is that I specifically remember mocking the day that I learned the word for waterfall in my French class, asking when I'd ever need to use that. Well, the day came, as a French couple walked up to me and asked me, in French, whether I could take a picture with them. With no hesitation, I slipped into French, helping them frame the photo. At one point at the start, the guy said "see the waterfall" in a very thick French accent, only for the girl to correct him, saying "Mais il parle évidemment français!"(he obviously speaks French) and we moved on, entirely in French! I also listened to the end of Mahler's 8th while there, a piece that I like to play to enjoy nature and the beauty of our world when I get the chance.

We finally got to the glacier, Sólheimajökull, which means "home of the sun glacier." It can be best described as a river running out from Mýrdalsjökull and Eyjafjallajökull, but instead of water flowing, it's ice. See, I learned so, so much about glaciers today, and the first thing is that ice can be seen as just very slowly flowing water. We still get "waves" on the walls, and I'll talk more about those when we get to the ice climbing bit, but for now, we were just observing. Nowadays, the terminal face of the glacier flows into a pond, and that terminal face is receding. It expands and recedes regularly with time, though they have noted that the recession is faster than it has been in previous cycles. Basically, 50 years ago, all of this basin was covered in ice, and it would have looked from the top what the sides of the lake look like today.

We geared up and headed onto the glacier. The gear included a harness for climbing, cramp-ons (spikes that go on the bottom of the boots), and some ice axes. We didn't use the ice axes at all for anything but climbing, but our guide, Quique did use it to clear out the path often.

Taking a short break from the actual hike: we were in a group of six with an amazing guide. Quique, who is originally from Spain and has been hiking on Sólheimajökull nearly every day for the last two years, is super knowledgable about the glacier, obviously. He said really that he knows or understands Sólheimajökull, as if it's a family member. He sees it change, and he explained to us that cracks can open up from being too small for you to fit your hand through to being like the one that we climbed in just a matter of months. The one that we climbed up didn't even exist in November, and he said he'd doubt that it will still exist by April. It's just amazing to see how, in a sense, alive, this glacier is. That it is constantly changing, and that it needs care and an eye on it so that crazy and unexpected things don't end up being dangerous for anyone who wants to enjoy this beauty. He showed us later on these things called moulins, which is where some water works its way and creates a hole dozens of feet deep. He broke off a piece of ice right in front of a moulin and threw it down. It took seconds for it to make a splash, so clearly, you would NOT want to fall in... When we took a look into one, he made sure to secure a mount into the ice and clip us onto it.

This does not do justice of just how stupidly deep the moulin is. Like it is really, really deep.

But anyways, we did all this discovering after the ice climbing, which was, of course, the main reason we came. So we found a crevasse for us to walk into, and he said "ok, so we're going to climb this." I was amazed since it is literally just a wall of ice, straight up. No forward slant (slab) or anything, just a wall of ice. Of course, the spikes on the front of our cramp-ons would help us with this, as would the axes, but it just seemed so much more professional than I expected. We did some practice first, learning the technique. Technique items are as follows

• The rhythm is to get both axes into the ice, then move the feet to an even level, then "stand up" so that now you can get the axes higher

• You feet should always be perpendicular to the wall, almost as if you were walking on flat ground

• Everything is designed to lock into the wall once it's even just slightly in the ice

• Try to keep the majority of weight on your lower body, not upper body

• As I was saying earlier, there are "waves" in the ice. You want to stick yourself into the troughs, not the peaks, as they are more stable and will not break with as little force as the peaks will

I went first out of the six of us, which I was told is the most difficult since you have to set the path.

This was a super awesome experience! We were all supportive of one another as everyone went up, and everyone made it to the top! After the climbing, we went more on a hike to see more parts of the glacier, which included drinking the glacier water, finding ourselves some silica-ash mud, talking about the melting of the glacier and moulins (which I explained earlier), and how the crevasses form.

The crevasses form because, once again, a glacier can be seen as like very slow flowing water. As it moves around corners, or moves over bumps in the foundation, the stress in the areas farthest away from the corner or bump will need to be moving at different speeds from those closest. That leads to stress, and eventually, fracture. Quique had hiked all 11 miles of the glacier, and he said that right around the corner, a new crevasse field emerges as the ice undergoes this exact process I just described.

Here's us just exploring the glacier...

Finally, here's me drinking the water from the glacier

So, it's time to talk about the water. Icelanders are crazy about their water. Like in their showers, they actually have degree marks for the water. And everyone talks about it. Leifur is particularly proud of the tap water, and they claim that the toilet water is drinkable as well (though I'd imagine ours is back at home too...) They just love to talk, think, and brag about their water. This glacier water isn't actually going to do much for you, though, because even though it's water, it has no minerals in it whatsoever. So it needs to be "processed," which involves running it through something volcanic to give it the minerals it needs before it can be filtered and brought to the public for consumption. But this water was indeed delicious, refreshingly cold, and crystal clear!

We headed home after 12 hours out on the go, and just enjoyed talking with Leifur and his siblings about things like the school systems, the water and energy (of course), along with just how our days were. I always love those little conversations, and it's what I really missed about staying in a family's house, since I haven't done that in a few years.

All in all, 10/10 last couple of days. I'll probably be back with one more post before I'm home!