Trips

Fri., 11/8 - Vik, Glacier Walk, Seljaladsfoss Waterfall, Horse Farm, and Fludir

This morning we drove to Vik where most of us took the optional tour in a Super Truck out onto a tongue of the Myrdalsjokull glacier that covers the Katla volcano. On the way, we passed cliffs with Fulmar birds that look like sea gulls but are cousins of the albatross. They nest in the cliffs and when the young start to fly they flounder on the ground where they are easy to kill. The Fulmar has been hunted and eaten as a delicacy by past generations of Icelanders. A “hunter” uses a long stick to conk them on the head before they have a chance to spit out a foul smelling, gooey, thick spit.

The caldera of the Katla volcano has a diameter of 6.2 mi and is covered with ice to a depth of from 660 to 2,300 feet by the Myrdalsjokull ice cap. There are 120 volcanic craters beneath the ice cap. When a bunch of the volcanoes erupted in 1918, the glacial ice melted and broke apart and caused a flood that devastated all of the farmland from there to the ocean. The resulting tsunami slammed back and inundated everything again. Lava and ash were added to the land.

It snowed on the glacier last night so we walked on a track made in a foot of snow up to a large ice tunnel or cave. The inside showed layers of thick ice and strips of black sand, indicating winter and summer over the millennia. It was another awesome experience to stand there and be inside a glacier. Our guide served us Icelandic vodka with clear iceberg ice to celebrate the event before we headed back to the super truck.

Rock formations off shore	Our Super Truck - $250,000 Mercedes with high clearance and $1,300 apiece tires
Pyramid-shaped rock - the light was flat!	Ice cave
Ready for the glacier's cave	Getting closer
All in a row	Layers of lava
In the cave	In the cave
In the cave - the ice is beautiful	In the cave - black ice from the lava
Vodka over glacial ice	In the cave
In the cave	Icicle
Pothole in the ceiling	Pothole in the ceiling
Sea and cliffs	As we drove from Vik to lunch at the Volcano Hotel, Andres tried to explain the Icelandic language. The Icelandic alphabet has 32 letters and no Q or Z. Only one word contained a Q so they made it a K and any Z became an S. The Norse settled Iceland so Icelandic is closest to the Norwegian language. Icelanders created their own dialect over time. Schools teach Icelandic, then English, and then Danish, because Iceland was most recently subjugated by Denmark. Iceland, like Wales, has tried to create new descriptive words in the Icelandic language for modern things such as computers, TVs, etc. - rather than just adopting the English word. But slang and young people shortening the long Icelandic words is “modernizing” the pure Icelandic. After lunch we stopped to look at the Seljalandsfoss waterfall. It falls 200 feet but it was so windy and wet we did not get to walk around behind it. Many tourists stepped over the “Closed” chains and walked behind it anyway. It was a nice walk and view anyway.
Farmlands
Seljalandsfoss waterfall	Seljalandsfoss waterfall
The next stop was at an Icelandic horse farm. It was a disappointment. We got to pet a horse but did not see them move through their five unique paces.	Icelandic horses
Very friendly	"That's nice!"

The ride to the hotel gave Andres the opportunity to try to explain the naming of people in Iceland. There are no “family” surnames. “Son” is added to the father’s first name to become the son’s" last name" and “dottir” is added to the girl’s father’s (usually, but sometimes it is the mother's) first name to become her “last name”. Many names are not “allowed.” Biblical names are okay but others must be “approved.” (See the Internet for some interesting information on the subject.)

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