Monthly Archives: January 2019

Your Choice in Walk-Behind Waterfalls

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You can walk behind Seljalandsfoss.

Wear a coat. Just a hint.

A million people come here every year. Bit of a muddy path. Very pretty, though. 
Tour busses everywhere. Wait your turn.

Or you can sneak off to the Kistá, on Snæfellsnes, which has trolls. Real trolls. You can see a big one lurking in front of the fall below. Sorry, not on the must-see-waterfalls of Iceland lists. But it’s just off the road. You can sniff it out on the edge of the Berserker Lava Field. 

Bit of a brown place in November, but it greens up real nice in the summer. Oh, and there’s a second troll leaning over the cataract, so a bonus!

Nice. If you were four metres tall you could reach high tup from your waterfall lair and scratch her under the chin, even! Oh, yeah, one more thing. Bit of a muddy path. You can approach the falls from both sides, but only on the north side can you get underneath. Sorry, no crowds.

Homeland Security in Grundarfoss, Iceland

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Yesterday I showed an image of Grundarfoss and it’s mysterious lava tube and troll. I was remiss. I should have mentioned that there is a welcoming team.

Say hæ, everyone! They’re kind of like the airport security guys who check your suitcases at the airport, so you know the drill. (Don’t expect to hide anything in your pockets.)

Grundarfoss and Its Mysteries

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I took this image of Grundarfoss on a very cold morning because, well, how cool is it that the public water supply of a major city of 872 people (huge for Iceland) is a waterfall. Very cool! So cool, I could hardly hold the camera steady.

But look what I missed, at the base of the cliff just to the right of the base of the main fall: a lava tube. Now, how cool is that! But, of course, it’s a public water supply, so no snooping around there. Rats. What about the troll at the base of the hill at the left of the image. I bet they’d let me go visit it.

Sea of Milk: Renaming Iceland for Fun

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Time to make a new map. Here, let’s start:

And the map?

Perfect. Wouldn’t it be fun to make maps rather than to follow them? To discover Iceland, like the settlers did, because it is, after all, a culture of settlement? For instance, Hafnarfjall …

… would be…

Mount of Atlantis (on the Sea of Milk)

It sounds like it’s on the Moon, doesn’t it, but, well…

… the place already looks like that, too!

 

Cheap Eats in Iceland

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The snow’s falling, the budget is tight, you’re sitting in your rental car trying to defrost two hours from a cafe, and it’s lunch time. What to do? May I suggest …

Icelandic flatbread, a Danish twisted donut, herring-beet-apple salad, skyr (fresh-cheese-yoghurt with zero fat and 17g of protein — I like pear or blueberry the best, but there are a lot of other flavours, too), and the one you love. Cost? About a third of a cup of tea and 10% of a bowl of soup in Reykjavik. At this rate, you might be able to afford dinner! And by the time you’re done, you might be able to see out!

Good Fortune at Hraunfosser

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The Hraunfosser, or the lava field falls, are really worth the visit, even in winter.

Even in the snow!

Sure, you can lose important stuff in the snow, because you have to negotiate snacks, camera, wallet, hat, gloves, snow, and slippery paths. Here I am after running across the bridge looking for likely nice people and finding them. Look how she takes charge. He should keep her close, I think. (It was my wife who found the wallet and sent me on my sprint across the icy bridge with no people in sight.)

This Russian-French (?) couple was happy to get his passport and all his money back. He didn’t even know he’d lost it when he put on his gloves back before the bridge.

Note how I keep my stuff in a little daypack now. Can you tell it’s a been-there-done-that situation?

Just another day in Iceland! I hope they’re doing well. Meanwhile, back to the light. What there is of it!

Barnafoss

Watch your step! (And do get a daypack. Really.)