Tag Archives: Iceland

The Puffins of Rauðarnes

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The puffins of Rauðarnes are a fun bunch. The walk is stupendous. It’s 7 km, return, but you could easily spend days sauntering along.

You can brave the rough, steep road to Borgisfjörður Eystr and see the puffins up close and personal, and they are really, really great, but this is better, because they aren’t so crowded, which gives a different dynamic, and more goofiness. These are, like, country puffins.

Plus, the gulls are sneaky. See her below?

And unlike the puffins in Borgisfjörður Eystril, they aren’t controlled by hidden netting to preserve their habitat and green it, so these are puffins in the raw, so to speak, which means erosion, yes, but also (see below) a penthouse!

Very cool!

Turn off the road to Vellir Farm just north of Svalbard, just north of Þorshöfn. You will soon be there, puffing on your 3.5 km walk to the puffins, delighted by the sculpted sea stacks and caves on the way. Get there soon, though. The puffins have an ocean to get back to. Oh, by the way, if you’re lucky, you can get pretty close. How about 3 metres?

Such beautiful birds!

Of Seals and Men

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Notice how little attention the seals are paying to either global warming or humans attracted to global warming and seals.

There’s a lovely crowd of them off of the mouth of the glacial river flowing out of the glacial lagoon these days, but, to tell the truth, if you go the the Selfljót and look for them in the estuary at the tide change you will have a lot more fun, even if you don’t see a single one.

This was the Iceland that Gunnar left for Denmark, and the one he returned to when war threatened the world. It’s still there, if you look for it, because even if Gunnar didn’t find it again, and you aren’t likely to, either, with a little luck the search will be the finding. Iceland will change you, if you work at it.

Trolls and Invasive Species

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Icelanders started playing around with imported North American lupines a couple generations go, to try to stop erosion. The things do stop the land from blowing away, and they are mighty beautiful, for sure, but they’re also a bone of contention, as they change the colour palette of the landscape profoundly and reduce the number of species that can thrive. Nonetheless, it remains an uncertain tradeoff, with some people planting lupines and others tearing them out. One of the species that doesn’t mind is the Icelandic Troll. Here’s one who seems to be thriving among the beautiful weeds.

Strutágil