My first week in Iceland had a lot of necessary logistics and administrative tasks, getting settled in my apartment and wrapping my head around living in a new country. But in my second week I was able to start exploring, not just around Reykjavík but more broadly into the countryside and Highlands.
The week began with my mind back in the USA since Emoji had a vet appointment to clean his teeth and extract at least one. My little guy is an old man by dog standards, and because of his heart condition it always makes me nervous when he has to go under anesthesia. The procedure went okay, but when they got a better look during surgery they discovered that many additional teeth needed removal — they extracted 14! Apparently dogs have ~42 total, but given that he’s lost 10 in the past that means he’s down to less than half. He’s doing okay, but every dog owner on the streets of Reykjavík can attest to me missing him as I stop for lengthy conversations with their pups.
My city explorations this week were long exploratory walks, reaching beyond the tourist streets to find myself on industrial corridors and inside abandoned WW2 bunkers. I’ve always liked to see a city this way, through the alleys and backyards. I hiked around Öskjuhlíð, a forested area near the Perlan Museum, walked along the southern coastline penned in by the domestic airport, and stumbled upon unexpected finds like the clubhouse of the Icelandic Radio Amateurs (ÍRA). I hugged the edges of the harbor through the Grandi District, stumbling onto gems like the The Living Art Museum hidden among the fishing trawlers and shopping centers.
But more importantly, I got outside the city. Classes for my graduate program don’t start until August 18, so my goal is to take advantage of my flexible schedule before then to see some parts of Iceland that I’ve never visited before.
On Wednesday I went to the Hveradalir geothermal area in Kerlingarfjöll, a mountain range in the Highlands between the Langjökull and Hofsjökull glaciers. It’s an stunning place, where boiling waters create steam that billows through the muddy hills, mixing with fog to continually obscure and reveal the mix of greens, browns, reds, and snow white of the landscape. I was in Yellowstone earlier this summer, which felt like a geothermal opener to this main act. The hills were steep and muddy, and the slow ascent and decent of other hikers provided a useful sense of scale when looking out over the vast landscape. This was my first time in the Highlands, and I loved it. The road there was as rough as I’d been warned about, probably the worst I’ve experienced outside of Costa Rica, but landscapes were otherworldly.
I also went to see the volcanic eruption happening on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Last week the Sundhnúksgígar fissure had its 9th eruption and while it had calmed down a lot there was still a chance of seeing flowing lava. So on Saturday I joined a group heading down the peninsula, and hiked in to a newly established viewing area roughly a mile from the most active crater. There was a hill at the site, completely surrounded by recently cooled lava flows. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to walk across that field to see newly created lava spouting from the closest and highest viewpoint, although now I see that there is official guidance against doing that. 😬
It rained sporadically, which hissed and turned to steam as it filtered through the cooled and blackened crust of the lava’s exterior and hit the molten core. In the shortened distance from the top of the hill I could see with my naked eyes the magma spewing violently from the crater and a river of lava flowing down directly into the field between us. It’s honestly quite humbling to witness the power of the earth like this, a fact that was reinforced on the drive back as we saw where flows from previous eruptions had encroached on the town of Grindavík and destroyed roads and pipelines in the area around the Blue Lagoon.
Noted & Done
- Got my pool card, which I can use at any pool in the city of Reykjavík.
- Saw Victor Shepardson at Nordic House.
- Saw Tonik Ensemble at Nordic House.
- Saw Skúli Sverrisson & Óskar Guðjónsson at Mengi.
- Figured out the laundry situation in my apartment building.
- Waited to hear back from the Directorate of Immigration about my residency card (I was supposed to get it this week).
- Finished reading Your Absence Is Darkness, a novel by Jón Kalman Stefánsson. It’s the third book I’ve read by him, and like much of Icelandic literature and movies it’s both beautiful and tragic.
- Visited the Gullfoss waterfall on the way to the Highlands.
- Visited the Seltún Geothermal Area on the way to see the volcanic eruption. A very interesting, if short, trail through bubbling pools and steamy ground. Similar in scope to some areas I saw in Yellowstone.