For most of the last two weeks my parents have been in Iceland. After a couple of days in Reykjavík, we traveled around the country together, driving 1500 miles counter-clockwise on the Ring Road with excursions into Vestmannaeyjar, the Eastfjords, and around various peninsulas. They were on a tour of Iceland in 2021, so there was a little bit of overlap with that, but we did the kind of exploring that a tour would never support: driving down gravel roads deep into mountain passes, roaming the back streets of harbors in tiny fishing villages, tracking down sculptures in the mountains. A couple of years ago there would have been no way they’d be up for some of the hikes we did — up a volcano, on a glacier — but knee replacements do wonders and they have three new knees between them.
There were far too many great sites and moments to chronicle in one post, but I’ll touch on some of the highlights and things that were new to me. I have lots of photosets on Instagram if you want to see more.
Our first stop was Vestmannaeyjar, which was the trickiest to plan around because the ferry is operating on a single engine and can’t make it across the strait in bad weather. Luckily the weather was good enough to sail there on schedule, but on advice from an agent at the ferry terminal I swapped our return trip the next day to be the first ferry out at 7am, in order to guarantee that we wouldn’t be trapped.
I love those islands, and was happy for another chance to hike up the Eldfell volcano to get a view of the whole archipelago. It was a lot greener when I was there last August, but this trip offered the chance to see a new site-specific artwork by Ólafur Elíasson that was installed earlier this month. It’s called “The Wanderer’s Perspective” and consists of two parts: a viewing sphere that frames the volcano, and a new walking path up to its summit (still in development). The walking path will follow the route of a giant piece of lava from the 1973 eruption that was nicknamed Flakkarinn (The Wanderer) because of how far it traversed across the landscape.
The viewing sphere is easily accessible, and frames the volcano in a way that the sun aligns with the volcano’s peak at 1:30pm on January 23, the exact date and time of the eruption. Circular holes in the roof trace the sun’s trajectory on July 3, the day the eruption was declared over.
Leaving the Westman Islands we visited lots of spots along the south coast, and it turned out that the earlier ferry was a great idea because there’s so much to see along this stretch. We stopped by the Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss waterfalls of course, but also the Sólheimajökull glacier, Reynisdrangar beach, and Hjörleifshöfði cave. The next day we hiked the Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon and walked on the Svínafellsjökull glacier before it started raining heavily. That may have contributed to lack of ice on Diamond Beach, but it was still fun to check out the massive icebergs in Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.
After staying in the night in Höfn, we drove into the Eastfjords the next day, venturing further east than I’d been in Iceland before. It immediately felt different for me, taking in new sites versus driving through ones I’d seen two to four times before. More firsts came fast, as this region is where the wild reindeer live and we added them to our animal sightings along with the pervasive sheep and horses. It was earlier enough in the year that their antlers were still velvety and we even spotted a couple of calves.
Also in the Eastfjords was Petra’s Stone Collection, an absolutely amazing place showcasing a single woman’s collection of rocks and minerals found all around Iceland over her lifetime. It is impossible to convey the size and scope of her collection but it’s like nothing I have ever seen. See my Instagram photoset for more.
We stayed in Seyðisfjörður, which is reached by driving over a mountain pass that was still covered in deep snow. The town is where the Smyril Line ship arrives in Iceland after sailing from Denmark via the Faroe Islands. It’s also one of the two locations that were used in the Icelandic TV series Trapped, the other being Siglufjörður where we also stayed a few days later. I’m looking forward to rewatching the show now that I’ve spent time in both places.
While there, we also hiked up the mountain to see Tvísöngur, a sound sculpture by the German artist Lukas Kühne that consists of a series of interconnected concrete domes. The plaque notes that it can be viewed as a visualization of the Icelandic five-tone harmony tradition, and dubs it “singing concrete.” The experience is that if you stand directly underneath each dome your voice resonates strongly back to you, in an effect that feels as if you have headphones on, piping your amplified words back into your ears. It’s a strikingly simple design but a really fun and powerful effect.
Nearby was another sculpture, squarely aligned with my interest in subsea cables, called “Hvernig gengur?” — How is it going? — and was commissioned by Iceland Telecom to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first telegraph cable laid between Scotland and Iceland in 1906, which came ashore in Seyðisfjörður.
Our next stop in the Eastfjords was Borgarfjörður Eystri, the puffin capital of Iceland, where an islet named Hafnarhólmi is home to thousands of burrows. Stairs and platforms allow visitors to walk around part of the islet, providing an extremely close up view of the puffins from every possible angle. When we arrived, this closeness already made it the best puffin site I’d been to, even surpassing Mykines on the Faroe Islands. But soon after 8pm a majority of the birds that had been out to sea returned, in a seemingly coordinated ritual. At that point the hills were absolutely swarmed, with puffins taking off and landing, going in and out of their burrows, billing their mate, and strutting around.
The crowd gathered to view them all seemed to understand what a special moment this was, adopting library-hushed speaking levels and careful footsteps; it was a quiet and reverent place. These funny little birds have the ability to make everyone smile as they awkwardly fly and waddle around on their bright orange feet.
As we started heading northwest, our first stop was the hike to Stuðlagil canyon. The water at this time of year isn’t the turquoise color you often see in photos, but the basalt columns along the river’s edge are stunning. If you’re thinking of going, I recommend hiking in on the east side of the canyon. The west side has more infrastructure, and you can drive up to the lookout spot, but there are still hundreds of steps down to the river and you can’t walk down into the canyon. You’ll see some of it, but most of the views will be just out of sight. The eastern side has a new parking lot further along the canyon, so it’s now only a ~3 miles hike instead of what used to be ~6 miles.
As we headed west we started to get back into areas of North Iceland I’d visited in early April. We went to the Hverir geothermal area, visited the cows at Vogafjós Farm Resort, stayed on a farm near Lake Mývatn, and visited Goðafoss. There was a massive cruise ship docked in Akureyri, deploying 20+ full-size buses to the sites in the area. I’m not a fan of that kind of travel, or being around those kinds of crowds, so it was nice to head up the peninsula to Siglufjörður where we spent the last two nights of the trip.
It was rainy, and even snowed, the final two days — but that was okay. We stayed at the excellent Sigló hotel, which has a geothermal hot tub overlooking the harbor and mountains that is great in any weather. We also visited The Herring Era Museum, which has excellent artifacts from the town’s history when it was Iceland’s fish export epicenter.
As we headed back to Reykjavík we detoured to see the sea stack Hvitserkur. We also passed by one of the most interesting sheep roundup pens I’ve seen in Iceland, situated unusually right by the beach.
The final trip was to the Reykjanes Peninsula, to drop my parents off at the airport but also to explore the area around Grindavík. We saw the fresh lava flows that covered the old road, as well as the magma barrier walls that surround the power plant and town.
Overall, it was a great trip around the country and I’m happy that I was able to do it with my parents. One of the interesting things about traveling with other people is that they notice different things than you do. When my brother visited Iceland he pointed out many aspects of the architecture that I hadn’t seen. My Mom notices artifacts, furniture, and how people construct their homes in ways that I might overlook. She also has an incredible eye for interesting rocks and was always finding good ones as we hiked. My Dad, not surprisingly, sees the farming activity in rural Iceland with a level of depth that most of us would overlook. I see the tractors, sheep, and hay bales but he’s looking at soil type, fertilizer composition, and water management practices. We all have our travel eccentricities — I did track down a monument to a telegraph cable after all — but it was interesting to see Iceland through their eyes.
