The first is called the Jet Nest by Magnus Tomasson. It depicts a jet airplane wing breaking out of the shell of an egg.
The second sculpture at the International Airport in Keflavik is by Ruri Fannberg and is a 24 metre high portion of a rainbow.
And now, we would like to begin our discussion of Iceland with some of our observations on Icelandic living and culture.
While researching for our visit here, we found a couple of websites that dealt with Jewish life in Iceland. One is from a group of Jews who live in Iceland and one is a site run by Chabad Rabbi Naftali Pewzner, who visits here regularly and runs an annual Pesach Seder in Iceland. There is a small number of Jews living in Iceland (50 to 100 people) and there is no organized Jewish life. There is no Chabad House.
As far as kashrut is concerned, here is what we found in the supermarkets. Dry bread such as Ryvita and Wasa, Nature Valley Granola bars, Hellman mayo, Hunt's tomato sauce products (look for those with an OK, as many cans have cheese), Cadbury, KitKat, and Mars Bars from the UK, Ben and Jerry Ice Cream, Skippy Peanut Butter, some jams on the UK list, and Kellogg cereals. Of course, there is pasta, eggs, fresh and frozen salmon, fresh fish (if you can identify them as kosher), fruits and veggies. We will caution that you should have the apps on your devices called "Is It Kosher?". There is one that basically collates kosher lists from many different countries and then there is one specifically from the London Beth Din (KLBD). Both are very helpful in identifying items without kosher labelling as kosher or not.
So all in all, if you carry a fry pan and soup pot as we do, and if you have access to a cooktop, you can eat very well in Iceland. Below is a pic of a salmon meal that we ate in Reykjavik.
On the other hand, if you are staying in a hotel and cannot self cater, it would be advisable to shlep with tuna, cheese, salami, instant soups, etc and supplement with fresh veggies and fruit.
We expected a freezing and very windy climate. And we came prepared. But most of our gear stayed packed away, because it was quite peasant. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday were days of occasional brilliant sunshine and when it was sunny, it felt much warmer than Dublin, even tho the temperature in Iceland was 13C and Ireland was close to 20C. The sun was very warm in Iceland. Only on Tuesday when it was raining or drizzling most of the day did we feel a bit cold.
As you can see from our pictures on the first full day in Iceland, we were enjoying walking around without sweaters and with open coats.
We were told that during the winter, it can be very cold and icy. But downtown Reykjavik has an underground piping system beneath the streets and sidewalks to melt all the snow and ice and so the downtown area stays clear. They are able to do this because of the geothermal power that Iceland possesses in abundance...more about that later.
Things are very expensive in Iceland. Basic food costs, even in the Bonus Supermarket chain, which is supposedly the cheapest in Iceland, are extremely high. We looked at clothing in a number of stores and items were double what we would pay in Canada. Souvenir items were out of sight. Souvenir T-shirts which in most places would be in the $10-12 range were $40 each. However, our visit here was extremely affordable because we were self catering, the Airbnb costs were reasonable, the car rental costs were affordable and the waterfalls, national parks, glaciers etc. are not expensive to visit. On the other hand, if you are taking organized tours to see the waterfalls, glaciers etc., they can get quite pricey.
The official language is Icelandic which is difficult to pronounce and which seems to favour very long words, with many consonants and a few unique letters. For instance, the letter þ, is called thorn and is pronounced like our "th". And since it is considered the first language of 97% of Icelanders, most printed items and labels on food products in the supermarket are in Icelandic. Thankfully almost everyone speaks English fluently and they are eager to help. Incidentally, the largest population of Icelandic speakers outside of Iceland is in the province of Manitoba, Canada and specifically around the town of Gimli (which means heaven in Old Norse).
Street addresses are quite interesting. We are used to 123 Main Street, Suite 541. Well, in Iceland, each Suite has a specific street address. As an example we were staying in an apartment complex and our address was 165 Frostafold. Our neighbour above us in the same building was in 166 Frostafold.
But the naming of people is the most interesting. There are no family names. My Icelandic name would be David Sidneyson (may father's name is Sidney) and Fran would be Frances Mailechdottir (Fran's father's name is Mailech). My oldest child is Chavi Daviddottir who is married to Yisrael Yitzchakson. So married people have different last names. When people date, they check the app that traces the roots of the prospective mate so that you do not end up marrying a close relative. Everyone's last name ends with either "son" or "dottir".
Geographically, Iceland is 30% larger than Ireland, which makes it 5 times the size of Israel. However, in terms of population, there are only 320,000 people in the whole country with about half of them living in the Reykjavik area. So it is a very sparsely populated country.
As a matter of interest, the number of tourists coming to Iceland has now exceeded 1 million annually.
The currency is the Icelandic Kroner and it is about the equivalent of one penny. So if you see something that costs 5000 kroner, it is really $50 Canadian. However, the guidebooks all tell you that you do not need to exchange money because the credit card is king in Iceland and every transaction has an option for credit card payment.
Monday morning we left very early on what is called the Golden Circle Route. It covers the southwestern area of the island and depending how many stops you make, can take the better part of a day driving.
Unlike Ireland, where we had been for a week, this time we were driving on the same side as we do in Canada. The roads are very well maintained and they are certainly wider than some of the roads that we drove on in Ireland. There is not a lot of traffic and drivers tend to be very courteous.
Once you get out of the city, you are amazed by the wide open spaces and areas where the landscape is so flat that you can see for miles. Fran kept remarking that the sky seemed so much larger in Iceland and we think it was because the flatness of the landscape just allowed so much more of the horizon to be seen. It was magnificent.
We left Reykjavic and drove to Þingvellir, (pronounced Thingvellir), and its surrounding National Park, which literally means the Parliament Plains. This is a very historic site in Iceland being the location of the Icelandic Parliament from the year 930 till 1798. Below is a picture of the area with the old parliament buildings in the foreground.
But in addition to the historical and political relevance, there are magnificent views overlooking Þingvallavatn, Iceland's largest lake, the moss covered cliffs and the stunning surroundings.
But by far the most important feature of this beautiful place is its special tectonic and volcanic activity, as one of the few places on the planet where you can see Earth visibly tearing apart as the North American and Eurasian plates drift away from each other creating these huge fissures in the earth, that are widening by about an inch a year.
There is a huge rift throughout the National Park, that measures up to 40 metres deep and 64 metres wide in some places.
This rift extends from dry land through the lake itself, creating one of the most breathtaking and deepest diving spots in the world, with almost totally clear water, filtered through volcanic rock. The picture below is not one of us (we have not done this....yet😀) but a stock picture that I found on the Internet showing a diver between the two plates.
This is an area of extremely active volcanic activity and earthquakes occur a number of times per day!! In fact here is a computer screen image of the earthquakes that occurred in the 48 hours since our arrival on Sunday...2 of them over 4.2 on the Richter scale (see the green stars). No worries😀!
And so there are bus loads and bus loads of tourists all over the park. And on this most clear day with an amazing blue sky, the views were wonderful, the Kodak moments plentiful.
We then drove another hour or so to the "town" of Geysir. There are many geothermal active regions in Iceland and wherever you drive, you will notice little puffs of steam on the horizon.
No, this is not someone's fireplace spewing smoke into the atmosphere, but rather steam rising from the earth, which is an indicator of a geothermal system beneath the surface. There are either underground springs or rain that seeped beneath the surface, was heated and then rises as steam, creating plumes of mist visible as you drive around the Island.
There are some 800 hot springs, with average temperature of 75C, in Iceland. In fact, Reykjavik, Icelandic for 'Smoky Bay', was named for steam rising from hot springs, and early settlers chose this place for its accessibility to the hot springs which they used for bathing, cooking and laundering.
The most famous hot spring, the Blue Lagoon, was discovered in the 1960s when local people observed steam rising from the ground after a rainfall.
In Geysir, the geothermal activity is very vigorous and it results in eruptions of plumes of water into the sky, with a strong sulphur smell all around. It was the first spouting hot spring to be recorded in print and therefore has become the namesake of all other geysers, including "Old Faithful" in Yellowstone. There are two main areas in Geysir, the larger of the two sometimes called the Great Geysir (from the Old Norse verb "Geysa", meaning "to gush") and the smaller called Strokkur. The Great Geysir erupts infrequently but when it does, the eruption can result in 70 metre plumes of boiling water into the air. Strokkur erupts very frequently (roughly every 5 minutes) and reaches heights of up to 30 metres.
As a result, there is always a circle of viewers surrounding Strokkur waiting for it to erupt and when we were there, it did not disappoint. We filmed a number of eruptions and then walked through a very active field dotted with pools of boiling, bubbling hot water. It was quite amazing.
Here are a few videos...we waited and tried to film the geyser as it erupted and with much patience, we were successful!
David at Geysir. https://youtu.be/0-JeNoJhtmM
Fran at Geysir https://youtu.be/8zWu3fFhXdg
Boiling water in the ground at Geysir. https://youtu.be/cZF0ZeLps2k
The third main spot on the Golden Circle Tour is the short drive to Gullfoss, (literally "Golden Falls"), Iceland's most famous waterfall. On this trip we saw numerous waterfalls and while Gullfoss is dramatic and very powerful and definitely worth visiting (especially as it is just ten minutes up the road from Geysir, which you must visit), it was not our favourite. The tourist board has erected very good pathways which lead to both the top and bottom of the falls, allowing visitors a full vantage point for panoramic shots as well as the close up view of the roaring falls.
The waterfall goes through two steps of falls as it cascades down the river and then plunges 30 metres into the Rift Valley riverbed below, creating lots of mist and a roaring sound.
We took our time driving, admiring the amazing scenery of rocky mountains, many times covered in enormous glaciers, areas filled with moss covered lava stones, raging rivers, fertile valleys dotted with farms, and many lush green fields filled with cows, sheep and the famous Icelandic horses.
The first settlers in the 10th Century brought with them horses from Norway and the British Isles. In the 11th century, import of horses was made illegal and so for the past 900 years, no horses have been imported. And therefore the Icelandic horse you see today is very similar to the original horses brought by the settlers, 1100 years ago. This isolation has preserved certain traits lost to other European horses over the years, the most noticeable of which is the 5 gaits (rather than the three of the Europeans) that the horse is famous for. Not a horse expert, but those who understand these things will understand.
What is also noticeable is that the horses are shorter and their manes are left to run wild and unkempt.
Truth be told, our impression of the Icelandic landscape before we came, was nothing like what we had found. What really surprised us was the diversity of the landscape. On the one hand the green colour, the wide open farming areas filled with grazing animals, surrounded by towering hills and mountains, all very beautiful and fresh (and not what we expected at all), contrasted with miles of desolate colourless lava fields, craggy mountains and immense glaciers.
We returned to Reykjavik after a wonderful day of seeing more of God's amazing creations and there was still much more to see in the coming days. We ended the day with a beautiful sunset...not the Northern Lights but beautiful nevertheless.
All the best
Fran and David
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