If you had one full day to spend in Iceland, how would you do it?
We generally avoid packaged tours, but in this case we took a Golden Circle tour offered by one of the local tour companies. We wanted to see as much of Iceland as we could, and this seemed like a good way to do it. We were not wrong.
The day started out rainy and windy (as you’ll see in a few photos—difficult to keep the mist off the lens) but lifted enough by mid-morning to show us some breathtaking sites in fall colors and without the crowds that usually overrun the sites—Thingvellir National Park, the Geysir geothermal area, the spectacular Gullfoss falls, and a few other sites. Along the way we saw sheep, Icelandic horses, and swans gathering for their winter migration to Scotland. (Just the swans. The horse and sheep were staying put as far as I know.) There were extensive geothermally heated greenhouses (Iceland grows most of its own vegetables), hot springs, and visible fissures where the island of Iceland, sitting as it does with the western half of the island on the North American plate and the eastern half on the Eurasian plate, is either splitting apart or growing, depending on how you see things. There is a point in Thingvellir at which the road goes directly over the border between the two plates—the only place in the world where you can drive between two tectonic plates.
One final word about Iceland before the photos. Everyone in the country speaks English and Icelandic and one other language of choice. Icelandic is fascinating in that it developed in isolation and is virtually the same as the Old Norse language that was spoken across all of Scandinavia and some of Europe over 1200 years ago. It is so close that high school students can read Old Norse sagas in their original form, as they were written more than a millennium ago.
Here are some photos from Thingvellir, the rainiest and windiest part of the trip. What you are looking at is the literal boundary between two continental plates. Click to enlarge, but excuse the raindrops.
Some photos from Geysir geothermal area in the Haukadalur valley. The oldest account of Geysir dates to 1294. The largest geyser here is named Geysir, which is where the English term comes from. It doesn’t erupt often, sometimes for years. A smaller geyser, Strokkur, erupts every free minutes and that’s what you’re seeing, along with a lot of other thermal features.
And then there was Gullfoss, described in many places as the most beautiful waterfall in the world. I won’t argue with that.
Tomorrow, it’s a morning of exploring Reykjavík and then off to the US. And so ends this blog, unless something comes up tomorrow…
