Vacation in Southern Iceland

On Friday morning, just before noon, we took off from Akureyri. We had gone shopping the day before, to buy food and tried to have as much as we could ready the day before. Travelling with kids means quite a long preperation time though and my father also had to fix something in the car before we could take off so we didn’t leave sooner than this. Apart from me, my parents, my sister Ella and my nephews, Jón Birgir (4) and Hákon Þór (2) went to the cottage and then we were expecting my cousin and her family (two kids, 14 and almost 8) to join us for the weekend. Later in the week we were expecting my brother-in-law Tommi, he was out at sea when we started off. The cottage I had hired through the firm’s staff club is located in southern Iceland, between Hvolsvöllur and Vík.

We had decided to drive through the highlands, a road called Kjölur. It’s open only during the summer and crosses the hightlands almost through the middle. We’ve once before driven this road, so we knew pretty much what to expect but another road through the highlands, Sprengisandur is quite unknown to us and we’d heard that it wasn’t good so we decided to take this one. It’s shorter too and we had to consider that because of the boys. The weather was foggy to start with but we soon drove through that and got a sunny and beautiful weather most of the way over. About half way through there is a place called Hveravellir where there are hot springs and beautiful landscape. The road lies between two of Iceland’s biggest glaciers (not the biggest one though), Hofsjökull on the east and Langjökull on the west. Almost immediately after you get up, you start to see Hofsjökull and it’s quite fabulous getting closer and closer to it and then, on the other side, seeing more and more of Langjökull as well. Hveravellir is quite close up with both of them and the landscape, the lava, the greens, the steam from the springs, it really makes it all very beautiful. The tempuratures of the hot springs at Hveravellir are from 80 to 100° C. There are a few houses up there for tourists to hire beds in or sleepingbag accomondation and you can camp there. There are showers there and you can cook, it’s like a camping place in the middle of nowhere really. There are people living there all year round but during the winter they’re main task is to report the weather.

We stopped there for a hour or so to have something to eat and relax a bit. The boys liked playing around a little after being stuffed in the van for hours and they really didn’t want to leave. We managed to get them out though and so we continued. After driving a bit longer we came to a lake, just by the side of one of the glaciers and there were a few icebergs floating on it. When we got there we didn’t have much longer to drive before we got down to the upper parts of the south’s farming areas but then it started getting foggy again. We had been seeing more and more of some beautiful mountains but then we stopped seeing them at all because of the fog. Where we come down from the highlands, there is one of Iceland’s most beautiful and most famous waterfalls, and Geysir, the geysir from whom all the other geysirs in the world take their name. We didn’t even bother to stop there to take a look, we’ve all seen it a few times Gullfoss (the golden waterfall) before, the boys were getting very tired and the weather was really gray so we continued. We just wanted to get to the cottage as soon as we could.

When we finally got there, around 19:30, my cousin and her family was already there. Hákon had been crying a lot but stopped as soon as he was allowed to go out. They were also happy to see their cousins there and to play with them. We ate, talked and got ourselves ready for bed. The house has two bedrooms, livingroom with kitchen and small bathroom with a shower downstairs and a loft where quite a few people can sleep. My parents got one of the bedrooms and my sister and the boys the other one, my cousins husband slept in the living room and I and my cousin and the kids upstairs.

There’s a hot tub outside the house and after we’d eaten we filled it and ‘relaxed’ a bit. Relaxing with 3 boys from 2 to 8 with you isn’t quite as relaxing as I would have liked but they had a lot of fun and so did we. We used the tub a lot, every day we turned on the water and bathed for a while. Two hours was the boys normal bathing time!!

This area where we were is almost on the south coast of the island. Towards the south one can see the ocean not far away and towards the north you can see the mountains and the glaciers above them. The mountains there are not high but they are green up to the top – or as far as one can see from the road, all the way up to the glaciers. In between there are glaciers that have run down through little valleys or passages, much further down and still keep running, pieces braking off them little by little. Many of them dark, even almost black, from ashes from eruptions earlier, a few years up to many years earlier. It’s really magnificient. There are a lot of creeks and waterfalls there and because of the landscape – the continious hills one after the other and one maybe never sees but the closest one – it seems like the flow from the top of the hill, it’s like they start there. And there are many nice waterfalls there.

In the morning we took off for some sightseeing – even if the weater was still gray and wet. We were going to see Skógar where there’s a great, big museum and Vík which is a village a bit further east and we started with Vík. The boys went to sleep when we started driving and we didn’t’ want to wake them up. Skarðshlíð is a farm between the cottage and Skógar. The animal houses there are built in or close up to caves, which are then used as parts of the houses. Films about old sagas have been made using those houses. I’d never been further east than to Skógar so this was new for me. We stopped for a while in Vík, had something to eat and took a look at the village. It’s located on a penesula – of which there are a lot there – and at the top there are a few big solitary rocks in the ocean, like trolls or something on their way off shore. The highest is 60 meters above sea leavel. They are called Reynisdrangar and the next penesula is called Dyrhólaey (ey = island). Dyrhólaey is 120 meters above sea level with almost vertical cliffs. It used to be the southernmost part of Iceland but the rivers have carried earth and mud with them and built up the land east of it so it we’ve got a new southernmost point now! Between those two, Reynisdrangar and Dyrhólaey, is a reef and at on the other end there is this place, a beach, called Reynisfjara where there are caves of all kinds of lava formations, rocks of different sizes and types and the variety is really amazing. On the way there there is the southernmost farm in Iceland.

The old house in Skógar.

After Vík we went to Skógar and experienced the museum for a while. It was started by an old man there, he’s collected all those different items, tools, boats, old costumes, saddles, you name it. There are also old houses there, made of wood, stone and mud, an old church built of material from a lot of churches in the area and, there is the old man who’s started all this. He’s almost 80 years old now and still guiding tourist around the museum, playing the harmonium and singing. When we were there he was guiding a group of french people through and then he played the national anthem of France!! He seems to be full of life and energy. He’s had help with the museum but it’s his idea, he started it, built it and is there every day. The church is very colourful inside. The ceiling is dark and light blue. The seats are a dark red/violet colour and there’s even a golden colour there somewhere.

Skógar waterfall

At Skógar there is not only a museum but also a school for the district. It’s really amazing how much this old man there has accomplished in his life and to begin with, it was a volounteer work I think.

One of these waterfalls I mentioned is Skógafoss at Skógar. It’s not very big and not very powerful but it’s classic and it’s beautiful. We didn’t go close to it, I just took pictures and we went on.

Hákon at Skógar church.

A part of Sólheimajökull

On the way back from Vík, we went up to a glacier called Sólheimajökull, which is the dirtiest glacier I’ve ever seen! It was quite misterious to see just a part of the glacier in the fog and you could just imagine the power of it, moving forward every day. There were floods there just a couple of months before and we could see the pits where it had taken the water a long time to dry, in the sands along the river. The power of the nature always amazes me, everywhere you go you see evidence of it, these glaciers, the lava makes you think about the volcanoes and the destruction they can cause (even if they not often take human lives here), the waterfalls, some are so big and powerful – we do use them to create electricity here, and so forth.

In Reynisfjara

We were expecting my mothers two sisters and brother-in-law that afternoon and my cousin and her family left that morning. When my aunts came we went to that place, Reynisfjara. It’s really pretty and we enjoyed the caves and the rocky beach for a while. Hákon was a bit afraid of the ocean but Jón Birgir seemed to like it. I ‘stole’ a couple of tiny rockes, just as souveniers. The weather was still foggy so we didn’t see far, I would have liked to see Dyrhólaey better. But it was fine anyway. On the way back I and my sister and my nephews went home to take a long overdue bath but the others went to the museum at Skógar. I would have liked to go there again because there’s a lot to see there but it’s going to have to wait like so many other things.

Reynisfjara

It was raining and we didn’t really know what to do. But we had to go buy milk and stuff so we took off to Hvolsvöllur. After shopping we ate and then drove up to Fljótshlíð, a countryside filled with old sagas. One of the farms there is one of the most famous one in our sagas, Hlíðarendi.

Seljalandsfoss

Although it was raining it wasn’t foggy anymore so we did see more than we’d seen before but we really didn’t want to go anywhere ‘important’. So we drove around and checked out what the farmers were doing, looked at churches and those amaizing waterfalls all around. They’re maybe half hidden in the landscape, burried in trees so you only see a glimps of them. On the way back we stopped at on of the most visited waterfalls in the area, Seljalandsfoss. It’s pretty tall and you can walk behind the waterfall. We did that and it’s was really fun. The boys liked it a lot, I think they found it pretty amazing to walk behind the water. It was much less ‘rain’ behind the waterfall than outside and it was pretty amazing that it wasn’t at all slippery in the mud back there.

Seljalandsfoss

We were expecting my brother-in-law this morning, he’d been on the see working when we left but came home on Monday afternoon. He came before lunch and shortly after he came we took off to one more sight seeing tour. This time we were going to Þórsmörk, a place behind the glacier we were staying under. It’s one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen, the glaciers all around, the trees all over, the river and the mountains. The weather was great, sunny and bright and we just had a marvellous time there.

There are two main camping places there and we went to both. To get to one of them you have to cross a river that can be quite big sometimes and there have been accidents there. This time it wasn’t so big so we had no trouble getting over it. We watched a bus crossing over and over, sometimes to ferry over people that had come with other busses but sometimes just for fun. And it didn’t cross where us – normal people – crossed but just anywhere, no matter how the river seemed to be. We went down to the spot where the river was the broadest because it’s likely that it’s also where it’s the least deep but he didn’t seem to care. He always made it over, you could clearly see that the bus had been fixed especially for this task, or other similar. My great aunt goes to this place very often and a few years ago they planted around 80 trees there in a hill, naming the place after her. We went up there to have a picknick and after that we walked up to a bigger hill, quite a challenging path, carrying the boys! But the view, simply great. The weather was so good, the sky was blue, only with a few clauds, and the sight towards the glaciers was so magnificent. It’s one of the most beautiful spots I’ve ever seen. When we left this place we went to the other camping place there, it has less to offer but is also very beautiful. One would have to stay there for a few days to be able to explore all the things you’d like to see though, a part of one day is not nearly enough.

The camping centre in Þórsmörk.

From Þórsmörk, below close-up on the same scene.

We decided to split up this day, I and my parents were going up to the highlands on a trip that could be long and my sister didn’t want to put the boys through that so they were going to drive around just a bit, maybe take a look at the museum again. Anyway, we drove through the upper parts of the agricultural region there and drove around Hekla, one of our famous volcanos for a while. We started by driving along the south side of it, then the west side and at last the nothern – and ofcourse we finally drove at the east of it but then we didn’t see it anymore. It’s usually covered by clouds at the top and this time it was no different but as we went higher and further noth, we started seeing all the way to the top. We drove along a river where there are no less than 3 electrical power plants and the road there is quite good. When we’d passed the second power plant we turned off the main road, towards the south, towards Landmannalaugar. It’s a thermal spring area, place where there are warm and cold springs and lava and the colours in the nature are really spectacular. It’s a rugged and colourful wilderness of the highlands. There are different shades of gray, different shades of blue and red and brown and green and there’s black. It’s really amazing. None of us has been there before so were all stunned about the beauty of the place. The weather was beautiful too so it didn’t spoil the view we got there. We didn’t stop there very long, maybe an hour and half, because we still had a long way to go. This place is like Þórsmörk, it takes days to explore it all.

Landmannalaugar is uniq in its beauty and ideally suited for hiking. There are a few hiking roads there and one is between Landmannalaugar and Þórsmörk. Then there’s one from Þórsmörk to Skógar, all of them very beautiful people say. There are so many things up there that I haven’t seen and would love to see, it’s take ages to explore it all.

Ófærufoss in Eldgjá.

Our next stop was Eldgjá. It’s a 40 kilometers long volcanic crack in the landscape. It’s not very deep and it’s not very wide but as I said, it’s quite long. A river, Nyrðri Ófæra (nyrðri meaning northern, ófæra means something like uncrossable), runs through it for a few kilometers. It falls down to it in a waterfall, Ófærufoss, which had a natural bridge over it but it broke down 5 years ago and even if the waterfall is still very beautiful, one can only imagine how beautiful it really was before. It’s really a double waterfall, meaning that they are two, one after the other. Then the river runs in the crack for a while, slow and beautiful and the lava, red and purple, on both sides. We walked up to the waterfall, accompanied by some foreign tourists who seemed to be stunned by all this.

Ófærufoss at Hólaskjól.

After that we went on and our next stop, Hólaskjól, was yet another place with camping possibilities, river + waterfall, different lava formations etc. This waterfall was more difficult to see though since it falls down to yet another crack and the lava opposide the waterfall is too high to ever see it properly. The river is called Syðri Ófæra, (southern uncrossable) and the waterfall has no name except Ófærufoss, like the one in the nothern river, they both take their names after the waterfall that makes them.

On the way home we drove past (even almost around) Mýrdalsjökull, which is a glacier, in fact a volcano covered with ice. People have been expecting eruptions in one of Iceland’s most famous volcanos, Katla, which is under the glacier.

Systrafoss

It was raining that morning and we saw that we wouldn’t be able to do much sightseeing. But we didn’t want to stay at home so we headed towards east one more time. This time we went further than I’d gone before, first to Kirkjubæjarklaustur, where there used to be a nun’s convict until we changed religion from catholic to Lutherian. Places and things have names from that time like Systrafoss which means sister’s waterfall, Systrastapi (sister’s rock) and so on. It had stopped raining when we came there but it was still very wet outside and the clouds hung way down to the middle of the hills so we didn’t see the glaciers above them. We ate and then we went further east. On our way we saw yet another waterfall, Stjórnarfoss which is quite beautiful. I like waterfalls. They can be beautiful, they can be powerful, they can be scary… There’s so much you can see in them and each is different from the others. We went as far as to Foss á Síðu which is a place under a hill with a waterfall (of which there are so many in this area) with a few farms and from there we went back.

Þingvellir church.

It was our last day at the cottage and before we went, we cleaned the place from top to bottom. I set up the camera on my tripod to take one last photo before we left and while doing that my nephew Jón Birgir just went crazy, he had to take a photo as well. So when I’d taken the photo of us all, I lowered the tripod to his hight and aimed and let him take a picture of us grown-ups. Hákon had to take a look as well, he closes his eyes though so he doesn’t see anything! Our first stop was at a farm where my brother-in-law’s aunt lives with her husband and daughter. We didn’t stop there long, only about a hour before going on. From there we went to Þingvellir one of Iceland’s most famous places. Always considered one of it’s most beautiful as well and I guess it is but, we have a lot of places more beautiful. It’s a big lake with a national park on one side of it and where the park is, it’s very beautiful. Iceland has a long history of democracy, since 930, and the parlament was there (‘þing’ meaning parlament). I remember coming there some years ago, walking up to a little hill called Lögberg where they used to stand and hold their speaches and I remember the feeling, standing there at the same spot our saga’s heroes used to stand. I didn’t get this feeling this time, for some reason, maybe because they’ve built a platform there, to prevent us visitors there to spoil the ground there I guess, but I didn’t stand there where our heroes had stood now and so I never got this feeling. There’s a volcanic crack there with a river falling down to it in a waterfall, Öxarárfoss and it’s pretty. There’s a church there and semitary with a special place where two of our most beloved poems have their resting place. I thought they were a bit lonely but I guess it’s supposed to be a honour.

From there we went straight home. Stopped for dinner but nothing more. We came home at half past 10 in the evening, quite exhausted but content after a great week.