Woke up again this morning at 0430… at least I am consistent… to the sound of winds howling around the guesthouse. Sneaked a peek outside as soon as it started to get light and noticed that any small shrubs were blown right over and even the grass sideways having capitulated to the wind. It was seriously cold, actual temp of 5°C but feels like -1°C with the wind chill according to the weather website – typical for fall according to our host, and no, she did not predict that the rain would let up for us. Never fear though – we were going to be out and among it no matter what, there is too much to see on this little island.
First stop today was to Seljalandsfoss waterfall (Yes, I am aware it’s a tautology but am sticking with it anyway). Seljalandsfoss is in the south of Iceland right beside Route 1 – Quelle surprise?! Everything seems to be directly beside Route 1 here – it’s like they took out a map, put pins in all the most naturally beautiful spots, and then drew the major highway to connect the dots. The waterfall is about 60m tall and is part of the Seljalands River, which originates in the glacier on top of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano – yep, that one, the unpronounceable one that erupted in 2010… which by the way is pronounced, AY-uh-fyat-luh-YOE-kuutl-uh. If you nail that, there are shops around here prepared to give you a 10% discount on expensive wool products. 🙂
Seljalandfoss is one of the most famous waterfalls in Iceland – I say ‘one of the most famous’ because there are several… well, shite tonnes of them actually and every single one of them stunningly beautiful. The only other place I can ever remember being with this many waterfalls was Wells Grey Provincial Park in British Columbia – that place was simply spectacular too.
This waterfall has a small cave behind it and we were able to walk around behind the falls, which is usually a major Iceland photo op high point, right there – but today. Today was cold, raining and with winds of 60kmph+ the water was less, ‘falling’ and more ‘blowing wherever the fuck it wanted’. We got drenched and our cameras were none too happy with us, so the pictures are what they are, but we enjoyed every minute of it.
It was so windy a little further down Route 1 and we observed two smaller waterfalls that were literally flowing up..!
A little further down the road, we stopped to see Drangurinn, which is a unique ‘tuff’ rock formation that stands alone at the Drangshlíd farm in the foothills of Eyjafjöll. Old folktales tell us that there was a strongman named Grettir Ásmundsson who was showing off and ripped the giant tuff rock right out of the Hrútafell cliff, leaving a chasm which is now above Skarðshlíð… as you do.
Under these tuff rocks are caves and passages to which small external farm buildings have been added throughout the centuries. Most of the buildings standing here are centuries old, and good examples of are called ‘fornmannahús’ or ancient habitations. There’s also talk of elves inhabiting the area and interfering with the farmers if they are/are not present when calves are born?! Not sure the info surrounding that one is a little squidgy.
After a 20 minute stop that should have been a 5 minute stop if only the Chinese tourists following us around weren’t ALL trying to get a million selfies in front of the old buildings, we head towards the next beautiful waterfalls – Skógafoss.
Skógafoss waterfall is on the river of the same name, the Skógá River, and belongs on the same cliff line that the Seljalandfoss falls are on. The long cliff line was once the former coastline and was formed by sea erosion where it used to meet the sea. However, the coastline has receded seaward and is now about 5kms away, leaving the former sea cliffs running parallel to the current coastline for hundreds of kilometres. This creates the flat, flat, flat coastal lowlands, flat flat, flat then omg fuck off steep cliffs that are called the Highlands of Iceland.
After a quick bite of lunch from the back of the car in the waterfalls carpark, we visited the Skogar Museum and saw many interesting artefacts of Icelandic cultural and historical significance. The Museum is divided into three (maybe four) sections – the cultural collections (which include a rather impressive natural history collection as well), an open-air museum which showcases life in Iceland in the 1700s – 1900s, and a transport museum (which because this is a HOLIDAY, I avoided as much as possible).
This ring is reputed to date back to the days of Þrasi Þorolfsson the first settler of Skogar around 900AD. Folklore claims that before his death, Þrasi hid a chest full of gold under the Skofafoss waterfall. Many attempts were made to drag the chest from under the fall, and on one occasion a rope was fixed to a ring in the end of the chest. But before the chest could be lifted, the ring came away and the chest plunged back to the depts. The ring then became the door-ring of Skogar Church until 1890.
Puffin… he’s a bit stuffed.
The outdoor museum contains a number of recreated period houses from differing centuries. The more rudimentary ancient style farm dwelling through to a 19thC turf house and eventually a driftwood built farmhouse.
Smithy
Barn/stable
Workshop for rope making
19thC farmhouse comprising of a number of small turfhouses that each have different purposes – living space, bedrooms, kitchen, stables etc.
Headroom mustn’t have been a priority…
Later period driftwood farmhouses… with no serious timber to speak of, Iceland highly valued any driftwood that washed up on its shores.
Stables directly under the living areas and accessed through a tiny door way from the kitchen.
I have no idea what this is – and with many of the descriptions in the musuem in every language, but English, am unlikely to find out.
Replica of a 19thC church.
Transport Museum.
After our turn around the museum, and the obligatory run through the giftshop on the wya out, we then head off further toward the south-west to find the Dyrhólaey peninsula. Originally an island – before the whole massive coastline changes – Dyrhólaey is now a section of land jutting out into the otherwise unbroken black sand beach that stretches as far as the eye can see in each direction.
In the summertime, the areas is closed off to vehicular access as the entire cliffside and peninsular becomes a rookery area for many seabirds including, you guessed it, puffins! So normally, ‘Here Be Puffins’ but as per usual they heard I was coming and probably left about four weeks ago.
Dyrhólaey literally means “the hill island with the door hole”. It’s 120 m high and you are able to walk the arch or the bridge if you are not afraid of heights and well if you’re stupid enough today to think that you can’t be blown away by what were still extremely strong winds.
And yet, there were plenty of Chinese tourists jumping under the chains to have their photos taken in front of the rock formations, and to actually go close enough to the edge to stick their cameras over and take downwards photos… even with the prevailing 60kmph winds gusting semi-regularly into ‘shit my beanie is going to blow off!’.
*if you think I am rolling my eyes here, I totally am*.
Next stop was Reynisdrangar, which is the famous basalt sea stack situated under Reynisfjall mountain near Vik. It is a beautiful black sand beach that was ranked once ranked as one of the ten most beautiful non-tropical beaches in the world. (Apparently… citation needed 😉 ) 
There are several legends surroundingReynisdrangar, one of which states that the stacks of basalt originated from when two trolls dragged a three-masted ship to land somewhat unsuccessfully, but then when daylight broke they (the trolls) became needles of rock.
The other, more contemporary legend, notes the story of a husband who found his wife taken by the two trolls, frozen at night. The husband made the two trolls swear to never kill anyone ever again. His wife was the love of his life, whose free spirit he was unable to provide a home for; she found her fate out among the trolls, rocks, and sea at Reynisfjara. Which sounds a bit of a likely story, you know: ‘Two trolls did it, Officer.’ *shuffles and kicks in the dirt*
For the life of me, I couldn’t photograph the sand and make it look as black as it was… the camera (and my phone) kept adjusting for the lack of contrast.
Naturally, as we left the beach it started pissing down rain again so we were drenched by the time we got back to the car. We stopped in Vik very quickly to see if we could find a pharmacy for some ibuprofen – yale is feeling a bit man fluey – and discovered that there is one, but it is open weekdays from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm only. Pray, don’t get sick in Iceland.
Civic art in Vik. 
When you come to Iceland, one of the things that you will see splattered about on tourist guides and in tourist info is a request to not go around making stone cairns everywhere. The disturbance to the natural landscape is quite visually jarring and obviously, Iceland Tourism wants to keep the environments as natural and pristine as possible. Laufskálavarða is an exception. It is a lava ridge, between the Hólmsá and Skálmá Rivers, that is surrounded by stone cairns. Travellers crossing the lava fields of Mýrdalssandur for the first time would pile stones up to make a cairn, which was supposed to bring them good fortune on the journey but it stemmed from a tradition to bring good luck for someone else first.
According to the tradition, there was a large farm here but it was destroyed in the year 1894 during the first recorded eruption of Katla. The farm neighbouring Katla was Kynskofar, home of a settler named Hrafn Hafnarlykill, for whom the rocks were being left… everyone travelling the Mýrdalssandur for the first time is supposed to leave him a stone to bring *him* good luck on his journey. which has translated into modern travellers leaving stones to bring good luck to their journeys – the tradition continues thanks to the Public Roads Administration’s efforts in making sure there is a good supply of rocks nearby.
We went barely another 10kms north and started to see snow laying around the lava fields. It is quite the contrast, the mossy green low lying lava fields – which you know are created by enormous upheaval of fire and earth, covered in scattered snow.
The early dusk light makes it hard to capture, but I may get another opportunity in the morning.
We eventually arrived at our home for the evening, the Hunkubakkar Guesthouse. We have a quaint but Scandinavian simple log cabin for the evening and the facility here has a restaurant attached instead of a big communal kitchen so we ended up having dinner in the restaurant. With the prices here (and by here, I mean Iceland) being anywhere between exorbitant to ‘a bit of lube first, please’, I opted for the plokkfiskur for dinner which is an Icelandic fish stew dish literally described as:
“Plokkfiskur, a combination of fish, potatoes, onions and béchamel sauce is a firm favourite in Icelandic kitchens.
I was kinda expecting some sort of white sauce fishy stew… but instead, it was more like white stodgy fishy clag. You could literally put it on your spoon and turn the spoon upside down and the stuff wouldn’t fall off – talk about stick to your ribs, comfort food! It tasted more of potatoes and salt than of fish, and while I found I couldn’t handle the pasty texture of it (it was like eating salty powdery peanut butter), yale seemed to enjoy it enough to finish off both bowls. 
After dinner, I started writing this all down – as is my usual travel habit – only to discover the world’s worst internet. Which as you all know is really saying something given that I come from Australia, land where destroying the National Broadband Network is a favourite hobby for politicians from both sides of the aisle. I couldn’t upload anything, not even a single 200kb photograph. yale, having experienced the same slow rubbish, mentioned he had already checked out the situation and we had a good wifi signal to what was effectively a shitty 3G wireless connection that was probably being shared between 20-30 other guests. He also happened to mention that the router for the guesthouse had the login: ‘admin’, password: ‘admin’… no shit. Unfortunately, no amount of pressure on my part seemed to convince him that changing the password so we could kick everyone off and I could hog all the bandwidth was a reasonable plan to deal with the situation. 😀
Seemed perfectly reasonable to me. So it ended up we were early to bed and that meant another inevitable 0430 start. At least no one will be online tomorrow morning and I should hopefully be able to upload my photos after all.