We slept for about twelve hours on our first night in Iceland, then went downstairs for an excellent buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Lots of different breads, a kind of baked scrambled egg dish, skyr (Icelandic yogurt — you're going to see that a lot), cold cuts, and so forth. And a very exotic Icelandic dish, which Sir William was at pains to describe to his readers:
"However, even this was not all; for a large dish of Waffels, as they are here called, that is to say, a sort of pancake, made of wheat-flour, flat, and roasted in a mould, which forms a number of squares on the top, succeeded the mutton. They were not more than half an inch thick, and about the size of an octavo book."
Well-fortified with breakfast, we put on our stoutest boots and walked a block to the old lava flow from 1973 which buried half the town of Heimaey under ten meters of rock. That lava was heading for the harbor, and would have choked it off and destroyed Heimaey's fishing industry. With no sheltered harbor, the island would be effectively inaccessible. Icelandic emergency crews sprayed cold seawater onto the advancing front of the lava flow to cool it and create a dam to divert the flow away from the harbor. There's even a monument to the heroic diesel pumps which saved the town.
The lava flow also displays the site of the old geothermal heating system, which tapped the heat energy of the cooling rock to heat Heimaey. It ran for 20 years until the dropping lava temperature made it impractical. Still, 20 years of effectively free energy isn't bad, especially for a town which gets all its electricity — and all its fresh water! — from the mainland.
At the southern end of the lava flow we began to climb up the cone of the Eldfell volcano, the source of all that melted rock. Until 1973 Eldfell was a sheep pasture, but in January of that year ash and rock began erupting from the ground. By summer the eruption had created a 200-meter mountain, and added two and a half square kilometers of land to the island.
The mountain is a half-cone. The crater is open on the north side (where the lava came out). This means that when one climbs it, one is climbing along the narrow ridge between the crater and the outer slope of the volcano. Fortunately it's currently inactive, so the bottom of the crater is just a flat expanse of dirt and rocks. But the actual material of the cone isn't solid lava. It's more like gravel. A huge pile of gravel.
So we chugged up the slope, with steep slopes to either side covered with jagged volcanic rocks younger than either of us. Slipping and falling wouldn't be fun. To add to the tension, it's windy on the island of Heimaey, doubly so up on top of an exposed mountain.
We did stop halfway up to take a picture across the channel to the main island of Iceland, with mountains and glaciers looming in the distance. The picture shows one of the other Vestmannaeyr islands, which has no permanent inhabitants but does feature a hunting lodge. Exactly what you're supposed to hunt there isn't clear. Seagulls? Kidnapped sailors?
After laboring up the narrow ridge we made it to the top, and braced ourselves against the aircraft warning light to survey the view. It was amazing. I'm sorry I don't have a picture from up there, but I wasn't about to fish my phone out of my pocket and risk having it blown out of my grip.
We descended, which was physically easier but harder to navigate, and walked back to our hotel through the town, stopping at a supermarket to pick up some well-deserved drinks and a snack. The snack was Hraun, an Icelandic candy bar which has become one of my all-time favorites. It's sort of like a Kit-Kat, only bigger, with a much thicker layer of chocolate over the cookie. The name means lava rock, and it kind of looks like it. Highly recommended.
After a rest we went back over to the western shore of the island, a little farther south than the day before, in hope of puffins. No puffins. Wonderful views of the uninhabited islands offshore, stretching off to the newest part of Iceland, the island of Surtsey, born in 1967.
In late afternoon we went back through the modern town of Heimaey, and got a glimpse of ordinary life in Iceland. Saw a new development of houses going up — each with its own hot tub, because hot water to soak in comes just behind oxygen as a necessity of life in that country. Japan, another volcanic island, also has its hot spring baths. Curiously, Italy — which has plenty of hot springs and practically invented baths — seems to have lost that tradition. Maybe the Mediterranean climate makes staying cool more important to Italians.
We stopped for "kebabs" in town, as most of the restaurants were still closed for the Easter holiday. Kebabs in Europe are what Americans call Gyros. I think that's because America got Greek immigrants who started restaurants, while in Europe the food was introduced by Turkish guest workers.
Though tired, we resisted the urge to go to bed early because it was predicted to be a clear night and we wanted the chance to see the Northern Lights. So we stayed up until twilight ended (it only got full dark at 10:30 p.m.), and hunted around Heimaey for a spot that didn't feature high-intensity street lighting. Eventually we found a little park, and stood around looking at the sky for about an hour. Alas, the weather on the Sun was too good, because there wasn't any activity to see. So at last to bed.
One final observation on Heimaey: for an island that's two miles wide by three miles long, there are a heck of a lot of cars there. Two reasons I can think of. First, there's a lot of steep slopes on that island. Walking around takes effort, and if one had to carry anything it would get very tiresome very fast. The second reason is that you can take your car on the ferry to the "mainland" and drive to Reykjavik or wherever. I was amused to see that Icelanders don't take off the snow tires until April's over.
There's even kind of a car culture. We saw a couple of dudes driving their boss vintage street rods around Heimaey, and at least once at night I heard what sounded very much like an impromptu drag race.
Next time: The Thing!
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