Water Falls, Ice Caves and Green Skies

April 4, 2018 

The next morning they packed the car and said goodbye to their cabin by the lake in southwest Iceland before setting off on the snowy mountain-flanked highway to Skogarfoss and the Skogar Folk Museum. 

It was sunny, with an aggressive wind blowing as they walked into the museum, which luckily had a strong automatic door that shut itself, to prevent it from being blown off its hinges. 

At the reception desk, a red-headed clerk greeted the family and issued them sticker-tickets. They wandered through Icelandic life from decades past; through exhibits of fishing and marine equipment, agricultural artifacts, domestic crafts and a natural history collection which included a mutant sheep. One or two other patrons roamed the halls. 

Before the trip, Astrid had learned a (very) little bit of the Icelandic language (Islenska) from a cell phone app, and as she browsed the museum displays, she challenged herself, trying to pronounce the various names and descriptions of the many items in the exhibits, often referencing a slip of paper on which she had written a pronunciation key. A student of language doesn’t realize how little she knows of a foreign language until she tries to speak it like the natives, or listen to the natives speak. Astrid couldn’t understand much, just words here and there. 

Poor lamb

Outside the main building, the family hurried between outdoor exhibits, fighting off the wind as they explored models of houses, a church and a schoolhouse from various places on the island. All the houses, examples of buildings in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, had thick stone walls flanking the outside of them, to keep out the wind and wicked weather of the island. 

The houses themselves and the artifacts displayed within were a testament to ingenuity and survival, the inhabitants made do with what was available, like using braided horsehair for a rope, bunches of birch twigs for kitchen whisks, sheep wool for blankets and cloth, walls of native rock and wood salvaged from shipwrecks to build houses (because timber is and was scarce in Iceland).  

After touring the outdoor domestic exhibits, they drove a short distance to Skogarfoss (foss in Icelandic means waterfalls), a tall cataract falling off a high ledge (what used to be the cliffs off the coast) above the plain into the Skogar River for an exhibit of more natural history. This was the most popular attraction in the area and the parking lot was much fuller, with buses, vans and cars. 

After getting their eyeful of the waterfall, Astrid and Snorri watched tourists pose and take selfies while Bjorn set up Tripod and patiently waited for the best photographic opportunities. Although sunny, it was still cold and windy, and part of the floor of the cavern that housed the waterfall was still in shade and covered in a thin sheet of ice, unbeknownst to many sightseers who slipped and sometimes fell on the rocks as their eyes were turned upward to the falling water. 

Skogarfos

After he snapped his fill of photos, Bjorn summoned the family to the car to discuss lunch. They decided to go to the small diner in the technology part of the museum which they hadn’t been to yet, but when they got there, they found it was closed. Instead of eating, they took a quick stroll through the history of Iceland’s adoption of technology, through wars and peace, particularly in reference to snow removal, fishing, ocean life-saving and transportation. 

Because they had an appointment with a very big van later that day, they decided to travel to their meet-up spot and eat there. At Víkurskáli Restaurant, Bjorn and Snorri had hamburgers and Astrid chose the lamb stew again. It was booth-and-table, fast food restaurant and gas station, so when a woman in a wedding dress walked in and sat down, Astrid couldn’t help but notice. It wouldn’t be the last time she saw this woman in her wedding dress that week. 

The Big Van

After filling up their stomachs with food and the car with gas, they parked the car and waited on the sidewalk of the small shopping mall where they were to be picked up for a tour to an ice cave. After some confusion, they found their ride: a super-jacked up, white, 15 passenger van with outrageously large tires that turned out not to be over-kill. Bjorn took motion-sickness medicine, and Astrid put on her Sea-Bands (anti-car sickness wrist bands) just in case. 

These uber-vehicles could be seen all over Iceland. They were high set, large-wheeled retro-fitted vehicles, from 15 passenger vans to jacked-up F350’s, to white panel vans to mini-vans: these vehicles were built to go where no average SUV or 4WD could. 

Gudrun, the tour guide and driver, took out a step stool and the family and fellow tourists packed themselves into the behemoth. The oversized wheels whirred as she drove the beastly van down the highway, then suddenly turned onto what looked like a snowy, no-road plain. Inside the van were enough additional contraptions, gear shifts and pressure gauges to bring steam-punk style machines to mind. 

As the van left the road Gudrun shifted into four-wheel drive, let pressure out of the knobby tires and proceeded to drive down a path covered at intervals with deep snow and drifts that surely came up over the height of the wheels. This woman knew how to handle her gigantic four-wheel specialized van. 

Fearing motion sickness, the family didn't look out the sides of the van, they were in the front-most bench seat, hanging on to handles or anything they could, because it was a swaying, bumpy, swerving ride. 

"Good driving!" Astrid applauded Gudrun for her skill when they finally stopped on a plain of snow.

The tour guide handed out hardhats and set out a box of crampons and waited while the tourists wrangled the items on their heads and feet.

Trudging over what seemed like an endless snowy tundra transported Astrid to the Sagas of the Icelanders when the ancient Vikings would set out across the island on journeys to visit relatives, or dole out a bloody revenge or attend a wedding.  

The landscape was white everywhere, the mountains speckled with black where the snow had melted. Inside the cave, the frozen water on the walls gave it a blue look. Myriad icicles dripped water down on them from the ceiling. It was a quick look at how weird, wonderful and beautiful frozen water could occur in nature.

Another swaying, jolting ride through deep snow and drifts put them back at the shopping center where they browsed Icelandic tourist wares including wool sweaters, dried fish flakes, blankets and cold weather gear including very high end hiking boots. Snorri picked out an Iceland soccer shirt for his collection. 

Next, they drove to Reynisfjara Beach, a black sand beach with impressive examples of columnar basalt rock. A sign and life buoy at the entrance emphasized caution. The beach is notorious for a few deaths, the waves and wind being stronger than they looked to the poor souls grabbed from the beach. 

But it was cold, so Astrid gave the ocean a wide berth and and watched that Snorri stayed out of the water, too. They walked along the shore, marveling at the stones, hiding from the wind in crevices of the pipe-organ-like rock. Back at the parking lot, amidst an ocean of white Kia crossover SUV rentals, they located theirs with little trouble, because it was the Viking Toe 5. 

Dinner was at Halldórskaffí, a restaurant set in a house in the seaside town of Vík. Every nook and cranny of the dining room was filled with tables, chairs and guests. While waiting for their food, Astrid took a good look around. There were Germans a few tables away from them, three French gentlemen to her left eating dessert and an Icelandic couple to her right. 

After Snorri and Bjorn finished their pizza and Astrid her salad with raw smoked salmon, they got on the road again, this time headed for their second Air BnB, Hrifunes Guesthouse. Just a few minutes into the drive they came to a stop, behind blinking lights of emergency vehicles and a car flipped on its roof down off the raised road. 

“Really, I bet it took just second. Just a second to glance at the phone, or pick up something or whatever, the same second a big gust of wind came and might’ve pushed that car off the road,” Astrid said. The wind was notoriously strong in parts of the island, so much, that roads were sometimes closed because of the danger. 

Bjorn called the Hrifunes Air BnB manager to tell her they would be late while Astrid took the opportunity to review some Islenska phrases on her phone.  

They arrived a few minutes before 10 p.m., just in time for official check-in and dragged their luggage into a neat, modern room with a concrete floor. After settling in, Bjorn kept walking to the door and looking out, only to be disappointed. Around 11:30pm, he came back and gathered Tripod and camera. 

“It’s there, the Northern Lights … it’s just a green haze right now, but it’s there, you can see it outside the window,” he said to Astrid and Snorri, who where already snug in their beds. “I’m going out, you should go and see it.” He went out, leaving the door to the room open to a chilling blast of air, which had Astrid jumping out of bed to close it. 

Astrid and Snorri stood at the window and looked out,  underwhelmed by what they were seeing and foggily unaware of what it would eventually become just a few minutes later.

“Wow,” Astrid said. “It’s a green sky. That’s weird.” After a few minutes, they went back to bed, the rarity of the spectacle eclipsed by their exhaustion and sleepiness, hoping to see the Northern Lights another night, but Bjorn stayed up to capture the rare spectacle. 

Reynisfjara Beach