Dettifoss and Volcanos

Today we travel Westwards through the farm areas sandwiched betwwen the desolate highlands and the sea.  There seems to be a lot of hay being harvested but not much livestock - perhaps the animals are kept inside all year but we do see occassional fields with a few sheep, cows or horses : but no pigs !  We were told of one farm that used to run 1,000 sheep but it had now been decreed that it could only have 300.   Aparantly, Island produces enough meat for home consumption but is no longer competitive in the world market.  You would think that, with its unique origins, a niche market could be found.

Möðrudalur

We made a small diversion of the main Ring Road to visit the farm settlement of Möðrudalur is, at 1,539 ft, the highest inhabited place in the country.  Its church was built in 1949 by Jón A. Stefánsson in memory of his wife.  It was a very quaint collection of buildings but the undoubted highlight was the little cafe with excellent coffee and cakes : the only downside was the first emergence of clouds of little Balck flies.  Although we still benefited from uncharacteristic warm & dry weather, the lowest temperature ever recorded in Iceland, -38.0°C (-36.4°F) was recorded here in 1918.

We travelled on for our lunchstop at the mighty Dettifoss - this is reputed to be the most powerful waterfall in Europe.  It is situated on the Jökulsá á Fjöllum river, which flows from the Vatnajökull glacier and collects water from a large area in Northeast Iceland.  The falls are 100m wide, have a drop of 45 m into a narrow canyon and  an average water flow of 193 m³/s.

From the carpark we walked through some rough ground until we crested a rise and looked down into the valley - it was a truely spectacular sight : the deep roar of the water, the spray/rainbows, the biblical flow of water and the ant-sized people totally dwarfed by its scale.  It was a unique place to sit and have a picnic - only slightly deminished by what I thought was pate with orange being, in fact, orange soft cheese.  It wasn't that bad and it, with some bread, soon disappeared.


Just down the road we walked up to the "new" lava at Krafla/Leirhnjúkur where the last eruption was in only 1975 - a nono-second ago in terms of geology.  The ground was black and slag-like with bubbling steaming pits (no lava unfortunately) and steam issuing from the rocks we skirted.   You could see where lava had flowed down and around - leaving vestigal green islands in the stygian landscape.  Back at the carpark, with a few minutes to spare, I sampled one of Island's delacies : a hot dog - not too bad !

Just down the road we climbed up and looked down into a blue lake of the Viti Crater still with a crecent of snow on its edge.  It is about 500ft. in diameter and almost 200 ft. from the rim down to  the water at the bottom of the crater - the water itself is around 26 ft. deep. It was formed in 1875 by a violent eruption in the Dyngjufjoll Mountains

All around were little geodesic domes cover the well-heads and insulated pipes supplying superheated water to the Krafla geo-thermal powerstation.

Námafjall

Our final visit was to the geothermal site at Námafjall which was dotted with fumeroles and plopping solfataras (sulfurous mud springs).

Our final journey today was along the shores of Lake Mývatn and to our hotel - the Fossholl which overlooked the famous Goðafoss (waterfall of the gods)  The water of the river Skjálfandafljót falls from a height of 12 meters over a width of 30 meters.

Goðafoss

Over 1,000 years ago  there was much friction between the various faiths in Island and the Lawspeaker Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði decided to solve the problem.  After sheltering under a cow hide in the hills, he decided tp make Christianity the official religion of Iceland. After his conversion it is said that upon returning from the Alþingi, Þorgeir threw his statues of the Norse gods into the waterfall.