TravelStream™ news feed for member ajvermont on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/ajvermont en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:49:42 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253446649/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253446649/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253446649/tpod.html Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:49:42 -0400 Iceland Adventure

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Borgarnes, West, Iceland

This will be the last entry. I realized that it didn't sound like we DID a lot while in Iceland. Also, I realize that I have a number of good pictures left that didn't get into any of the other entries.

As far as the doing goes, our package included the rental car to drive the Ring Road--and that's what we did. We had decided beforehand not to add on extra tours or some of the more strenuous activities. So we did what we do best, we went, we observed, we read about the history, culture and geology. We appreciated the incredibly dynamic forces at work in this place. It is always super interesting to be somewhere where the geology is moving at break-neck speed (you know, geologically speaking!). While in the Colorado Plateau area of Utah, Arizona and Colorado a few years ago, we really enjoyed reading from the Roadside Geology book as we drove along. We wish someone would do one of these in Iceland. The guide book we had was pretty good in this regard, but we always had more questions than the book could answer.

We also loved observing Icelandic agriculture. Being from a rural state that prides itself on small-scale agriculture, we were fascinated trying to piece together the story of how Icelandic farms operate. Fishing, sheep rearing, horse breeding and dairying seem to be the mainstays of Icelandic agriculture. I've already mentioned the vegetable greenhouses in the area around Hveragethi. The only vegetables grown are cucumbers, tomatoes and green peppers (probably lettuce too, but no one mentioned it.) Everything else is imported. So what we were seeing out in the countryside was pretty much it--sheep, horses, dairy cows and hayfields.

I like to travel to learn things and I learned a lot in Iceland. I also was in awe of the spectacular landscape in the south and the east. We still haven't mastered the limits of the camera we were using, and I wish that some of our pictures were better. In a place like Iceland a true wide-angle lens would have been useful.

So to wrap this up I'm going to write extensive captions for the rest of the photos. Click on the first picture in this entry and that will open up the album that goes with this. At the bottom right you can just use the "next" button to go through the pictures and read the captions.

We had a great time and would love to go back.


]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253219361/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253219361/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253219361/tpod.html Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:08:01 -0400 Iceland Adventure

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Hvammstangi, Northwest, Iceland

So, you ask, "Where-Are-All-The-Trees??"  The answer is "Gone to Vikings, Every One.  When Will They Ever Learn? When Will They Every Learn?"  (Sorry, little Mary Travers tribute there.)

Having just set foot on the new shore and declaring it good, the first Viking settlers looked around, though this looked just like home and proceeded to treat it as such.  Big problem was that the new land was further north, built of infertile volcanic soils and much more fragile than what they were used to.  The indigenous birch forests were quickly exploited for building, firewood and for smelting poor quality "bog iron."  (I don't know what "bog iron" is, but I read that this is what they had.) The sheep and cows they brought with them quickly ate up all the native vegetation and their little hoofs tore through the thin soil.  Before long all the trees were gone.  

It wasn't until the early 20th century that a concerted effort was made to work with farmers to improve and conserve the soil and to replant the forests.  The 100 year-old effort has met with only modest success given the climate and soil.  Everywhere we went there were small number of spruce, fir and birch trees planted around buildings and farmsteads. 

Driving around, the landscape felt familiar to me, having been raised on the edge of the treeless great plains.  At one point I remarked to Linda that the place we were looking at resembled the area around Lake Hattie, a large lake that sits in a vast treeless basin west of Laramie, Wyoming.  You can also think of it as looking like any area of the Rockies that sits above tree line.  It definitely had that tundra-y feel to it.

It's not surprising, then, that the trees that have been planted grow slowly.  They don't get all that big and in some places they are twisted and stunted the way trees are when they grow in cold, windy places.

Some of these pictures show the planted areas at places near the base of a steep slope.  These places were usually uphill from a farmstead and so we think there is a deliberate effort to keep rock and gravel from eroding down into the farm.  In other places it was clear that the effort was just to grow some trees.  These spaces were generally fenced in. I kept referring to them as the "memorial tree gardens".  I think that having the sheep out grazing wild restricts the ability for the trees to spread naturally.  Little seedlings probably get ripped out and eaten.

In his book "Collapse", Jared Diamond writes in detail about the destruction of the Iceland ecosystem by the Viking settlers.  Worth taking a look at.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253204874/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253204874/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253204874/tpod.html Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:28:24 -0400 Iceland Adventure

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Varmahlio, Northwest, Iceland


Being the hayseeds we are, as we drove the nearly 1000km it takes to go around the Ring Road, we keenly observed Icelandic agricultural practices.  More than anything this means seeing thousands of Icelandic horses and sheep, fewer dairy cows, and a smattering of beef cattle.  We saw nary a chicken, pig or goat.  In one location they had a set-up for aquaculture--probably salmon, maybe herring, in a fjord.  And that was it.

The Icelandic horse, sheep and dairy cow are all direct descendents of the animals that the Vikings delivered to their new home in the 900's.  The breeds have been isolated  and then protected since that time; therefore, the animals are especially adapted to the harsh climate, poor feed and lack of pampering. 

In a previous post I'd mentioned that the sheep are turned loose about 3 weeks after lambing in the spring.  The cultivated hay fields are needed to produce the winter feed, and there is precious little spare pasturage to keep a few hundred thousand sheep happy and fenced in.  The solution is to turn the sheep out to fend for themselves on whatever is available.  In many areas we saw the sheep on the beach, in the riverbed, high up in the mountains, on the road, and anywhere there was a fresh shoot of green grass for them.  Mostly there were fences along the roads forming rudimentary pastures, but sheep being sheep, many of them had wriggled beneath or through the fencing and were calming grazing between fence and road.  In other areas there were no fences, just like the open range areas of the American west.  It is up to the driver to be eagle-eyed about livestock on the roads.  We only had a few instances of sheep actually being up on the roadway, and there were long sight-lines that made it easy to see them up ahead.  Remarkably we didn't see a single roadkill, so I guess that there isn't a problem with sheep getting hit on the roads.

 The Sheep are rounded up in what is known as a "rettir" in September.  The farmers go out on horseback and with dogs (There is also a unique breed of Iceland Sheepdog that looks like a small, ginger-hued spitz dog; they are very friendly.) and on a single appointed day round up the sheep, drive them into circular pens with a wedge designated for each farmer.  The sheep are then separated by ear tags, dragged into the appropriate wedge and then taken home; I guess by truck, but I don't really know.  I'd love to return to see the process.  They don't always get all of them on the first try (some of those sheep were up on impossibly steep and high slopes) and go out again a couple of weeks later.  Apparently sometimes the sheep they miss have to find their own way to a farm when the weather turns nasty.
 
The sheep are smallish, they all have curly horns and long shaggy fleece and skinny little legs sticking out from this huge fleece.  Most are white but there are also black, grey and speckled sheep.  They were always in little groups of 3 (mama and 2 babies?) instead of sticking to one large flock.  They settled into little depressions in the dirt or between a couple of rocks to stay out of the wind while chewing their cud.  
 
 I kept saying I'd find the perfect flock of sheep and take more pictures, but by the last day the weather had turned blustery and wet and I didn't feel like hiking over to field to take sheep pictures.  When we were getting up to look at the columnar basalt the few sheep we encountered  nervously skittered out of the way long before I could get a good picture of them. So I have only this one little picture of one small sheep.  Given the size of the horns it is probably this year's lamb.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253211223/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253211223/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253211223/tpod.html Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:07:12 -0400 Iceland Adventure

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Húsavík, Northeast, Iceland

Horses!  Everywhere horses, and every mare had a foal.  What's up with that? We asked.  Turns out that there is a high global demand for the uniquely 5-gaited Icelandic horse.  So exports of breeding stock accounts for some of it.  Given that there are over 200,000 horse in a country of only 350,000 people, that is one big herd of horses.  Sooooo, they eat some of them too.  Many of those foals are destined for export and slaughter in Europe.  Between equestrian tourism and slaughter there is enough demand to sustain a very high breeding level.

Our second night in Iceland stayed at a very comfortable small hotel that existed primarily as a riding destination for tourists.  They arrange group rides on the beaches, in the highlands, on the glaciers--in a train and on a plane for all I know!  Linda does not ride and I did not arrange to do so, although once out in the countryside it was quite common to see signs directing visitors to farms that will provide riding.  In the northwest an agricultural college specializes in Icelandic horse breeding and that is the area where we saw the most people out riding.

We were assured that the Icelandic horse is friendly and curious.  But they seem mostly half-tame to me.  I kept trying to interact with them over the fences and they wanted precious little to do with me.  I'd swipe sugar cubes from the breakfast table and use that to work my way into their hearts, but to no avail.  The group of mares and foals that were being kept in a very small fenced area near our hotel one night were the most willing to tolerate my overtures.  The pictures aren't the greatest but the curly-coated foal was quite willing to hang-out for a good scritch on her neck.

As you can see, these horses are compact, stocky and shaggy.  They run about 13 or 14 hands and come in all colors.  We saw lots of pinto coloration.  It was pretty easy to differentiate between horses that were being kept to ride as they were shod and their forelocks trimmed back so they could see.  Some of these others had feet that needed trimming, couldn't see and were a little on the ornery side.  

These pictures came from four different locations.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253133674/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253133674/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253133674/tpod.html Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:23:32 -0400 Iceland Adventure

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Myvatn, Iceland

All of Iceland is shaped by three forces: vulcanization, glaciation and erosion. There are still several quite active volcanoes on the island, and they say that one of the larger ones is due for an eruption again in 2010 or so.
Some of the volcanoes are actually covered over by 200 meters of glacier. One of those erupted in 1996 creating a huge meltwater lake under the glacier that eventually burst out under the ice and flooded a large area. That area now is a several mile long plain of volcanic ash (looks like black sand), and rocks. It did not photograph well, but was quite impressive. It washed out the main highway as it carried huge ice boulders along with all the other debris out to sea.

The next series of photos shows Mt. Hekla, famously mentioned in Moby Dick. Mt. Hekla is one of the two most destructive volcanoes in Iceland and is one of the few classic cone shape. The summit is almost always shrouded in clouds. We couldn't get too close to it without a 4-wheel drive, but the drive along the paved road was quite beautiful nonetheless. Near Mt. Hekla you can see one of the glaciers sitting high atop the mountains. Oh, whoops, after I wrote this and looked again at the pictures I'm not sure we actually took one of Mt. Hekla, but these were taken en route.

The next photo shows some columnar basalt which forms when lava cools relatively quickly. The basalt essentially chrystalizes into hexagonal columns. There are more impressive columns elsewhere in Iceland, but these were the easiest to reach by car. They are out on the Snaefellsness peninsula, an area with many volcanoes, although most of them are not active and have eroded down to crater "stubs." On the way there we were pleased to be able to discern, after a week in "lava country", the exact line where we crossed into the knobbly, craggy, obviously-solidified-molten-lava field.

Out in the Northern rift area:
Mt. Krafla is in one of the most geothermally active areas in the country. This picture shows the area around the volcano and the power station built near it. 90% of the country's electricity comes from the 4 geothermal stations or hydro power. These plants also supply hot water directly to homes and businesses within about a 100 km radius. All of Reykjavik, for example, is provided with hot water from the geothermal station about 45 km away.

Here's a picture from near Mt. Krafla of an area of tall lava formations known as Dimmuborgir. Apparently it is supposed to be build by trolls or elves, or maybe they just live there. They speculate that the tall lava chimneys formed when superheated steam blew out these chimneys when the overlying lava cooled off and formed a ceiling. They preserved this area and built a neat network of walking trails all through them. This picture was taken from an overlook high above the floor of the valley and it doesn't show the actual height of the chimneys. They were probably 20 to 40 feet tall.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253130773/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253130773/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253130773/tpod.html Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:39:36 -0400 Iceland Adventure

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Höfn, East, Iceland

High on everyone's "Not-To-Be-Missed" list when visiting Iceland is the glacial lagoon known as Jokulsarlon.  For all I know, that literally means Glacial Lagoon, since jokull is the word for glacier.

Anyway, at a point where one of the glacial tongues reaches down to the sea, the glacier began retreating in the 1930's.  As it melted it formed a lagoon in the depression left from the massive weight of the glacier.  The glacier also began calving icebergs into the lagoon.  At high tide the smaller "bergy bits" can make their way out to sea.  Currently it takes about 8 years for a calved iceberg to melt enough to be small and bouyant enough to float and join the seals to frolic in the surf.  Fish can get into the lagoon at high tide and seals do gather to hunt for the fish.  We didn't see any though.

The Ring Road goes over the bridge under which the icebergs have to pass to get to sea.

This is another mecca for bus tours and the joint was jumpin' when we pulled in during a light drizzle.  You can go out into the lagoon in an amphibious boat--much like the duck boats that operate in Boston and San Francisco.  You load up in the parking lot and then drive into the lagoon and put-put around for a while.  The lagoon is quite deep--I think they said 100 meters or something like that.  Naturally it is getting larger all the time.  The water extends 200 meters under the glacier itself and this underlying pool of water is one of the factors hastening the melting and retreating of the glacier.

In the pictures the clean looking icebergs have gotten small enough that they change their center of gravity, flip over and look nice and clean.  The larger ones haven't done that yet and so still carry all the rocky debris that they pick up as they grind their way down the valley still as part of the main glacier.

You can see two different glacial tongues in these pictures, but they are both part of the massive Vatnajokull.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253105069/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253105069/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ajvermont/2/1253105069/tpod.html Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:25:07 -0400 Iceland Adventure

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Skogar, Iceland

The Foss, or waterfall, is ubiquitous in Iceland.  As previously mentioned, the fall line between highlands and coastal plain is sharp and all that water has to go somewhere in a hurry.  There are several large, magnificent fosses, like Gulfoss, of which I've already written.  There are also innumerable smaller ones.  The best ones we saw were in the south and the east since the lip of the highlands is pretty much jammed up close the the sea, whereas in the west there are many more great broad flat-ish valleys and plains and therefore we were further away from the fall line and the fosses.

One of our favorites was Seljalandfoss.  It, along with maybe 5 or 6 other, falls right off the lip of the escarpment and down into a deep pool.  It looked like a few of them fell right into holes they'd carved into the lava.  We couldn't see any pool, they just disappreared.  You can walk around behind Seljalandfoss, but the wind was blowing and I got wet enough just getting up close to the front of it.

Another big one that you can also walk behind is called Skogarfoss and it was down the road a piece form Seljalandfoss.  On the approach to Skogarfoss you could see the glacier up top so we took pictures from a distance so as to get the glacier in.  It actually had a longer drop than Seljalandfoss, but both of them were in the 50-60 meter category.  You can begin a 3 day, 27km backpacking trip from Skogarfoss, up over the glacier (or past it) to a place called Thorsmork which is accessible by 4WD vehicles.  But to get to Thorsmork, any vehicle has to ford 27 (!) rivers.  

 

Several of the fosses are fairly small but fall in stages down the slope.  This one pictured here was over on the way to Mt. Hekla (mentioned in the "Volcanoes" entry).

 

These last photos are over on the western side of the county.  Gothafoss was really spectacular more for the amount of water than for the sheer drop.  It took a couple of distinct drops and there was a pedestrian bridge downstream where it was possible to stand out over the river and get an excellent view.  A guy was down there fishing right along side a commorant.  Must have been a fish somewhere!

The next foss was interesting Hraunfossar comes right out of the middle layer of "pillow lava".  It doesn't originiate in a river, just from springs in the area that sort of "leak" out through this very porous lava and down into the rushing river.  The river really did rush!  Upstream at the so-called "children's falls" (sad legend) the entire river squeezes through a hole carved in the lava--just like gushing out of a fire hydrant.

 

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Vik, Iceland

The little village of Vik is the southernmost point in the country.  There isn't really anything there except a gas station, woolen outlet store, a pretty church and some houses. I was hoping to maybe get one of those iconic icelandic sweaters there, but even at this place that purportedly has some of the best prices in the county, they were still too expensive to justify.  You could also buy a sheepskin, arctic fox skin, seal skin and also reindeer (caribou).
We'd just driven through an intense rain squall and the rainbow came out.  Linda took these pictures.
You can see the steeply curved slopes behind the town.  This is what most of this eastern area looked like with these abrupt, steeply sided slopes rising up.  Many times they flattened out on top.  Some were isolated, so of like buttes in the American southwest, and some connected up into the glacial highlands.  All of them were dotted with hardy Icelandic sheep that are turned out in May to graze wild until September when they are rounded up and sorted out.  Some of those sheep were mere specks up high, high, high on the steep slopes.

After we left town we could see these sea stacks right off the coast.
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Höfn, East, Iceland

Iceland's glaciers are the remnants of the great ice age of 10,000 years ago, but they are going fast, my friends. The locals can point up to one of the glacial valleys and mark the retreat from summer to summer. Several glacial tongues used to make it all the way down to the sea but no longer do. Even so, it is still impressive to see the bright white and blue of the ice up on the mountain as you drive along the coast.
You can get up onto the glaciers either by hiking of by taking a "Super Jeep" tour. We did neither of those, for different reasons, but I would consider going up in the Super Jeep if we ever go back. Super Jeep is the generic term for any 4 wheel drive vehicle that is outfitted with oversized tires. I don't exactly know how they drive up onto the ice, but they do. There are also some tour operators that go up in snow machines. We got as close as we could given that we were limited by our teensy Toyota and the rental agreement that stipulated that we pretty much could not travel on the rough tracks necessary to get up into the mountains.

The largest glacier Vatnajokull is in the eastern part of the county and is the largest glacier in Europe. There are 4 others in the country including a teeny one out in the western fjords area.

These photographs are mostly of Vatnajokull since its tongues reach down to the coast in the east.

Once again I'd suggest looking down at the bottom of the screen on the travelpod page and check out some other people's blogs. They might have better glacier pictures than we have.
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Skogar, Iceland


Historical Architecture
Although Iceland has been occupied by settlers since the 9th century, remarkably little remains of early architecture.  Some of this is due to the passage of the centuries and the rudimentary materials used for building.  Unlike  classical architecture, early Viking settlers did not construct elaborate buildings of stone and so abandoned buildings simply returned to the elements.  Another factor accounts for so little left from the earliest times and that is the frequent catastrophic volcanic eruptions which repeatedly buried farms and villages in volcanic ash, lava or both.  What does remain are a few scattered examples of turf buildings.  We spent some time at two museums that exhibited hybrids of rebuilt and reclaimed turf buildings.  They were on opposite sides of the country but both showed the same technique of farm buildings from the 18th and 19th century.  The commonest technique was to build foundations and knee-walls from stone or driftwood, use driftwood poles as roof rafters and cover the entire building in a herringbone pattern of turf.  The house, work sheds, kitchen and animal barns were all connected so as to be able to move from work to living space without having to go outside in the long, dark Nordic winters.
What struck me particularly was how different these dwellings were from the sod houses of the American plains.  Neither location had much wood, but both had lots of stone and the thick sod which, when cut into blocks and stacked, creates a compact solid wall.  The sod busters of the American west, however, never seemed to have learned this herringbone pattern of building walls that made them stronger than walls laid using a basic masonry pattern.  The living portions of turf buildings were quite comfortable and cozy.  They certainly seemed cleaner and much more permanent feeling than the "soddies" I've read about.  Perhaps the difference is due to the fact that the American frontiersmen knew that the railroads would soon make it possible to bring in lumber to construct a conventional farm house and barn and so always believed the "soddie" to be a temporary privation, whereas the Icelandic folk had never had any other choices and so perfected this building technique.
These pictures are from the  museums in Skogar, on the south coast, and Glaumbaer in the west.
Apparently the Gulf Stream current from the southwest and the arctic currents from Russia and Scandanavia delivered quite a bit of entire driftwood logs of which the Icelanders made good use.  they had a whole system of "finders-keepers" marks that would be made on the log to show who had rights to it until it could be hauled away from the beach and used.

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