What a beautiful day for our last touring day in Iceland. And what two nice spots to visit, too.

We arrived with plenty of extra time before the 9:30 AM ferry boat departure to Hrísey. Didn’t want to miss the boat in case it was crowded. We and three others were all that came, as it turned out.

There wasn’t much to do on Hrísey, except admire the scenery and watch the birds, which was our original intent anyway. The church and museum were both closed. So we hiked maybe half a mile to a small pond advertised as a bird viewing spot – over 500 species inhabit Hrísey at various times of the year. We didn’t see them all but enough to make us happy. We ended up sitting on a grassy hill overlooking the pond for an hour or more, enjoying the beautiful day and the birds.

We didn’t know it, but Hrísey has a really great place for fish and chips. We had less than an hour to kill before the 1:00 PM departure. There, a few steps from the wharf, was a nondescript building displaying the single word “Restaurant.”

The lady who greeted us brought the chef/owner out of the kitchen – a young guy – who said he could do some roasted small potatoes for me (No Fries, Please. I’m Not British).

And was it ever good. Fish so fresh it was still squirming. Really nice thin tempura coating. A fresh locally-grown green salad with a great dressing. I rated it “Best fish and chips in Iceland. No kidding” on Trip Advisor.

The lady who saw to our needs told us about a young lady from Singapore, an artist, who came to Hrísey, loved it and keeps coming back. She left last April but promised to return in December.

“December? Isn’t it cold in December?”

“Not as cold as it was when I was a kid,” she answered. “Global warming, I guess.”

She, like other middle aged and older adults we’ve met have OK English, but not as good as the kids who are studying it in school and on the ‘net. I said “thank you” to a couple of young guys this morning. “No problem” was their response. Bet they don’t teach that in school.

Hrísey was a center for herring trade back in the first half of the twentieth century, especially 1930 – 1950. It was a Klondike-style boom town. It attracted people from all over Iceland – men and women – to process the catch. It was a wild time. Then, like that, in 1969 the herring simply didn’t return. Overfishing. The economy and population crashed. There’s some fishing left today, I suppose, but tourism has got to be the big deal.

One funny story about the boom times. “Have you ever been married?” A young lady was asked. “No, but I’ve been to Hrísey Island,” she replied with a blush.

The museum that was closed was a shark museum. Unlike the fermented shark museum we visited earlier, this one focused on shark as a source of oil for illumination. That market has of course gone away and so has shark fishing here.

The story was the same in Siglufjordur, 45 minutes north. At one time it produced 20% of Iceland’s exports of herring products. Then 1969 happened. Boom to bust. We toured a herring museum there where much of the equipment was on display.

I didn’t realize it, but herring was and is processed to produce both salted herring for consumption and also to produce fish meal and oil. Fish oil, like shark oil and whale oil and cod liver oil, was used as a source of illumination and as an industrial lubricant. Today the meal and oil are used as livestock feed and other industrial purposes.

The herring population, now under strict government control to prevent overfishing, has come back and there are 11 herring processing facilities in Iceland but none in Siglufjordur. Tourism is the main economic driver here.

Which brings up a political point Thor made last week. A few large operators have bought up all the fishing licenses, leaving the individual fisherman out in the cold. Not fair.

Tourism in Siglufjordur is made possible by three long tunnels cut through the mountains – maybe 15 Km (9 miles) in total, linking the town to the outside world. One tunnel is a single lane. Northbound cars have cutouts every so often. If there’s an oncoming car, the northbounder is obligated to get out of the way. On our way back southbound, some cutouts had four cars waiting. Scary until you get the hang of it and learn to trust your fellow drivers.

So that’s it. Home tomorrow. As we’re sitting here Saturday evening, we have two choices: A flight from Akureyri to Reykjavik Downtown airport, bus transfer to Keflavik and then a five hour wait for our 5 PM flight to Boston. Or, simply drive the rental car to Keflavik, a 5:15 trip. The weather tomorrow is supposed to be like today – warm and sunny. Why not enjoy another day in Iceland rather than fly and wait in the airport?

We’ll see how the spirit moves us in the morning.

Who in their right mind would choose a cold (44 degree), windy, rainy day to hike uphill to see a botanical garden? Is that person possessed? I’ll let you figure out which of us was that person.

Actually, necessity is sometimes the mother of questionable travel planning. See, this is our next-to-the-last day of our Iceland trip, so we’ve got to shoehorn in the last must-does. Today is the lousy day, tomorrow the nice day – forecast is for  59 degrees and partly sunny. That makes it one of the warmest days we’ve seen all trip long. So today we decided on “doing” Akureyri, which can be mostly an indoor activity. But not entirely; hence the botanical garden.

We had a lazy morning, not turning out until 9:30 or so. I moved the car out of a zone where parking fees began at 10 and we walked down our street to a nice, up-scale Dunkin’ for breakfast. Sweet rolls and hot chocolate with coffee.

Around the corner is the Akureyri Art Museum, indoors, so that was first on our agenda. It was a great collection of Icelandic and Arctic Circle-ish artists whose Is This North collection was part of the Reykjavik Art Festival we saw way back week before last. As far as I could tell, every single artist shown there is still alive, most young enough to be our kids and some our grandkids. Nary an Old Master and hardly a daub of oil.

I take that back; there was an exhibit of Marcel Duchamp, the French/American artist/chess player. Actually, it was part of an exhibit, put together by living folks, titled Stranded – W(h)ale a Remake Portfolio – More Than This, Even. It has to do somehow with whales. I’ll let you know how when I figure it out. But it was an amusing and interesting collection of items from the first half of the twentieth century.

Then, rain, cold, wind notwithstanding I led the way up the hill to the Botanic Garden, overlooking the fjord and downtown. Akureyri is really quite nice with neat, Icelandic houses. Granted we were in an upscale neighborhood, but the other areas we drove through later were all very nice. Neat, clean and well maintained. Our Airbnb being an exception.

The gardens featured, of course, Arctic and Icelandic flora. We’ve seen many of the Icelandic flowers on our travels. The garden, however, includes plants from all over the world, the colder climates anyway. The biggest tree we’ve seen in our travels here was a cottonwood imported from Alaska. Cottonwoods are apparently quite abundant in Akureyri. Some of the other species aren’t quite so adaptable to near-Arctic conditions and have to be planted as annuals.

On the way down the hill we stopped at a quaint old house in the middle of nowhere but literally a stone’s throw from our house. It was the home of a man, a Lutheran priest, author, poet and advocate for the disadvantaged, such as women. His wife was equally active. After the last remaining daughter died the house was turned into a museum displaying original furnishings of the early 1900s.

Enough of that; into the car for some exploration.

First, the Hof concert hall. Somewhat of a disappointment in that there is not performance scheduled this weekend and for the foreseeable future. The Akureyri Symphony’s season begins in September. We couldn’t even peek into the concert hall to compare it to the Harpa and the Sydney Opera House.

We had a particular interest because this is where Sage Lewis recorded his orchestral work during Covid. He piggybacked on another recording session, getting a cut rate for two hours of recording time for a 30-minute piece, the orchestra sight reading his composition. The Iceland government kicked in as part of their “Record in Iceland” initiative. Later, in other places, he added other musical and vocal performances that were combined into the finished work. We’ve heard it and it’s an amazing expression of Icelandic scenery. I may be overstepping my knowledge base, but I would term it a tone poem. We listened to it while traversing the volcanic fields of southern Iceland.

Our next stop was the Akureyri Museum but we took the scenic route (and no, I didn’t get lost) along the waterfront, seeing an interesting collection of what I would assume to be fishing craft, although it’s hard to figure out where they dangle their lines to catch the Arctic char and wolffish we’ve been enjoying.

Then the Akureyri Museum which, like the Art Museum, was very much locally oriented. There was a very interesting exhibit of old maps, dating from the 16th century an later. Many were Danish, since the Danes ruled the place and the Icelanders had little wherewithal to do any mapping of their own. In fact, there was one map done in the late 1800s by an Icelander who had to beg and borrow surveying equipment from the Danes. The maps, inaccurate as they might have been, are works of art.

The other exhibits focused on life in Akureyri way back as far as rock and roll bands from the 1960s, home life of that era, etc. There was an old wooden stave church and the boyhood home of Jón Stefán Sveinsson (1857-1944), aka Nonna. He was born near Akureyri but after his father died at age 11, his mother didn’t have the wherewithal to care for him. A French nobleman offered to have him educated in Europe so, at the age of 12, he left his mother, never to see her again. He eventually became a Roman Catholic priest, a big leap for an Icelandic Lutheran. He lived in many places around the world and became the author of 12 children’s books that have become much loved favorites for many generations. Nonna returned to Iceland only twice, briefly, once to be named an honorary citizen of Akureyri. He died in a bunker in Germany in 1944.

So enough of the museum scene. One more stop: our favorite grocery store, Bonus (we’ve shopped at two), for skyr (Icelandic yogurt) and rolls for two more breakfasts before we head home.

If dinner last night was 169 feet from our house, tonight’s was 269 feet. Fish and chips for me and grilled lamb chops for Judy. The walk home, though short, was in the same cold windy weather. The warmth of the Airbnb was most welcome.

Heating here and in most of Iceland is from geothermal water piped to everyone’s home for both tap water and household heat. We learned today that it wasn’t until the oil crisis of the 1970s that geothermal hot water became widespread. Judy likes the fact that hot and cold water flows almost instantaneously. Often, especially here in Akureyri, the water has a decided sulfurous taste and smell.

On the way back we found a figurine of one of Akureyri’s hidden people – elves – of which many Icelanders, and especially people from this area, are staunch believers.

Tomorrow, we’re headed north to Siglufjordur and on the way a 15-minute ferry ride to the island of Hrísey. And no, Sage didn’t tell us to go there. We figured it out all by ourselves.

Then home on Sunday.

There I was, standing in the lava tube formation at Dimmuborgir, a circular opening in the lava structure that they call the Cathedral. The whole lava field is said to be the place where Satin alit when he came to earth so I don’t get the Cathedral reference, but that’s folk lore for you.

My challenge: how to get down gracefully. The problem: there was a busload of tourists speaking some unknown language, starting to climb up. My other problem: the Aleve I took last night had worn off and my gimpy left hip made my left side MIA. The crowd went silent. One person warned, “Keerful.” Another, “Seet down.” Everyone sighed an Eastern European sigh of relief when I finally made it down with body intact but ego badly bruised.

This was our first stop, the Dimmuborgir lava field, almost directly across the highway from our Airbnb, which we’d left a few minutes earlier. We picked this stop, and most of the other stops today, by following unashamedly Sage’s Northern Iceland itinerary. Thanks, Sage. Send us your bill.

This lava field was more dramatic and larger than most of the similar fields we’ve seen in Iceland. This lava eruption occurred about 2,300 years ago. But by 1940 the area had accumulated a large amount of silt, almost burying the formations. The owners, farmers in the area, gave the land up and the Land Conservancy fenced it off to keep the sheep out, built stone barriers and planted grass. The result is that the lava field has recovered. And, the grass has provided a basis for the growth of birch trees. A win-win.

Now I’m all in favor of Iceland growing some trees to replace what the Vikings cut down 1,000 years ago. But keep in mind, trees get in the way of tourists’ snapshots. And tourists contribute a whole ton of krona to Iceland’s economy. So careful where you plant those trees.

After Dimmuborgir we went further north, retracing some of the route we traveled yesterday, about 10 miles worth. That took us to the Hverir geothermal hot springs park. Here, the landscape is covered with multicolored deposits and bubbling pools of boiling water. The deal is that lava lies close beneath the ground. Surface water seeps down, hits the lava and turns to steam. The steam rises back to the surface through vent holes, carrying with it sulphur dioxide and other chemical elements that produce the distinctive colors.

We waved as we passed by the lava pillars and lava fields that Sage covers in his trips; we’d seen them on our way to Myvatn yesterday. We did stop, however, at the Laxá River where Harlequin ducks are said to be found. Ooops, the guide book says, “best viewing is in the Spring and Fall.” No ducks. We did, however, enjoy the fast-moving river and we ate the sandwich we’d purchased from the café at Dimmuborgir, another Sage recommendation.

In addition to a lame hip I have a lame brain. I tried to plug our next stop, the Godafoss waterfall, into Google Maps. But instead I hit the listing for the Dettifoss falls, the one we’d seen yesterday. (“Foss” is Icelandic for falls.) It took a while, but when the GPS suggested a turn to the northeast rather than the southwest, my brain returned to duty and I realized I’d blown it again. It cost us maybe 20 minutes of extra driving. Godafoss was worth it, in the end.

That left us 30 minutes to reach our next Airbnb in Akureyri. The direct route would take us through a seven-kilometer toll tunnel. Instead, we took the scenic route over the mountain rather than through it. Saved a buck and gave us much nicer views. I wouldn’t do it in winter time, though.

Our Airbnb is nice on the inside but decidedly lacking in curb appeal. We were instructed to walk around back, past the trash cans, to an entry way last painted at the time of the Vikings. But it’s a great location and we’re going to do just fine here.

There is a TripAdvisor five-star rated restaurant 168 feet from our front door. Nice dinner but be sure to leave lots of available credit on your Visa card when you come to Iceland. They aren’t ashamed of asking for a princely sum for just about everything, hot dogs on up.

After dinner we took a brief walk up the hill to the church located there and not far from the botanical garden. On the way back we passed by the art museum. We’re thinking tomorrow, with a forecast for rain, will be our indoor day, hitting the museums, art galleries and what not. Then Saturday, our last day, we’ll head up the coast to explore Siglufjordur. Why? Because Sage says so.

P.S. I’ve added some new pictures to yesterday’s posting. They, for technical reasons beyond my control, didn’t make it yesterday. They mostly add to what was already there and appear at the end, not in time sequence.

I called it the Golden Diamond in yesterday’s posting, but I was mixing two circles: The Golden Circle, which is Route 1, the Ring Road, goes all the way around Iceland. The Diamond Circle, which we did today, is a much shorter loop around the northern portion of Iceland. It’s main city is Húsavík on the west side. Lake Myvatn is on the southern side. There is a longer route in northern Iceland called the Arctic Coast Way, which travels the coast line from which the Arctic Circle is a stone throw’s to the north.

For us, there were three main attractions on the Diamond Circle: the Dettifoss Falls, the canyon at Asbyrgi, and the town of Húsavík itself. It took us all day – 9 AM until 9 PM – to do the loop, including stops.

We actually bypassed two attractions technically on the Circle: the nearby geothermal power plant and the hot springs at Heverir. We’ll catch those tomorrow on our way out of town.

The Dettifoss Falls stop entailed a one-mile hike in to the falls over reasonable, if a bit rocky, terrain. The falls are big. Everyone wants bragging rights, and Dettifoss’s case it measures as the biggest waterfall in Europe, by water flow: 500 cubic meters of water per second. It is an impressive sight. There may be taller or wider falls elsewhere but this baby pumps more water.

The drive from Dettifoss to Asbyrgi is only 35 Km or so, but I never cease to be amazed and dumbfounded by the change in terrain. Today we saw:

–              Volcanic deposits in jagged piles of debris. Our Airbnb is in a pile of the stuff. As it gets older, moss begins to grow on it, which leads to plants, which leads to trees over millennia in some cases.

–              There are relatively flat sections of terrain with some form of vegetation for the omnipresent sheep to graze on. Sometimes it’s pretty rough scruff; sometimes it is pristine pure pasture land.

–              There are surrounding mountains, all with snow. We drove up and through several today.

–              We stopped briefly at a section of a totally smooth lava flow, more like what I expected a lava flow to look like, not the jagged type we see everywhere else. It’s the only such formation we’ve seen.

–              The canyon at Asbyrgi had a dense growth of birch trees without signs of lava.

I wish I was more of a geologist to explain it all (or I wish Thor was along to give the lowdown).

Asbyrgi, if I have the story right, was an area of volcanic activity just after the last ice age – 20,000 years ago, say. Then, 8 to 10,000 years ago, and again 3,000 years ago, a series to tremendous floods cut a canyon roughly 20 miles long and more than a half mile wide. The canyon walls are 330 feet tall. It’s a big canyon, hard to grasp because of the trees that grow within it. You can’t see the whole thing from one spot to appreciate its size. But we did hike in to a couple of viewing spots to get an idea.

Apparently, large quantities of water built up in moraines and lakes high in the volcanic mountains surrounding Asbyrgi. Eventually, the water pressure built up so that the pools of water burst, creating a cataclysmic flood. Possibly volcanic action under a glacier triggered a similar flood. The result was that the canyon was cut in a matter of hours, not centuries or millennia as is the case for normal erosion.

The town of Húsavík is a small fishing village that serves as a port for ferry service to nearby islands, as a cruise boat anchorage and for certain raw materials – we’re guessing gravel and other construction materials. And of course it’s a tourist destination. Whale watching tours are offered there.

We ended up doing some shopping, which didn’t take long, given the small number of stores available. Judy did score her prized souvenir: a two-foot long shoe horn, which she’s enjoyed using at several hotels on this trip. She’s happy and so am I.

The really enjoyable thing was our visit to the Geosea spa on the outskirts of town. It’s a mini Blue Lagoon but much nicer. It heats sea water with geothermal energy, rather than blue water. It’s less crowded and cleaner than the Blue Lagoon. It’s all outdoors and there is a great view of the snowcapped mountains across the bay. A very relaxing experience.

The other nice thing was dinner at the Salka restaurant, another Sage recommendation that proved to be a winner. Judy had fish and chips and I had the wolffish catch of the day special plus a flatbread mushroom appetizer recommended by our waiter. Everything was great.

Earlier, we stopped at the Salka to make a reservation and who did we find but Colleen and Richard from our trip last week. They had just ordered so we chatted only briefly. They’re heading back to Reykjavik tomorrow and then on home.

One thing we’re lacking on this trip are pictures of sunrise and sunset. There’s really no excuse. Sunset tonight is at 12:35 AM and we’d only have to wait 1:46 AM for sunrise. Just time enough for a cup of coffee. If, that is, we drank coffee at that hour and if we stayed up that late in the first place. Don’t hold your breath.

Tomorrow we pull up stakes and move to Akureyri where we’ll spend our last three nights in Iceland.

Today is a road trip day, about 250 miles and 5:30 non-stop driving time. We left at 8:30 and got here around 6, having stopped a couple of times. Since I was driving, Judy did the majority of the picture taking, mostly out of the moving car window. Good job, Judy. Thanks!

The driving in the morning was interesting. As usual, the weather was cloudy with periods of sun peeking through and intermittent rain. Normally, that would be no big deal but the road until we hit the Ring Road around lunchtime was gravel. A good gravel road, but slippery and one and one-half lanes wide with single lane bridges. Guard rails are reserved for the Ring Road. You’re on your own when it comes to avoiding the frequent cliffs. But we made it.

Incidentally, Thor told us that so far there have been 11 vehicular fatalities in Iceland so far this year, ahead of last year. Most were tourists watching sheep rather than the road. And you do have to watch for sheep; they are free to wander across the road. And if you hit one, it is your responsibility to find the sheep’s owner and make restitution.

I didn’t know what to expect scenery wise, so I was pleasantly surprised to find the route to be quite beautiful. For much of it, there were broad valleys between mountains. I suppose the mountains were once volcanoes but to me they looked like plain old mountains. The flat land between mountain ranges was quite lush with cultivated fields of hay, more prosperous looking than down south, to my untrained eye.

We stopped at a museum along the way where they had reconstructed a long house like the one where Eric the Red is thought to have lived before he left town in haste for the cove we saw yesterday. Ruins of such a long house were found nearby. Turns out EtheR ended up murdering at least eight of his neighbors and was sentenced to three years of exile, which he served in, you guessed it, Greenland.

The guide for the long hut gave us some interesting factoids about Viking life. Vikings, like many peoples around the world, built fires in their long houses and let the smoke go up a hole in the roof. They slept sitting up (“only the dead lie down”) to avoid the carbon monoxide at ground level. Because women spent more time indoors than men, their life expectancy was only 28 years versus 35 to 40 for men. Thus, there was a chronic shortage of women. The Vikings would go to foreign lands and, literally, carry off brides to make up the difference. Ireland was a favorite hunting ground. Today, the DNA of Icelandic men is 40% Irish. Women sport 60% Irish DNA.

Viking society gave women extraordinary rights for the times. Women could own land independent of their husbands. They could divorce their husband. One ground for divorce was if a man was found with a bare chest. Men who toiled in the heat would drop their trousers to cool off to avoid divorce court.

We stopped for lunch at the Sjavarborg restaurant, recommended to us by Sage,  in the small fishing village of Hvammstangi. Try saying that three times. I can’t do it once. It was an unassuming place; a number of patrons were working men going for the spaghetti special. We went the lamb burger route, and, boy of boy, the place’s reputation as a haven for foodies was proved beyond doubt. I wish we could have sampled the baked cod fish-of-the-day too.

Nearing Akureyri, we passed through a mountain range on the Ring Road with spectacular views.

It took a bit of doing to get into our Airbnb on the shore of Lake Myvatn, a large, ancient crater filled with water. I contacted the host, who was in Norway, and got the code. We drove up the road 5 miles to the next town and put in a grub steak – scrambled eggs, potatoes and onions for dinner tonight and some stuff for breakfast.

And I was wrong: “Myvatn” dosn’t mean “Mosquitos, “ it means “Midges,” and they are thicker than flies, to mix a metaphor. But that’s nothing to worry about our host assures us. Only one of the 25 varieties of midges bite, and then only  the females. “If they come in to the house through open windows and they try to get out again. Some go out through the same window, others fly onto the windows and die there. They don’t stick people inside the houses. That’s why we don’t need to put nets in the windows.”

And speaking of unpleasant things, you may have noticed in yesterday’s pictures that Judy and I were sampling something again. Not raw scallops this time, but rather fermented shark meat. We visited a shark meat processing plant, the only one still operating commercially.

Turn out shark meat is fatally toxic. You have to let it ferment for three months before it’s safe to eat. This outfit gets “accidental” sharks, those caught by anglers in Reykjavik who hook one while fishing for something else. Until 1950 the grandpa of this outfit fished for sharks. His record was 24 sharks in 24 hours. Today they do around 120 sharks per year, mostly for a food festival. Shark, if you’re wondering, ranks right up there with lutefisk as an acquired taste best not acquired.

Tomorrow we’re going to explore the Golden Diamond, a 150 mile loop to the north of Lake Myvatn.