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.
