Steve and Cathy's Blog

We awaken at 7am. The sun has been streaming in for almost three hours already, so we are quickly made aware of how far north we are (some northern parts if Iceland are actually slightly above the Arctic Circle). Even in mid-August, sunset is after 9pm. The other indication is the temperature – a cool 45 degrees Fahrenheit, forecast to reach a balmy high temperature of 52 degrees. It is a beautiful, mostly sunny day. We hustle to get ready for breakfast.

The hotel restaurant has a fabulous buffet set. Cathy will describe: One room with carbs: fruit, rolls, breads, croissants, and one room with proteins: eggs, sausage, bacon, deli meats, cheeses and TWO kinds of smoked salmon! Also a coffee/cappuccino machine. Everything was self-service and quite efficient.  

The evening before, we had booked a cab for an 8:30 pickup to take up to the BSI bus station to meet our Golden Circle tour at 9:00am. We wait outside as recommended but no one shows. Steve checks with person at the reception desk, who calls the taxi company. Someone arrives at 8:45. We arrive ten minutes later, breathing a sigh of relief. We check in and hustle to the Reykjavik Excursions bus, only to find that few of the other passengers have boarded. No big deal. In fifteen minutes, everybody is aboard and off we go on our eight-hour tour.

The Golden Circle tour is the most popular tour in Iceland. First of all, the area is not far from Reykjavik. That’s a factor, because we are in the southwest of the island – where two-thirds of the population lives – and Iceland is much larger than most expect. It is 39,768 square miles, approximately the size of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, with a population of 372,295, 94% of whom live in urban areas. As such, statistically it is one of the most sparsely populated countries on earth.

The Golden Circle is a 190-mile (300 kilometers) route, so-called because it covers three of Iceland’s most popular natural attractions: the Geysir geothermal area, Gullfoss waterfall and Thingvellir National Park. Our tour will see them all in this order, but we begin with a stop at Fridheimar Greenhouses about forty minutes from our start. 

Our guide, whose name we never could understand, appears to be in his seventies, but is lively and full of information to impart to us as we motor along. Here are some random facts we hear:

• 10% of Iceland is covered by glaciers. Some are indeed shrinking due to global warming.
• A new period of volcanic eruptions has begun recently on the Reykjavik peninsula. The area had been dormant for the past 800 years until ten months ago.
• We pass by lava field after lava field. Basalt rock – very porous, which is why you see areas of steam coming out of the ground. The geothermal magma is relatively close to the surface – only 2-3,000 meters below.

• Geothermal energy heats houses and provides much electric power, but a majority of power is hydro.
• Iceland has the highest ratio of electric power to population in the world.
• We are close to the Hekla volcano, one of Iceland’s most active. It has erupted 20 times since the year 874, and last erupted in the year 2000 from February 26^th to March 8^th.

• The most predominant religion practiced in Iceland is the Lutheran Protestant denomination. This came about when Denmark took over Iceland in the 1500s. Prior to that, the island was Roman Catholic. The last Roman Catholic bishop and his two sons were beheaded by order of the King of Denmark. Today, however, Roman Catholicism is making a comeback, and is practiced by most of the 30,000 Polish immigrants who have come to Iceland to work since the fall of the Soviet Union.
• DNA tests show that there is much Viking DNA in both Icelandic men and women. Interestingly, women tend to have more Celtic DNA than men. 

Our first forty-five minutes is through beautiful countryside, past large farms, some with the Hekla volcano in the distance.

We also see hundreds of horses, and our guide explains: Horseback riding is extremely popular in Iceland, and almost every town has at least one stable. All of the horses are an Icelandic breed, and no other horses are allowed into the country in order to protect the DNA common to all of them. They are related to a Mongolian breed brought to the island by early settlers a thousand years ago. They stand an average of 15 hands high and have a very good temperament. The horses are bred for both recreational riding and medical purposes, where five liters of blood are drawn from each horse per month. There are approximately 90,000 horses in Iceland, and 150,000 more of the breed outside of the country.

Fridheimar Farm

We arrive at our first stop: Fridheimar. It is a farm that’s been in operation since 1946 – a farm in the sense that they grow produce there – but today everything is grown in greenhouses under a precisely controlled environment. Electric power is geothermal, heat for the greenhouses produced geothermally, even carbon dioxide fed to the greenhouses to stimulate plant growth is derived geothermally. The farm specializes in tomatoes, and produces two tons of tomatoes every day of its year-round operation. Annually this one farm supplies 40% of Iceland’s tomatoes. It is not only “sustainable,” as they are quick to point out, but industrial … and a tourist attraction as well. A very impressive operation, and truly a harbinger of how such produce will be raised in the future – in controlled environments not dependent on weather or local soil conditions, and close to major markets. It is thriving here because geothermal energy right from the ground beneath them is so inexpensive.

Geysir Geothermic Area

This was well worth a stop, and we are off for a short drive to the Geysir Geothermic Area. According to an article in Wikipedia, this is the home of the Great Geysir, which has been dormant for many years. The main attraction today is the Strokkur geyser, which erupts every four to eight minutes, shooting water up to 98 feet in the air. We also pass an area with bubbling puddles of boiling water and clouds of steam rising out of the ground enroute to the Strokkur geyser. There are several other geysirs in the area, but their eruptions are infrequent and unpredictable. Strokkur is the draw.

The English word geyser derives from the Icelandic word geysir, which itself was derived from the verb geysa (to push). Our guide told us geysir means ‘rapid movement of air in the water.’ This particular geyser is the only one in Europe, and major earthquakes in the area in 2000 and 2008 have affected the size and frequency of the eruptions.

We join a couple of hundred others surrounding the Strokkur geysir, all with cell phones at the ready, and, as advertised, it erupts. In the twenty-five minutes of our visit, we see four eruptions, all accompanied by ooohs and aaahs. A very fun experience. And a quite typical one for Cathy and Steve. Steve runs around taking photographs and videos, while Cathy takes a bench and makes friends with other visitors.

As you might expect, this is quite a tourist attraction. The parking lot is packed with rented camper vans and huge tour buses. Time for lunch! We head for a building with a huge sign Geysir Restaurant. It doesn’t open until 3pm. We cross the parking lot to another building that houses the Geysir Bistro, a large buffet restaurant with enough eight and four-seat tables to accommodate a hundred diners. We get in line and quickly decide on a bacon, goat cheese and tomato sub and delicious wild mushroom soup. The line moves quickly and we are seated with four others. 

After lunch, we descend some stairs into the inevitable gift shop, which is huge, full of interesting items … and packed wall to wall with people. In about five minutes, we maneuver out way out of there, convinced that, even if we had wanted to make a purchase, the mob scene would have not left us enough time to do so. We have been reading that the Icelandic tourist industry has been growing exponentially, so much so that thousands of immigrants have come to the country to work in that industry and others. Here we see it right in front of us.

Gullfoss

Back on the bus for a twenty-minute ride to the next attraction: Gullfoss, or ‘Golden Falls,’ located in the canyon of the Hvítá river. The Gullfoss waterfall is also known as the ‘Golden Falls’ since, on a sunny day, the water takes a golden-brown color. This is due to the fact that its source is the Langjökull glacier which carries lots of sediments that the glacial ice has carved off the Earth over the years. Gullfoss is the largest volume waterfall in Europe, with the average flow being 4,944 cubic feet per second in the summertime and 2,825 cubic feet per second in the wintertime. The falls are 100 meters wide and 32 meters wide (329 feet wide by 106 feet high).

We arrive and our guide gives us very specific instructions so as to spend time at all the best vantage points in a specific order. There’s a fair amount of walking, and Cathy decides to park herself on a bench so she can relax, look at and hear the falls … and people watch. Steve wanders around to each viewing spot madly taking pictures … as is everybody else. We spend a good hour there and the time goes by quickly because the sight and sound of this beautiful cataract are, well, mesmerizing. We quickly understand why the falls have become such a popular attraction.

Þingvellir National Park

At this point, we are at the eastern end of the Golden Circle, and we begin to head west to Thingvellir National Park. How do you say the name in Icelandic? We have no idea. Ears that have been attuned to the English language – at least these ears – cannot decipher Icelandic. Our guide must have said the name of this place a dozen times, and if Cathy had not read about it in a book, Steve would still have no idea. The language is a derivative of Old Norse, we’ve been told, and the isolation of Iceland has been such that it has remained pretty pure from those origins.

But we digress. Back to Thingvellir (spelled as we would) National Park. To explain its significance properly, we are going to lift paragraphs from https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/jorunnsg/ingvellir-national-park, which does a much better job of relating the history and importance of this almost sacred place than we ever could: 

“Iceland’s settlement by the Norse started with the arrival of Ingólfur Arnarson in 874, and for the next 56 years, the era was called ‘The Settlement Period’. Driven away from a newly united Norway under King Harald Fairhair, many communities from many different clans started to spring up all around the island’s shores.

“This, however, was quite an unsustainable situation. The arrivals largely shared an ancestral home, religion and language, but otherwise had their own leaders and customs. Violence between groups, therefore, was commonplace, as people fought for their beliefs and for the limited resources their new island had to offer.

“District assemblies began to form, but the majority of the power in the island was concentrated in the south-west, around Reykjavík, in the hands of the descendants of Ingólfur. The settlers spread around the rest of the country resented this, thus pushed for a general assembly to establish how they could all live together harmoniously.

“A man called Grímur Geitskör was given the tasks of gathering representatives from each clan and finding a suitable meeting location. As is often the case with Norse history, this became a reality through rather grim means. Just as Geitskör was searching, the man who owned a sheltered piece of land accessible from all corners of the country was convicted of murder, and his property turned public.

“This location would become Þingvellir. While still clearly more convenient to reach for the wealthy individuals of the south-west, it took no more than seventeen days of travelling from the furthest reaches of the east, so it was settled upon as the assembly’s site. In 930 AD, over thirty ruling chiefs met for the first time to discuss law on the island and to create a commonwealth.

“In hindsight, we can see that what these early Icelanders did was create a crude version of a modern-day representative parliament in response to absolute monarchy, about 800 years before such ideas came into play in the USA and France.

“The meeting was such a success that the chiefs returned each following year. The institution, called the Alþingi, developed to be a place where disputes were settled, where distant relations could share their annual news, and where criminals were tried and punished. No one person ruled the entire parliament; the de facto head was the Law Speaker, but he was simply the institution’s mouthpiece with only ceremonial powers. Instead, decisions were made collectively.

“It was at Þingvellir – which translates directly to ‘the fields of parliament’ – where most of the major turns in Iceland’s history then started to occur. For example, it was here that the nation abandoned Asatru, the Old Norse pagan belief system, in lieu of Christianity in 1000 AD, due to the threat of Norwegian invasion. Nearly a millennium later, in 1944 AD, it is where Icelanders declared their independence from Denmark and confirmed their first President.

“The Althingi has existed nearly constantly since its inception; it functioned even throughout the Icelandic Civil War in the 13th Century. The only time it did not operate was between 1799 to 1844 due to Danish colonialism. When it returned, it was the same institution under the same name; only it was restored in Reykjavík, where it continues today. This makes Þingvellir the original site of the world’s longest running, still ongoing parliament.”

Another fascinating aspect of Thingvellir is the geology. Again we borrow from the abovementioned website: 

“Iceland is divided by the Mid-Atlantic Rift; some parts of it, such as the Westfjords and Reyjavík, are on the North American tectonic plate, while others, such as Vatnajökull glacier and the East Fjords, are on the Eurasian plate. Iceland is the only place in the world where this rift is above sea-level, and nowhere can you see the edges of both plates as clearly as in Þingvellir. 

“As you enter the park from Reykjavík, you descend a steep cliff into a valley. Looking upon the face of this cliff is to literally look at the edge of North America. If you drive through the park, you will ascend on the other side adjacent to another wall; this is Eurasia. The valley in between, in which Þingvellir is contained, is the rift valley.

“You are welcome to walk alongside both of these plates. One of the park’s most pleasant walks takes you between the edge of the North-American plate and an old part of the wall that collapsed away; this is called the Almannagjá gorge. This path impresses the geological processes going on here upon you very clearly, and ends with a charming waterfall called Öxaráfoss. 

“The tectonic plates move apart at approximately 2.5 centimetres a year and have done for millenniums. The effects of this movement are very clear within the park. Lava fields fill the valley, from magma that welled up as the continents spread, and the whole area is littered with ravines, ripped open by centuries of earthquakes. 

“Earthquakes continue every day in Þingvellir, although most are far too minor to be felt. No volcano has gone off in the area in 2000 years, but they are not considered extinct. More eruptions are expected; the question is only as to when.”

Our tour took us in the opposite direction as noted above, but of course we saw all of the features mentioned in these two pieces of text. We spent an hour there, primarily hiking the Almannagia gorge and listening to our guide describe the history of the area, some of it fairly gruesome in certain periods. By the end of the tour, we felt that we had indeed visited one of the most important destinations in Iceland.

Back to the bus and on our way. Scenery continues to be very beautiful:

We hit rush hour traffic on the outskirts of Reykjavik, and it is fairly heavy. Unbeknownst to us, many of our fellow travelers today boarded the bus at various hotels and bus stops in the city, and we spend almost half an hour dropping them off. An impromptu tour of Reykjavik! One thing Steve took notice of was the gasoline prices. Converting liters to gallons and Icelandic Krone to US dollars, and the price seems to be right around US$9.24 per gallon. Wow! 

We arrive back at the BSI bus station and are lucky to find an available cab right in front of our bus. We comment to the taxi driver that much of Reykjavik looks as if it was built recently, and he says that that is the case. The city has grown tremendously in the past fifteen years, especially as it has become such a popular tourist destination. Steve mentions his difficulty understanding any of the Icelandic language. Our drive laughs and says that many Icelanders have trouble with the language! School children begin English lessons when they are seven years old, so, thankfully, English is everywhere.

As soon as we arrive at the Hotel Reykjavik Grand, we go to registration and secure a dinner reservation for 6:30 – thirty minutes from now. Up to our room to change and refresh, then back to the restaurant. Again it is packed, and we are seated next to two couples that instantly accurately guess that we, like them, are going on the Oceania cruise tomorrow. 

A pleasant conversation ensues, started by Cathy announcing to the man I am sitting next to that Steve has taken the “gunslinger” seat – the one that faces the room. Our new friend relates a story about a NYPD inspector that his wife, as a police radio system sales rep, took to lunch. The inspector chose some Mafia hangout in Queens, and, sure enough, took a seat where he could see everyone in the room. So we add “inspector seat” to our definition.

Given last night’s unfortunate experience, we choose the buffet. Cathy will describe: little pies made of sweet potato crust and filled with butternut squash, spinach and lots of interesting seeds. Four kinds of pate, five or six different smoked and cured meats, many strange and yummy cheeses, assorted pickled things like beets, several salads. Cathy heaven. Several desserts including a pavlova. 

After the meal, we head straight back to the room. It’s been a long day, but we feel thoroughly immersed in Iceland, having seen three of the country’s most significant and popular locations. It has merely given us more of an appetite to learn more. Tomorrow’s Hop On – Hop Off bus tour through Reykjavik should help.