The recipe for an Icelandic outing: start with a sunny Saturday. Join a friendly community group and drive west from Höfn í Hornafirði for one hour along the southern margin of the Vatnajökull glacier. Along the way you pass several glaciers tumbling off of the large Vatnajökull ice cap, with the mountains dividing them reflected in still pools of water that dot the fields. To the south is the ocean, beyond the large lagoons that border much of the SE coast. On the way Christine’s husband Sæmund told me stories... of why there were no early stories of this region, and thus why the origin of many place names are uncertain. The largest collection of early Icelandic manuscripts belonged to Árni Magnusson, a scholar who lived in Copenhagen in the early 18th century. Tragically, his house burned in the large Copenhagen fire of 1728 - apparently he was able to save most of his manuscript collection but not all. He had arranged his collection by region rather than alphabetically, and it was his manuscripts from the SE that were lost. But new stories spring up, such as the large boulder field that contains the stones known as the troll woman and the troll man (although the locals refer to the troll man as Winnie-the-Pooh, to which he does bear a resemblance). Which illustrates the human tendency to read shapes into rocks, as seen in the sleeping giant who appeared later in our day.
We drove past the always amazing glacial lagoon (Jökulsárlón) with icebergs drifting out to sea and then around to another glacial lagoon (Fjallsárlón), where we turned in toward the mountains on a (typical Icelandic) gravel road. At the end of the road we parked by the first excitement of the day, a sort of hand-pulled cable car that would allow us to cross the glacial river. The cable car, and the land beyond it, are privately owned, and the owner (Gisli) has decided that he does not want his land flooded with tourists, so he opens it up only on special occasions for Icelandic groups. Our group was about 40 people (with many small excited children). The cable car could hold three grownups (or four adults + kids), so it was a task to ferry everyone across the river, kids shrieking with delight on the downward glide (like a flying fox), and the men hauling the last upward bit from ropes on both sides.
Once everyone was across, we set off across the mossy plain. One goal of the outing was berry picking, the target berries being crowberries, small black berries that grow in low-lying plants (and are apparently also common in Alaska). It soon became clear that the Icelanders were serious about their berry-picking, as they came armed with large plastic buckets and berry pickers: fork-like metal scoops with attached cloth bags (old style) or red and black plastic scoops (modern). To our disappointment, however, it was not a good year for berries - apparently they had a very wet July, so the speculation was that the plants did not get adequately pollinated. But that didn’t matter. The kids ran around, climbed boulders and investigated waterfalls off the steep cliffs of the mountain Breiðamerkurfjall while the adults made their way across the flats to the marginal moraines of the glacier, an area that was covered in ice just ten years ago (the glaciers are receding rapidly in Iceland, as elsewhere).
On the way Sæmund told me another story... about Baldur the White, a Norse god (son of Odin and Frigg), the best and fairest of the Norse gods. In a variant of the Achilles story, Baldur’s mother Frigg made every object vow not to hurt Baldur, except that she didn’t demand this vow of the mistletoe. According to Wikipedia: “When Loki, the mischief-maker, heard of this, he made a magical spear from this plant (in some later versions, an arrow). He hurried to the place where the gods were indulging in their new pastime of hurling objects at Baldur, which would bounce off without harming him. Loki gave the spear to Baldur's brother, the blind god Höðr, who then inadvertently killed his brother with it (other versions suggest that Loki guided the arrow himself).” This then set about a series of events that led to Ragnarok, the end of the gods. Baldur is in the underworld (Hell), where according to Sæmund he will stay until the whole world weeps for him. This story lasted until we arrived at our lunch spot, a monument commemorating a true story about the place. In 1936 a young farmer - Sigurdur Bjornsson - from a nearby settlement had gone into the mountains with others to round up sheep in the autumn. He was swept into a crevasse by an avalanche, where he stayed for 24 (or 36) hours, keeping himself awake by singing hymns. Eventually rescuers heard him and were able to get him out of the crevasse. He died only a few years ago. His story has been used, in part, in a modern novel by the Icelandic writer Sjón, in his novel Skugga-Baldur (translated into English as The Blue Fox).
The afternoon passed pleasantly - I hiked a ways up toward the glacier Breiðamerkurjökull before heading back to the cable car around mid-afternoon.
Just as we were gathering to be ferried back across the river, we got the (erroneous) news that the volcano Bárðabunga had erupted. That statement was made on the basis of seismicity and was later retracted when there was no evidence of subglacial eruptive activity. But it made for some afternoon excitement, Iceland-style.
Once we realized that there was no call for alarm, we made our way back to the main road, with a stop at Fjallsárlón, a lovely iceberg-jammed glacial lagoon.
As I write this, the volcano still hasn’t erupted, although the seismicity remains high, and the national protection group ´borða hraun og drekka gos´... an in joke which means that they are eating ‘lava’ (an Icelandic chocolate bar) and drinking ‘eruptions’ (fizzy drinks).
