Living in Pittsburgh for most of my life, I’ve experienced some pretty different weather. I’ve been through heavy downpours, blizzards, occasional hail storms, negative wind chills, and on the other side, extreme heat, but nothing quite prepares you for the Iceland weather. Sure it’s cold, but it’s not *that* cold. No, what gets you is the wind, blowing at us between 45 and 55 mph throughout the day, quite literally pushing us around. And then there are the hail storms that come and go very suddenly. One second it’s sunny, the next it’s hailing and you’re getting pelted in the face with ice. I expected ice on the ground, but not to be berated by ice from the sky.
Despite the extreme weather though, today was a great day and to be fair, the wind was kinda fun. 10/10, would recommend getting pushed around by the wind at least once in your life.
Today was an outdoor adventure day. In the morning, we stopped at Hraunfossar – a waterfall on a lava field, a gas station where I got another Icelandic hotdog, and Ytri Tunga – a beach on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula that had seals. I myself didn’t spot any seals, but some of my peers did. Ytri Tunga is also where we experienced the dramatic weather changes for the first time.
The geology of Iceland is super cool since a lot of it was formed due to volcanic activity. That’s why a lot of the rocks around there a black. On the way to our destinations today, we got to see a lot of other lava old lava fields, some covered with green moss.
Iceland itself is growing due to the tectonic plates shifting apart in the center of the island with East Iceland moving further east and West Iceland moving further west just a little bit each year. The island continues to grow as they drift apart due to magma coming up from underneath the Earth’s surface as the plates split apart. This means that the rock on the outsides of the island (which is a lot of the rock we saw today) is the oldest.
For lunch, we went to a nice farm about ten minutes away from Ytri Tunga. The couple there had a greenhouse where they explained how they use the hot water from the ground to heat it. They said they mostly use the greenhouse to grow lettuce during the year, but at this point in the year they seemed to have more of hodgepodge of plants. They need greenhouses in Iceland to grow pretty much any plants because the harsh conditions and the environment created by the volcanic activity isn’t conducive for most plant life.
We then went to their little restaurant, called “With Good People” (that’s the English translation from the Icelandic name of course). It’s named as a retort to an old book written by a priest which was entitled “With Bad People”. According to the woman who ran the restaurant, the Icelandic people took it in stride and would say “oh the priest is just telling stories.” I particularly liked the name of the restaurant though. Everywhere we have gone so far in Iceland we’ve been with good people. They’ve all been super hospitable and patient with my peers and I as we’ve traveled the country. I’ve also found my peers to be good company through our travels thus far, so my experience in Iceland as a whole has been “with good people”. The lunch that we had there was quite delicious as it was a freshly made tomato soup (very different though from the tomato soup I’m used to back home) and homemade bread with cranberries in it.
To finish off our day, we went to part of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula that had a stone structure of Bárður Snæfellsás and some really cool lava rock formations. Then we went to Snæfellsjökull National Park where the wind was even stronger than before. We took a look at their visitor center there and got to see what fishermen used to wear and the boats they would go in, did not look nearly warm enough and the boat was essentially just a row boat, which is wild.
We ate dinner in the town of Borgarnes then headed back to our lodging to get an after dinner treat from Ólöf (well depending on your perspective they were treats). We learned more about the history of Iceland and how their foods are made and then got to taste some of them. We tried Skyr with and without sugar (essentially yogurt, but can be classified as cheese), lamb’s head (very salty and gelatinous but tasty), dried fish, shark (not as bad if you try a second bite, very chewy), a traditional rye bread and sweet bread, and some chocolate.
So all in all, a good day. I believe it’s time for me to sleep now though, see you tomorrow!
Swanson School of Engineering 