Another day in Iceland, with more geographic features to explore. This morning, I woke up and had some more toast with Icelandic butter and the tastiest blueberry jam. After breakfast, we loaded up the bus in preparation to move to another hotel in the evening. Once the bus was loaded, we journeyed out to the Golden Cirlce.
Our first stop was Þingvellir National Park where we got to see the Öxará waterfall as well as where parliament used to be held and the witch drowning pools. The area for parliament meetings was an area between rock ledges where some dirt had been moved to form a small hill as a place to sit. The rock cliffs made it so that voices would echo off the edges and amplify the voice so that everyone could hear better. This area is no longer used for parliament meetings of course, but it is still considered a sacred place for modern day Pagans in Iceland who use it for sacrifices and rituals (no they’re not murdering people there guys, chill).
Next stop in the Golden Circle, the Gullfoss waterfall. I don’t have anything profound to say about this stop, but the waterfall was a lovely site and the Panini I got at the cafe there was quite tasty.
Finishing off the Golden Circle, we traveled to visit the Geysir geothermal area. The geothermal area contained Strokkur, a geyser that went off about every eight minutes and is only slightly shorter than the eruptions of Old Faithful in Yellowstone back home, as well as hot springs and bubbling mud pools. The water there is close to boiling or boiling and I wouldn’t recommend touching it, but if you happen to find an appendage in one of the streams of water going through the area, you’ll find those to be luke warm. With the geyser going off at pretty short intervals, we were able to see it from multiple perspectives, once up close and once from on top of a nearby cliff.
After the Golden Circle, we traveled to the Friðheimar greenhouse. The greenhouse is well known for their tomatoes which they grow all year round. They sell them in stores and also use to make all kinds of tomato based foods for their on-site restaurant. The company makes 40 percent of all tomatoes sold in Iceland.
Their process of growing tomatoes is a bit unique due to the extreme climate in Iceland. They have lights on the ceiling so that they are not dependent upon the light during the day since Iceland can have extremely short day time hours during the winter. They also use geothermal heat by using the hot water from the ground and running it through pipes in the greenhouse and heat from the sun to keep the greenhouse at a proper temperature for the tomatoes to grow. The growing process is controlled through computer systems which utilize a weather station that’s on top of the greenhouse to adjust internal greenhouse climate based on external weather in Iceland.
Additionally, they have to control the bugs inside the greenhouse themselves. There are some flies for example that get into the greenhouse that shouldn’t be there, so they buy eggs of good flies that eat the bad flies and won’t destroy the plants. They also have their own bees and beehives where they keep track of the amounts of bees and switch out hives when need be based on bee numbers.
During the presentation of the greenhouse, they offered us some tomatoes to try as well as a sample of their tomato soup and lots of bread, all of which was delicious. I enjoyed both tomato soups that we had so far on the trip, but I think I enjoyed the tomato soup yesterday a little better.
All in all, the day was pretty interesting. I think seeing how people in Iceland can utilize their unique landscape with using the hot water underground to overcome the barriers the harsh landscape creates to grow plants they wouldn’t otherwise be able to is very cool. I also enjoyed being able to see more cool geographic features and important historical sites.
That concludes today, see you tomorrow!
Swanson School of Engineering 