We were at a new hotel for the night. New hotel, new breakfast. They had croissants and sausage, so I had one of both with a piece of toast and what I think was still blueberry spread, but this time more of a jelly rather than a jam.
Our first stop for the day was Skógafoss. The waterfall itself was quite incredible. There was a lookout at the top which we walked around 380 steps up the hill side to get to. There’s a path after the lookout that eventually leads to a glacier. We didn’t travel far up it, but we went far enough to see a mini waterfall further up the river.
After Skógafoss, we went to the Skógar museum. When the museum was first started, it was located in the basement of a school. Over time, the collection grew and now it is located in an old house. The museum contains lots of historical artifacts and technology of Iceland through the centuries. We did a scavenger hunt through the museum created by Dr. Barry which we got chocolate for completing later in the day. We had the opportunity for a late lunch there, but many of my peers and I opted to wait until dinner and eat snacks for lunch due to the wait time and cost of the lunch there. I myself ate some of my leftover bread from the greenhouse yesterday.
Then it was on to Sólheimajökull, a glacier outlet that was ten minutes from the museum. The glacier was very cool. It generally looks blue, but there were layers of ice that looked gray or black. These were caused by volcanic eruptions throughout time, so we can kinda get a sense of when there was volcanic activity from the glaciers. Additionally, the glaciers have been retreating a lot. Which generally is fine, the problem is that it’s not only retreating but is also shrinking in height and therefore volume at a rapid rate.
This causes a lot of issues in Iceland. The more obvious of which is lots of flooding, especially when large chunks fall off into the already large pools of water that have formed at the bases of the glaciers from prior glacial melt. Another issue it causes though is greater volcanic activity. The glaciers sit on top of areas with magma underneath the ground. As the glaciers melt, they put less pressure on top of these areas, which causes more and more volcanic activity.
Much of this glacial melt is due to global warming. One way to counteract this would be for countries around the world to do their best to become at the very least carbon neutral. In addition to this though, it’s been shown that we’ve had at least some global warming ever since we’ve started destroying trees and forests in order to create good landscape for farming. By planting trees, we can help reduce the effect of CO2 emissions as well and it could help reduce the damage from floods in Iceland if more trees are planted there to soak up the water.
After the glacier, we went to the town of Vík where we got to see a black sand beach. The beach was so windy though that it would blow sand up into your face and eyes. I stayed out long enough to see the view, walk on the beach, take a couple photos, and then leave. We had some tasty pizza then at a nearby pizza place where they had black crust and sourdough crust pizzas.
At the end of the day, the sky cleared up and we were lucky enough to see the northern lights, which was a great way to end the day.
Swanson School of Engineering 