Today, we drove east from our hotel, along the southern coast of Iceland. We stopped at Dverghmrar, a unique rock formation said to be the home of dwarves. Unfortunately, we were not able to find any. We probably scared them away! We continued east, passing by the numerous outlet glaciers of the Vatnajokull icecap. The landscape was impressive, with the blue and white ice of the glaciers sitting impressively in between the dark stone of the mountains. It was definitely something unique and something that I hadn’t really seen before. Along with the glaciers themselves, I noticed that we would drive through vast fields of gravel each time we drove beneath the outlet of these glaciers. On the coast, there’s usually grass and shrubs anywhere there isn’t a lava field. These fields were the work of jokulhlaups, massive floods that would wash away anything in their path whenever a volcano erupts underneath a glacier. We could see the effects of the jokulhaups on the infrastructure in the region; at every bridge we travelled over, there were earthen berms that were piled up against the bridge supports at either end. These were required to prevent the bridge from washing away anytime a glacial outburst flood occurred. We made a stop at the Skeiðará bridge monument, which was 2 massive steal beams from a bridge that had been washed away by a flood. These beams were almost as thick as I was tall, which really demonstrated how powerful these floods could be and underscored just how challenging it can be to build infrastructure in Iceland sometimes.
Swanson School of Engineering 