Glacial Chill: Southeast Iceland

Hvoll, Iceland
Latitude 63°54' N
September 5, 2011

Labor Day.  Clear, blue skies.  55 degrees.  Early September on the South Coast of  Iceland. I was solo; Steve had flown home the day before to start yet another school year.

In my other life, this was the most dreaded day of the year.  School would be less than 24 hours away.

But this Labor Day there was none of the old anticipation.  Instead, I got up early, left the hostel in Hvoll.  My destination was the mighty Vatnajokul icecap/glacier.  Later in the day, I visit the glacial lagoon of Jökulsarlon.  I had no expectations!

Vatnajökul was 40 miles frm Hvoll and the ride, as all car trips in iceland have been, was nothing less than jaw-dropping and extraordinary.

It was a clear morning (not all that common in Iceland) and from the start I had a clear view of Hvanndalshnukur--Iceland´s highest peak at 6,877 feet--snow covered from top to bottom.  This was a rare treat as I lost sight of it within the half hour.

The drive was magical.  Farm houses nestled in front of gushing waterfalls--water that plunged off the Vatnajokul icecap.  Other waterfalls fell off massive rock formations--massifs really, green and verdant with grass growing almost top to bottom--that fell hundreds of feet.  Sheep, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, grazed in lush green fields.  At almost every bend in the road there would be another glacial tongue sliding off the icecap, very close to the road.  It  was hard not to have an accident!

And then the sandar!  I´d never seen a sandar, and didn´t even know what one was until this Labor Day.

They´re soul-destroying flat and made up of silty sand and gravel that´s been carried on glacial rivers then dumped into huge, desert-like plains.  I was driving through just one part of the sandar--the largest of its kind in the world.  Skeiðarasandur is 600 square miles of flat, grey-black sand with fast flowing rivers. 

And then....Vatnajökul!  I´d had sightings of it for more than 30 minutes.  Mighty glacial tongues would emerge out of the clouds and plunge close to the road.  But at one bend in the road, for an endless vista, I could see the impressive rivers of ice that made up just one small portion of Europe´s largest icecap.  My goal to join a group for a walk on the glacier then hike a circuit of  trails aroiund the Vistor´s Center.

After a brief lesson on how to walk on ice (I grew up in Plattbsurgh, NY, for Pete´s Sake.  We don´t need this type of lesson.) and another brief lesson on putting on crampons, we were off.  We slogged our way into ice chasms and peered into deep, ice-blue crevices.  The ice, though, was grey and gritty from layers of ash that a nearby volcano had dumped on the icecap laste May 20th.  It was slighty underwhelming, but I was standing on the biggest glacier Europe has to offer.

It´s difficult to wrap one´s head around Vatnajökull.  It comprises 8% of the Icelandic landmass and is three times larger than Luxembourg.  If Atlas could pickit up, he´d be carring 3,000 billions tons of ice.  The national park it´s part of contains the highest point in Iceland and has two, highly volatile, volcanoes underneath.  It´s mind boggling!

But one thing I didn´t have a hard time wrapping my head around was the fact that I´d spent $60.00 to climb on ice when I spend much more than to get away from it in the winter.  Strange, the things we do. :)

From Skaftafell National Park, the souther portion of the the glacial national park where I´d done the ice walk, I headed 40 miles east, hugging the icecap all the way.  It was another, simply amazing, journey.  Once, I almost had an accident when I didn´t notice a sheep in the middle of the road.  Luckily, I slammed on the brakes which spooked the sheep enough to get out of the way.  It´s amzing more accident don´t happen with this type of scenery all around.

One of the best things about having a car is the ability to drive off road, wander down a gravel track and see what awaits.  Often we´d pull off the highway, drive a bit, turn off the engine and lay down on soft, almost warm grass.  Traffic was normally so light that that there´d be absolute and total silence.

Thus is was that half an hour out of Skaftafell National Park that I headed down a rocky path.  When I crested the hill I was speechless, almost breasthless.  In front of me was an icy lagoon filed with icebergs of all sizes.  I was stunned and the only thing to do was get out of the car, grab my camera and hike to shore´s edge.

I was at the western end of Jökulsarlon, an 1,800 deep lake at the base of Breiðamerjurjökull--a large glacial tongue of Vatnajökul.  I found a place to sit, a bit higher than shoreline, and just watched--an iceberg filled lagoon in front of me, the giant ice river of the icepack above.  I was fortunate enough to see an iceberg calf, then crash into the water.  I knew I was blessed.

They were wondrous ice sculptures--some small, the size of a large car and larger ones the lise of big homes.  What was amazine was tha all I was seeing was 10% of the total iceberg´s mass.

At shore´s edge small chunks orf ice--bergies--had washed ashore, allowing me to pick them up and break them into small bite size pieces. 

Later, I moved on to the Visitor´s Center, five minutes away from this unexpected wonder.  For $30.00 I  spent 45 minutes on an amphibious boat, slowly circling the icebergs, getting as close as safely possible. 

The larger icebergs were composed of stratified layers of ash and snow.  The ice, we were told, was 1,000 to 1,5000 years old and reading ash layers was tantamount to reading rings on a tree.  The oldest ice predated human habitation in Iceland and the ash was layered from multiple volcanic eruptions.  Icebergs in this lagoon could spend up to five years floating here after calving.  They´d float in the 10 square mile lake, melt, refreeze and would ocassionly topple over with a stupendous splash.

The lagoon flowed directly into the cold, Norfth Atlantic and smallish icebergs drifted under the bridge and into the sea--white submarines off to greater waters.  I wandered down to sea´s edge--sand black and gritty from countless nearby eruptions.  There, freed icebergs crashed against the shore, slowly melting in the 60 degree day.

I walked for a mile or so, westward, towards the weak Arctic sun as it slipped lower in the late afternoon sky.  My ice day was spectacular.  Que dia, as we say in Spanish.  What a day!

The weather held until late day.  It was 120 miles to Vik, my next destination.  I drove into a hard, steady rain.  Passing the sandar, this time grim and foreboding against the rain-lashed sky.  I could easily imagine malevolent trolls of Icelandic myth lurking in black mud hollows. 

I was glad, finally to pass into soft green pastoral farmland.  Even in the rain it was a soft pleasure to watch sheep, horses and cattle dotting fields and pastures.

The storm finally ended.  That is, I drove out of it into glorious, late-day sunshine.  To my left and right were miles and miles and miles of lava fields, moss covered in various shade of green, their softness belying the hellacious catastrophe that produced them.  (In the spring of 1783, a vast set of fissures opened, forming around 135 craters that took it in turns to fountain molten lava up to 1/2 miles high.  In a period of eight months, 30,000,000,000 tons of lava spewed forth which covered an area of 300 square miles in a layer up to 12 miles thick.  One fifth of the country died  and the remainder faced the Moðuharðini--the Haze Famine--that followed.)

At days end I´d driven twice across the largest sandar in the world, walked on Europe´s largest glacier, sailed in a lagoon full of chilly blue icebergs, walked on a volcanic black sand beach studded with small icebergs and drove miles and miles past mossy green lava fields.

I hugged the ocean to my left and bucolic Icelandic farmland to my right. The day was still fabulous--full of sun, white clouds and and cool winds.

That night, I tucked myself into bed, reliving the wonders of Labor Day.

But the most wonderful wonder?  I didn´t have to wake up on Tuesday and go back to school. 

Yay on that one!