Day 83-windfall

   March 27-While perusing the paper in the faculty/staff lounge on Monday, Sally read that a local guide had discovered a beached sperm whale on Snæfellsnes the day before.  The Icelandic word for "windfall" is hvalreki, which literally means "beached whale."  Given the amount of meat and oil in a whale, it is not hard to imagine the sense of relief a (typically, near-starving) medieval Icelander would feel when a whale washed up on his farm.  This happens in Iceland around a dozen times a year on average, so it is not necessarily rare, but it is also not something that a person would expect to have happen on their land very often!
In case this got you to thinking, the etymology of our "windfall" is similar to Iceland's
"hvalreki," although smaller in magnitude, since it refers to fruit or wood that has fallen due to the wind and is therefore easier to collect.  Our visitors had already expressed an interest in exploring the Snæfellsnes peninsula, which extends out to the west from us here at Bifröst, so we decided to take advantage of this windfall and go see if we could find ourselves a hvalreki!

   We kept our kids out of school so they could spend time with their relatives and have the opportunity to see the whale as well.  We chose to drive out on the south side of Snæfellsnes, since this highway is paved all the way out.  There were also a number of things to see on this side, including waterfalls and a seal colony.  However, there was a downside with taking this route.  Urbanization first occurred in Iceland in the 19th century, centered on the summer gathering points from which groups of men would put out to sea for the fishing season.  Consequently, locations with poor harbors did not develop urban centers at that time and still mostly lack them today as well.
Since the south side of Snæfellsnes is relatively level and the shore slides gently into the sea, it lacks natural harbors and has no towns and essentially no service industry during the winter months.  This meant that we could find no open restaurants, general stores, or convenience stores on the drive.  Even Shan's family members, who all have roots in the relatively sparsely populated eastern Colorado plains, found this lack of food services disconcerting.  When people from the High Plains think that towns are few and far between, you know that area must be very thinly populated!
   By the time we made it to the tip of the peninsula, the empty stomachs were growling loudly, so we shot on around to the steeply sloped, good harbors of the urbanized north side and quickly found a restaurant and bakery.  We then backtracked to the tip of the peninsula to look for the whale.  The newspaper articles mentioned that the whale was ashore in Beruvík bay, but gave no more details, so we were not sure if we would find the whale.  It turned out that there were multiple roads that accessed the coast at Beruvík, so we were able to find the whale after only a little bit of searching.  It was a rather impressive, yet sad,
sight.  The whale, which was about 50 feet in length, had only been on-shore a couple of days
and no decomposition had taken place externally, although it was starting to smell.  The only real damage to the whale had been caused by humans.  Apparently, sperm whale teeth are very valuable, so someone had sawed off half of the lower jaw.  Since the purchase and sale of sperm whale teeth is banned under international law, the police has subsequently been looking into this case.  Until she heard this, Alex had been very interested in trying to get a tooth for herself as well!  Along with the whale there were hundreds of small capelin washed up on the shore.  Greg later read that this happens when they are unexpectedly caught in a high tide with heavy waves.  That certainly matches some of the weather we had been experiencing around here the previous few days.  That also could explain the whale's final position at the high tide water mark.

This is a view of the back of the sperm whale, which is lying on its left side.

A hard day of sightseeing wore these two out!

   After everyone had seen enough, they headed back to a closer parking lot, while Greg and I returned to the cars and drove over to pick them up.  We subsequently returned north and enjoyed the views on the north side of the peninsula until the Sun started to set.  We found a restaurant, where we grabbed ourselves supper, and we headed back across the peninsula to return to Bifröst via the southern highways again.  On the drive home, we saw some faint Northern Lights in the sky, but the fading light of dusk and the partly cloudy skies mostly obscured them.