Day 190-boating on Jökulsárlón

   July 12-Today was another nice day.  We packed up, hiked to the snout of the Svinafellsjökull glacier, and viewed the informative exhibits at the Park’s visitor’s center.

We did not manage to get onto Svinafellsjökull. It looks like it would be fun, but it is also dangerous!

Instead, we observed the glacier from its edge.

The glacial lagoon of Svinafellsjökull, dammed by its old moraine. Behind everyone is the imposing cliff of Lómagnúpur, which rises 2500 feet above the Skeiðarársandur desert.

Continuing our Ring Road tour, we drove northeast around numerous glaciers and glacial valleys.

   We stopped at a couple glacial lagoons, including Jökulsárlón, where we rode an old U.S. Army amphibious vehicle out into the lagoon.  The guide told us that the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier that feeds the lake is receding at an ever increasing rate.  The snout has moved back one kilometer in just the past five years.  Consequently, there have been more icebergs in the lake the past few years than there were in prior years.  A Zodiac boat accompanied us across the lagoon to push the icebergs aside to allow us to pass.  Its other purpose was to rescue anyone who fell into the water.  Thankfully, that was not necessary.  Interestingly, the fjord under Breiðamerkurjökull is the deepest in Iceland, bottoming out at nearly 1000 feet below sea level.  Once the sea erodes out the short beach separating the lagoon from the ocean and the glacier melts away completely, that fjord is going to become a significant obstacle to overcome in order to maintain the continuity of the Ring Road.

Breiðamerkurjökull and Jökulsárlón.

The outlet of Jökulsárlón was dammed so no salt water would enter the lagoon, allowing it to freeze, so a car chase from the James Bond movie, Die Another Day, could be shot on it. The guide fished this iceberg out of Jökulsárlon and offered it as a raffle prize to the first person who could guess how long it took for the lake to freeze. Shan won it with his random guess of two weeks. The guide chipped off pieces of ice so everyone could taste 1000 year old ice and then Shan released it back into the wild.

Playing in the sand at the seashore is always fun, even if there are icebergs just offshore!

We had a picnic dinner at Fjallsárlón.

We loaded back up and continued on northeast, skirting many more glacial tongues of the vast Vatnajökull ice cap.  We finally left the glacier behind us at Höfn and entered the Eastfjords region of Iceland, where we came across these reindeer. Not native to Iceland, they were introduced in the late 1700s by the Danes with the idea that the Icelanders would adopt a nomadic lifestyle like the Lapps. The Icelanders refused to change from their pastoral lifestyle, though, and the reindeer have run wild in eastern Iceland ever since. 



Looking out towards Papey island around 11 pm.

      We pulled over to camp at Berunes on the northern shore of Berufjörður.  We managed to get our campsite up early enough that Sally and Shan could go into the accompanying restaurant/bar and share a Viking Stout.  Meanwhile, the Easleys sat outside in the cool air and the kids played on the large, round hay bales.  Like the vast majority of bales over here, they were wrapped in plastic to keep the hay dry.  The kids spent a good hour trying to climb up on the bales.  They occasionally succeeded and then would jump off to try again.