Today is Icelandic National Day (in Icelandic: Þjóðhátíðardagurinn, the day of the nation's celebration), an annual holiday in Iceland which commemorates the foundation of The Republic of Iceland on 17 June 1944 and its independence from Danish rule.
To type the above Icelandic, I had to copy and paste, because I don't have access to some of those characters or diacritical marks on my keyboard. Another weird thing: the listed time for sunrise and sunset for today is listed as "null" for where we are, which is in the north of Iceland. We are not at the Arctic circle, but we still have no official sunrise or sunset. At 11:00 at night, we had the sun shining out in front of our hostel. Crazy!
Anyway, about our day. We drove around many, many fjords. The scenery was pretty.
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| Shelby and Joshua on snow pack near the road |
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| An old cottage with sod roof |
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| Shelby and Joshua playing around in the snow |
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| We saw seals! |
We finally found a gas station when we were getting extremely low on gas! Then found a fairly good-sized town (for this part of the country!). They were having their National Day celebration. Many people, men and women, were dressed in their country's traditional dress. It was held in front of a building that had originally been a hospital opened on Icelandic National Day. The building is now an Icelandic cultural center. There were kids with their faces painted with the Icelandic flag, people with flags, and people just having fun!
Then on to the grocery store and to our hostel. It is very much in the middle of nowhere (there's a lot of that in Iceland!). We can see other farms in the distance, but if you shouted "hallooo!", only the sheep would hear you.
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| We saw this at the store and wondered what a Cool American tasted like! |
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| The view from our hostel |
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| Another view from our hostel |
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| our hostel |
For dinner, we had bought a package of pre-seasoned and sauced pork chops, potatoes, garlic bread, and fruit. The owner had mentioned that they had a grill; when I asked to use it, he pointed out the window and told me that it was at the barn about a 1/4 mile away. When I said that I didn't know how to use a gas grill (we have charcoal at home), he seemed a little annoyed but drove me (yes) to the barn, then couldn't find the lighter (he had to call his son to tell him where it was), cleaned the grill for me, then got it lit (with a lot of trouble). I thanked him, then walked back to the house, got the pork chops and grilled them while Randy got the potatoes in the oven. The food tasted fabulous! Then we decided to go to a nearby town to walk around. It was cute. Near they edge, they had this cool jumpy thing. Joshua and Shelby played on it for awhile with some local children, then they left and I joined them! It was harder than it looked! You have to have balance and coordination, and I have neither! Once when I landed, I could feel it in my ankles, and not in a good way. But we had fun. We noticed a rock wall against the sea on one side of the town, and a raised earthen "wall" on the other side to protect against future avalanches (one several years ago killed many people and destroyed homes). Seems like a dangerous place to live!
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| a double image of the mountains in the fjord |
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| behind the cemetery is the wall of dirt to keep back an avalanche |
On the way back, we saw what looked like fish-drying racks. Upon further examination, it was filled with hanging fish heads and spines and smelled awful! Then there were also dead birds hanging from poles on the roof. Joshua said that he got a bad vibe from the place; I decided that it must be Baba Yaga's house! Creepy!
After that, we played cards, then watched a movie with popcorn before retiring for the night to our room.
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