That's pronounced 'Thorsmork,' or Thor's woods. And it's AWESOME.
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| Bye Seljalandsfoss! |
We awoke early in Sejalandsfoss and made our way towards the bus and waterfall area. After tea, of course. I may have still had coffee (and my relative sanity) at this junction in time. It's a beautiful 500 ish meters, the sun was shining, birds were singing, and there were probably puppies and lollipops and chocolate, but all that was forgotten when we threw our still monstrously heavy sacks into the undercarriage of a MONSTER TRUCK BUS. The weeks were nearly as tall as Christine, designed to ford the miasma of ever changing rivers as we make our way up the glacier and away from Icelands (apparently) only paved road. And even the main highway isn't always paved...
Anyway, monster truck bus. Awesome. The rivers are constantly changing as glaciers melt, and since the way up towards þórsmörk is a gravel 'road' that winds its way through a rocky delta of old rivers, some more bad-ass than your run of the mill tour bus is warranted. Also, we got to listen to the audio guide which we've taken to calling Icelandic Richard Attenborough. It's a recording, in eerily good sync with the passing scenery played on the bus. But it's full of pauses, stuttering, mistranslations, and super bizarre info. Like the fact that the sea birds (NOT gulls, but closer to an albatross, mind you,) live for 60 years, only lay one egg a year, and have an oily 'stink cannon' to drive away predators- the oil they secrete and shoot makes other birds' feather lose their waterproofing. Or his long soliloquy on how the hills look like breasts, replete with nipples. Or his obvious pride on defending the honor of Iceland's 'forests.' Anyways the recording makes the trip all the more interesting.
We headed out towards þórsmörk, sometimes creeping, sometimes barreling down the road. We stopped at what was once a massive glacier-filled lagoon that was totally obliterated by the last volcanic eruption. I keep thinking how cool it is that I'm walking where Vikings did, then I keep remembering that iceland blows up, floods, shifts under glaciers or melts under floods every handful of years or so and the landscape is totally different than it was even a few score years ago.
Speaking of changing landscape, there's this island that I can't remember the name of (Vestmannaeyjar?) that long served as a trading post until the English established a fort there (interestingly, near where they found third-century Roman coins, proving the Romans made it that far north. Yeah, history time.) so the English now have a fort in the 16th century, until 16 something (1627, thanks, Wikipedia) Algerian pirates raid the place, kill a third of the population, only a few of which escape by abseiling down cliffs, and take 200 and something people prisoner. They throw them into galleys to row the pirate's treasure back to Algiers, where they live miserable pirate-slave lives until 20 something years laters, when a mysterious benefactor buys the freedom of 27 survivors. He neglects to help them find a way home, however, so this rag tag group must make it's way BACK to this tiny, freezing, beautiful rock after spending a quarter century slaves to a gang of pirates two continents away.
And then THEIR ancestors are hanging out one day, enjoying paisley and long hair and whatever else was hip in 1973 (bell bottoms? Rubicks cubes? Not being hunted by dinosaurs?) when there is this force-10 gale, forcing all the fishermen to stay ashore. Which turns out to be good, because a giant fissure opens in the middle of the night and starts spewing lava everywhere. Somehow, they managed to evacuate the entire island, only one person died, and the lava, in very typical Icelandic fashion, decided to stop about a hundred meters from the harbor, ensuring the town could be rebuilt in time for the next catastrophe. With all this in mind, is couldn't wait to go do something dangerous there. I'll just have to wait until Chris isn't looking...
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| Views from the þórsmörk bus |
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| At some point the road disappeared |
Anyway, where was I. þórsmörk. Yes. We got in, set up camp, and ran into a guy I had met at the campground in Reykjavik, Ben, from Devon. We decided to go on a quick hike as it was still early afternoon, and set off to conquer a 400 meter hill that overlooked the area. The 'quick hike' turned into an epic six hour journey, scrambling up mountains and around crags and through brush. The views were amazing, all the more for the fact that we were well off the beaten path, alone in the middle of this epic wilderness.
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| Valahnukur summit 450m directly above the Volcano Huts |
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| Summit of the 'quick hike' |
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| Bus traversing the river road below |
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| Up the river valley in search of the next summit |
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| Up up up |
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| Views from the top |
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| A view straight to the ocean with Langidalur hut at the bottom left and Valahnukur summit at top left |
We didn't even head out to start hiking until 2pm, but thanks to the midnight sun you'd never know it was close to 7pm when we headed back down.
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| Back to camp |
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| Our tent at the volcano huts! |
We got back to camp exhausted but excited, mowed down some delicious dehydrated veggie stew, and found a group of Americans playing cribbage, so I took the opportunity to show them what was what and do our blog proud with a victory (followed by two more the next night, but, to be fair, they were doing their best to lighten their packs before attempting the 25k hike to Skogar. And as their packs were mostly burdened by scotch and whisky, it was a win win win situation.
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