June 3 – Waterfalls and Southwest Iceland

We were picked up at the hotel and driven to the rental car facility where we picked up our car that will take us around the island.  

Today the wind is around 50 mph!  Makes for careful driving and interesting walks.

We headed back towards the airport and then took a cut off down to the “Bridge between two Continents”.  This bridge spans a small riff where the North American (the 6^th largest tectonic plate in the word) and the Eurasian Tectonic Plates (the largest tectonic plate in the world) meet (or rather, are pulling apart).  

Paul is standing in Europe and Mary is standing in North America. 

We drove along the coastline and found the Brimketill Sea Pool (actually there were two pools and we aren't sure which one is the Brimketill Sea Pool). 

The old Icelandic tales seem to have a story for ever interesting geological feature.  This sea pool is also known as Oddný’s Pool.  Oddný’s was a night troll who leaved nearby.  One night she went out to fetch a whale carcass and on the way back she rested and took a bath in Brimketill. However, she lingered too long and was caught by the rising sun as she headed towards home so she was turned into a stone.  For a long time the stone (a tall lava pinnacle) could be seen in the sea but it has since been worn down by the sea.

We drove along the coast to Eyrarbakki, a small fishing village that still has some old charm and a pretty coastline.  

There was the small church...

and some small, pretty homes.  

We ate lunch in the only restaurant in town, a lovely red building beside the church.

Current Icelanders seem to enjoy setting out occasional displays. First, little “people” on a fence,...

then, In case you can't make out the one from a distance, those are many colored bras.

Our hotel tonight is back in Vik (where we were just the day before) so we are covering some of the same route.  

However, we found some new things to see.  First was Urridafoss waterfall.  We have probably been by the turnoff at least a couple of times but this time we are on our own so we took the detour.  It turns out the Urridafoss is the largest waterfall in Iceland by volume.  It is fed from rivers that run off of Hofsjӧkull, Vatnajӧkull and Tungnafellsjӧkull glaciers. 

We also stopped by the Saga Center in Hvolsvӧllur.  

The Icelandic Saga period runs from the settlement of Iceland in 870 until around 1056.  The saga stories are about various people and the events in their lives.  The Saga Center focuses primarily on the longest and best known saga about Njáll, a lawyer and sage; Gunnar, a formidable warriors, and their wives.  The saga center had a fairly detailed account of the saga that spans several decades.  We don’t usually read everything in museums but we found that we were reading pretty much everything about the saga, trying to find out what happens next.  Suffice it to say that almost everyone was killed or banished and Njáll farm was burned down. 

This particular saga was written down several centuries after the fact and is based on the oral stories that had been passed down.  This written saga is the longest and most highly developed of the sagas and is considered the peak of the saga tradition (thanks Wikipedia).

They also had some interesting murals, paintings and armaments (all reproductions).  We very much enjoyed it...definitely recommend it.

The adjacent restaurant/bar had a large room that looked like it must have come out of a very large long house (the old Icelandic dwellings).

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More photos in the Saga Center
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Then it was on to the find of the day, Gljúfrabúi waterfall (or Gljúfrárfoss).  After our visit to  Seljalandsfoss  a few days ago Mary did a bit of research and found that there were three other waterfalls near Seljalandsfoss, not the two we had seen.  And the one we missed, Gljúfrabúi, was probably the most magical of them all.  The falls are a bit around the corner from the others…

and buried behind a large fissure in the rocks in a small grotto so it is easy to miss. 

You can see the falls through the very narrow fissure…

but you are also able to walk into the fissure (on slippery wet rocks with some mild wading in the stream) to the small grotto at the bottom of the falls.  It was petty wet inside.  Paul didn’t go all the way in but Mary did.  Again, magical.

We didn’t go back to Seljalandsfoss but we did have some nice views from our parking lot.

Finally, we headed back to Vik where we picked up some light food from the local market and had a picnic in our room.  Restaurant food is pretty expensive so we plan to hit markets occasionally.