Journey to Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Saturday, June 7, 2014

The Internet has been EXCELLENT in Iceland, and free in hotels and restaurants.  It has made writing the blog much easier.

Another bright and sunny day.  We've lost count now.  We are beginning to believe that weather in Iceland is very regional.  Apparently the south is still having cloudy rainy weather like when we were there.  If we had to choose, we would put the yucky weather at the beginning of the trip anyways and end with the nice weather like we are doing.

Well, this is the farthest we've had to go for breakfast.  This is one of two guesthouses owned by the family, so we took a little walk through the cemetery to go to the other guesthouse.  At breakfast, we were absolutely spoiled with lots of personal attention, I guess it's more like a bed and breakfast.  The owners had bought gluten-free food just for Frankie because they had been told ahead of time, and they refrained from wearing perfume.  So thoughtful.  There was way too much gluten-free food, so Frankie took some along for lunch.

Our drive today started out foggy, which made blind hills and curves interesting, especially when all of a sudden there were sheep on the road.  In Iceland, if you hit a sheep, you have to pay the farmer for it.  A lot of the sheep have little babies frolicking about, so cute.  Must be lambing season.

Today we drove through Tröllaskagi.  Tröllaskagi (the “Peninsula of the Trolls”) is a mountainous peninsula in northern Iceland. 

We ran across the cutest wooden church set into sod, called Grafarkirkja.  It was built in the late 1600s.  The church was deconsecrated in 1765, we didn't know they could do that!  It was rebuilt in 1953.  Around the church were some stones set into the ground, a graveyard with 4 or 5 stones.

We drove through Skagafjörður which is an area famous for horse breeding. Skagafjörður is the only county in Iceland where horses outnumber people. Icelandic horses are small but hardy and long-lived. Icelandic law has prevented other horses from being imported into the country for over 800 years, and exported animals are not allowed to return. It is illegal to bring any riding gear from other countries (to protect from diseases). The Icelandic horses have two additional gaits that most horses around the world do not have. The first additional gait is a four-beat lateral ambling gait known as the tölt. This is known for its explosive acceleration and speed; it is also comfortable and ground-covering. The breed also performs a pace called a skeið, flugskeið, or "flying pace".  It is used in pacing races, and is fast and smooth.  When horses compete in Iceland, it is not in racing, it is to see who has the best gait.  Only one horse at a time goes around the track.

We decided there was no better place to try horseback riding in Iceland than here, so we booked horseback riding with Hestasport at noon. We took the one hour “Pleasure in Every Hoofstep” tour, which took us alongside the river Svartá with the prominent mountains of Skagafjörður in the background.  Our guide Michael took us to Reylijafoss, their very own waterfall, and they also have their own hot spring. What was nice was that we didn't stick to the trail, but ambled across some meadows as well.  We were the only ones with Michael today, so he gave us an hour and a half instead of an hour.

Anton had a nice docile mare named Nös, who obeyed his every command, while Frankie got lucky with a spirited and stubborn mare named Dila, who dug in her heels several times refusing to budge.  But we did get up to a tölt a few times, it was so nice and smooth.

Just further south we drove through Vatnsdalshólar, which is an area of small, cone-shaped hills clustered together. They are thought to have been formed by a catastrophic landslide. There are so many of them that they are considered to be one of the three “innumerables” (uncountable) things in Iceland, along with the lakes in Arnarvatnsheidi and the islands on Breidarfjord in the west.

We took a little detour to visit Eiríksstaðir, the home of Eiríkur the Red and the birthplace of Leif the Lucky, who discovered North America in 1000 AD. This is a living museum, there was a guide dressed in costume describing the people who lived there and their lifestyle.  Eiríkur the Red seems to have been a very unsavoury character.  He was outlawed from Norway for killing some of his neighbours, so he came to Iceland.  Here his son Leif was born.  Again Eiríkur got into trouble, killed a few more of his neighbours, and was outlawed from Iceland.  He sailed to Greenland with his family.  His family all became Christians but he remained a pagan his whole life.  They heard of land to the south from a passerby, and his son Leif wanted to sail to explore.  On the way to the ship, Eiríkur the Red fell off his horse and broke his collarbone.  He took it as a sign from the gods that he was not to sail.  Leif sailed without him and discovered North America.

The 10^th century longhouse is on display, although it was a bit hard to find. We had to start at the small statue of Leifur and take the gravel path to the right up the hillside heading towards the waterfall. A replica of the longhouse has been built nearby. This is where the guide told her stories.  It has 12m by 4m turf walls, a dirt floor, and a roof made of rafters covered over with turf and twigs.

Much of our drive was gravel roads for the second half of the day.  We got stuck behind one car that decided it was okay to take the blindhaeds (blind hills) on the wrong side of the road, and stop their car at the top of a blindhaed.  Sheesh.

We are at the Hotel Frammes in Grundarfjördur for the night.  It is a small sized hotel with two floors.  Much smaller room than last night.