August 7 - Lake Myvatn

We were really busy today visiting a lot of volcanic features around Lake Myvatn. The day also featured lunch at a cow shed – the owner happened to be Bjorn’s (our host last night) cousin!

Lake Myvatn is located ON the mid-Atlantic ridge and the area has a high degree of volcanic activity, currently and in the past. It also has some unusual volcanic features found in few other localities. Iceland is slowly splitting apart (as we saw in our city tour of Reykjavik on 8/2) and today we got to stand with one foot on the North American plate and one on the Eurasian plate.

On our way there, we stopped at a waterfalls called Godafoss – Waterfall of the Gods. About a thousand years ago, the Icelanders decided to become Christian and the law-giver, a local chieftain with a national presence, decided to lead the way by disposing of his pagan icons, which he tossed into the falls. As we drove there, I was expecting to see high ground, but it was very flat and I wondered where the falls were and what the big deal was. Well. There is a river that falls thru a cleft in the basaltic stream bed and it was VERY impressive. I also found a sweater there I couldn’t live without, and given how chilly and windy it has been, it will be a welcome addition to my wardrobe. Too bad I didn’t bring a turtleneck tee to wear with it, especially since none seem to be for sale in the summer. (Some summer! We are REALLY glad we brought some warm clothes and hats!)

Jim at the main part of Godafoss

Lynn, a bit further downriver at a subsidiary falls.

 Next was a ‘pseudocrater’ field at Skutustadir. These formations look like craters where magma came up and erupted thru them, leaving a lopped of cone. But what really happened was that lava flows covered up water/boggy land, creating steam that exploded through the lava. This created the crater look without the magma source from below.

Pseudo craters at Lake Myvatn

No, this isn't a volcanic formation, but there was also a herd of cattle there, and I had never seen one quite this color before.

Then we went to visit the ‘trolls’ or ‘Yule lads’ at Demmoborgir. Icelanders have a tradition that trolls are night-time creatures who become frozen in stone if they don’t get back into their caves before dawn. Apparently quite a few of the trolls have been careless about the clock, because they are all over. In this case, the formations are also called Yule Lads, 13 sons of vicious trolls who live in a cave and appear around Christmas with names like Spoon Licker and Door Slammer. These are another unusual volcanic formation, caused when lava forms a lake (blocked from flowing by the pseudocraters) over boggy land. This time, instead of exploding thru the whole pool of lava, a pillar of steam escapes and cools the lava, creating pillars. Eventually, the rest of the lava drains, creating these shapes. Snorri lead us through a maze of characters and the provided us with a short trumpet concert in an area he called the Palace Hall.

Vogafjos Café (or Cow Shed Cafe) is located in half of an actual working milking shed that also had a bull and several calves in residence. This is a way to expand on the capabilities of a working farm – the food served was mostly raised by the café owners on their land.  After lunch, we went to a very large explosion crater at Vita, looked down onto the thermal electric plant at Krafla (captures steam from below and converts it to electricity for the island-wide grid), and stopped at the boiling sulphur mud pots at Namafjall. There were also a couple fumaroles there – with steam pouring out of rock piles.

Vita Explosion Crater

Volcanic mud pots

Jim walking thru fumarole steam

Our last stops in the volcanic area were at Grjotagja Springs and the rift zone created by eruptions in the area for 9 years in the 70s and 80s. The Springs had been a nice comfy bath-like temperature before the eruptions, but is now much warmer. More interesting was the rift zone where the North American and Eurasion plates pulled apart back then. There were also caves with warm pools of water below – they weren’t too far down, so I actually explored them – we were careful not to get too close – Jim did test the water and thought it was in the 115 degree range, but it started to get crowded and space was limited, so we escaped. A few minutes later, some less careful tourist fell in and got wet to above his knees. Lucky for him it was shallow and not too deep.

Inside of the rift zone cave

Straddling the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates (in theory)

After our ride home, we walked through the botanical garden and into the Catholic Church (primarily used by Polish immigrants) and the large Lutheran Church, designed by the same architect who did the cathedral in Reykjavik – the similarity in the designs was definitely noticeable. We learned that the genders sit in opposite sides of the aisle in Iceland, even for weddings – there is no grooms side or brides side, other than the men all sitting on the right (behind the groom) with the women on the left. 

We were on our own for dinner and decided to get bold and try sushi. A very different experience – miso soup was an actual serious BOWL of fish soup, a green tea request was delivered as black, and the rolls were huge and available as halves (thank heavens Jim asked and so we got 2.5 rolls instead of 3). Taste-wise it was a bit unusual too – hard to point out quite why – and very expensive – nearly $100 for 2 soups, 2 teas, and 2.5 rolls!