Grimsey

Monday, August 6th: Morning dawned early as always and I was up by 6:00. There was a bit of a wrinkle to my plans for the early morning however. I learned (the hard way unfortunately) that "white spirits" in Iceland, is not the same as "white gas" in the States. It is in fact turpentine and not very suitable for my camping stove. No coffee this morning. Sad.

We broke our little camp, decidedly uncaffeinated, and drove from the backyard of the school to the reason for our trip to Davick: the ferry to Grimsey Island. Grimsey is a small island north of Iceland, known for two things, fishing and the geographical oddity of spanning the Arctic Circle.

Now, for my non-nautical, non geo-geek friends, the Arctic Circle is not just a Utah fast food chain. It is the imaginary circle around the pole where on the Summer Solstice the sun just touches the horizon but never sets. 24 hours of daylight. This line is "imaginary" like the equator and its sister the Antarctic Circle, but it is cool landmark nonetheless. I had never been that far north and was excited to get there. 

The ferry was fairly small, able to transport three or four cars and maybe 75 passengers. This trip had one small pickup truck and perhaps 40 folks, mostly tourists like ourselves, intent on seeing the island. The weather was windy, the seas quite calm for such a high latitude and the skies were amazingly clear. The passage took about three hours and we even saw a humpback and Jen reported Orca, but I missed seeing them. Soon enough we were landing at the small pier which was the lifeline for the 80 or so people who live on the island.

There's not much to do on Grimsey but walk, and that's what we did. We passed the three-hole golf course, took a picture of the signpost that listed distances to remote places like Sydney and New York and headed north toward the sea cliffs. Our crossing of the Arctic Circle was uneventful. There's no marker or sign and I marveled at the fact that I was in the real, Gods-honest Arctic walking around in my shirt sleeves. There are many the dead Viking and long-gone polar explorer who are quite annoyed with how easily I just strolled into territory they had to spend a life's effort to explore. What a world.

As we got further north on the island, we encountered high sea cliffs with huge numbers of Puffins nesting on the cliff face. I've seen these birds before in Maine and Nova Scotia but usually only glancingly as they flutter by at sea fishing. They are awkward fliers but graceful swimmers, gifted by evolution for some reason with the brightly-striped beak of a parrot. The beak is good for fishing, but very funny looking on a sea bird. These guys were everywhere, sitting in large groups on the sea cliffs and weaving by as we sat on the grass watching them. Amazing to get so close to such a beautiful animal.

We only had three hours or so on Grimsey until we had to reboard the ferry and head back. The trip was totally worth it. Six hours on the boat enjoying the Iceland coastline and three beautiful hours on the island made for a wonderful day. Returning to our car, we headed out of town.

We had about a two-hour ride along the north coast heading back to the west. It was a beautiful coastline and we stopped several times for pictures. Jen is actually very patient as I constantly request a "quick stop" to photograph this or that piece of stunning scenery. If one out of twenty of my photos come out at all, I'm going to have a great collection to show from our trip. 

The only other event of note was the series of tunnels we passed through on our way out of town. The Icelanders, faced with huge fjord cliffs have chosen to drill directly through the volcanic rock to get from valley to valley. Jen was driving and I'm not sure which one of us was more unnerved by the new game of "Icelandic Chicken" we were learning. These tunnels were one single lane with traffic going both directions! Every so often there would be a small indentation where you could pull the car over if a car was coming the other way. It definitely leant a degree of tension to the drive. We made it through unscathed however and got to Skagafjordur where we found a boarding school that acts as a hostel during the summer. We got a cheap room in the mostly-empty place and crashed for the night.