Overall, we were really lucky with Iceland's weather. There was just one day, August 20, 2022, when it rained so hard and so long that we missed some of the sights in our itinerary. This post shows what we should have seen, as well as what we actually saw!
We spent the day on the Vatnsnes Peninsula, identified by the red marker on the map above. Iceland's northwest coast is shaped like the teeth of the saw, with many peninsulas cut deeply by fjords. For several days, we drove up one side of a peninsula and down the other, veering constantly west. The scenery got wilder and wilder, and the towns and farms more and more isolated.
Each day, in Iceland, there is a new waterfall to see. Each is gorgeous and each is unique in some way. On August 20, we gazed down at Kolufoss, thundering down a canyon.
The three sights we missed today, because of the rain, were the chieftain's fortress of Borgarvirki, the volcanic mounds of Vatnsdalsholar, and the basalt rock stack of Hvitserkur. All were shrouded in fog and rain. Borgarvirki is interesting because it illustrates a bit of the violent history of Iceland's late Middle Ages. After forming one of the earliest parliaments in the world, the cooperation of the tribes fell apart by 1200 and they warred with each other. Borgarvirki, pictured above, was the fort of one of the powerful chieftains.
Iceland is a volcanic island. It has the black sand beaches and outcroppings of lava, half-covered with grass, to prove it. At Vatnsdalsholar, there was a huge field of half-covered volcanic mounds.
Hvitserkur is a strange formation, off the shore of the Vatnsnes Peninsula. It is often covered with shorebirds and their guano. We looked and looked, but it was just too foggy to see that sea stack. Another time.
By the time we arrived at Hvammstangi, the main town on the peninsula, we were searching for a refuge.
We sheltered for several hours in the Slasetur Islands Seal Center and its restaurant.
Heidi and I walked around the
museum with Audrey, talking with her about all the different kinds of seals,
evidenced by stuffed specimens—babies, mommies, black, white, and spotted.
Audrey felt the sealskin pelts laying next to a seal boat. We then watched a movie about seals, and
Audrey and I talked (softly) about what we were seeing--seals swimming, seals
nursing, seals with their mommies.
Unfortunately, the movie then cut abruptly to a pile of dead seals and a
farmer eating seal soup. I hoped Audrey
didn’t make that disturbing connection!
There's always a next time. The museum offered seal watching tours that looked very fun. Maybe we'll be back....
We ate lunch at the museum restaurant and then killed time the modern way--by playing with our cell phones!
Audrey amused herself by rubbing her hands on the floor and then begging to use the bottle of hand sanitizer by our table. “How do you explain to a two-year-old that you don’t have to
rub your hands on the floor in order to use the hand sanitizer?” Heidi and I
asked each other. Heidi has been in constant motion during the trip, nursing Calder, changing Calder and
Audrey, and entertaining the children in the car. She is a trooper.
Mike and Heidi stopped at the witchcraft museum in Holmavik,
which Mike described as “bizarre,” while Dave and I drove on to our room in Drangsnes. Drangsnes felt like the end of the world—a town
along the coast of the Westfjords with a nice hotel but no store and a gas
station with a hand pump! Our room
looked out on the sea!
Our guidebook recommended Drangsnes' outdoor hot tubs, but Dave and I were just too wet and tired to hunt them down, after we finally arrived at our hotel
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