Land of Ice and Fire

Iceland does not feel like changing scenery - it is like changing planet. Going for a week off road in Iceland’s South is a good thing to do, while on my construction site the house foundation went through the finish line. April is a little to late for a good chance to see Northern lights. But Iceland has a lot to offer: glaciers, volcanos, waterfalls, geysers and all you need to push a 4x4 to the limit. Equipped with a 2022 version of the Suzuki Jimny. This car is like a gecko. It goes up everything. With a curb weight of just above a ton, crossing rivers it has a bit of a handicap though. But with anything else, this is a perfect car to go quite extreme. And that’s what Iceland is - extreme.

Driving around the whole island in a week, is a little too much behind the wheel. That’s why I focused on South Iceland, took more stops. Walking towards the glacier lagoons gave me the opportunity to see the effects of climate change and to recall my University lectures in glaciology. From the most recent end moraine you walk around to 2 km to the lagoon. Then it’s another 500 - 800 meters to the glacier itself. This looks like the retreat of ice in the last about 100 years. And that’s a lot. I have seen similar scales in New Zealand a few years ago - maybe even more. I do appreciate all the effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But it does look to me, that we better also start to also prepare coping with what’s coming anyways. And then there is the whole field of climate engineering, which I studied quite intensively during my PhD time. I am pretty sure, that the whole topic of global warming is too serious to keep it to the hippies trying to fix it by drinking oat milk and soy beans. And anyway the concept is known at least since I started studying in 1986. It’s a little late for voodoo, right?

The last two days I spent in Reykjavik to give the trip an urban ending and troll around with humpback whales and dolphins in the Reykjavik Bay, which was fun.

Leaving a mark in the sand

There are many ways the wind leaves marks on plants and landscapes. For example, trees bent with the wind, and so do bushes. The more constant and severe the wind is, the more you see it in the floral shape. When the wind comes with rain, you will also notice the pattern of those needing the water growing on the exposed side. And then there are the forms of erosion, deflation, sedimentation, and ripples which let us determine wind directions and speeds. This photo shows a different mark, by a grass scratching in the volcanic sand in Southern Iceland. I also wrote a small travel entry, you may read by clicking here. By this, I resumed the travel section of this website, after a long break. This is where the trips will be found, which fall outside the normal annual migration pattern. It will be less than in the past. But there will be some to follow.

Iceland

I saw it, seen from Europe, as a short distance alternative to Patagonia or New Zealand. Iceland has vast volcanic landscapes, glaciers, and icebergs. But it does not have the grandness of the other landscapes. Nice, but not Wow.

Iceberg Lagoon, Southern Iceland

Goðafoss 

Gullfoss

THE Geyser in Southern Iceland

Geothermal power plant