Around noon on July 24 we docked in Torshavn, capital of the Faroe Islands. It came as something of a surprise that we had reached the dock because it had been so foggy all morning that we couldn’t see anything until we were actually at the dock. We were told that fog is common here but it was disappointing since the main thing to see here is the town itself, which we couldn’t.  So getting off the ship didn’t seem like a priority and we waited until after lunch about an hour and a half later. The good news is that by then the fog was starting to lift & the weather remained pretty nice until we were returning the the ship, when the fog started to roll back in. The weather usually doesn’t seem to work that nicely for us; usually on overcast days the sun comes out just as we reboard the ship.

     Anyway, Torshavn (TORS-hov-en: no “sh” sound) is a small port city of fewer than 20,000 with lots of fishing. The name means “Thor’s harbor” so it pretty obviously was settled by Vikings. The town’s coat of arms features Thor’s hammer in the center.

     After leaving the ship we walked around the east part of the harbor to the old town.  Called Tinganes, it is located on a peninsula jutting out in the middle of the harbor. This is where the Vikings started holding their Thing or Ting, an annual governing meeting, in the Faroes in the 9th Century. Later it became a trading center, probably because of the excellent harbor. Today it is made up largely of wood slatted buildings painted bright red or black, many with sod roofs.  These roofs are interesting; some looked like flourishing lawns while others looked dead. We could see watering hose systems on some of them (visible only on the dead ones, ironically).  The oldest of these houses was built about 500 years ago & many of these old buildings are still inhabited by offices or families.

     The first place we visited was Havnar kirkja, the Cathedral (presumably Lutheran) of the Faroes.  It has a pretty blue ceiling much like the church in Seydisfjordur and a pipe organ in the balcony over the door.  There are also some model ships hanging from the ceiling.  We were told this is a tradition as thanks to God for bringing the ship home safe, or an offering before sailing to ask that the ship return safe.  The one featured below was built by the crew of a ship that broke up during a storm on New Year’s eve in 1707 and given to the church in thanksgiving for being rescued.

     We walked down to the west harbor.  There were several sidewalk cafes by the water & an unusual statue of one Nolsoyar Pall. I have no idea who he was (died in 1809) but the large birds flying over his head made the statue interesting.

     We found two libraries in Torshavn, both of them rather disappointing.  The public library (Byarbokasavnid) was not far from the west harbor. It looked like a drab office building & seemed to be doing more business at the ice cream stand inside the entrance than in the book rooms.  The national library (Landabokasavn) was further away on a hill & looked pretty much like a factory.

     After a (too) long search we found the Faroe Islands parliament building. It turned out to be a rather nondescript gray wood building we had walked past several times.  Holland America’s write-up of Torshavn said that the parliament had been meeting in this building since the 9th Century, but you can see by the picture below why we didn’t believe that once we saw it.  It turns out that although their parliament (Ting) had been meeting in this area since the 9th Century, it was only moved to this spot in the mid 19th Century when this building was built. So you can’t believe everything you read (but you already knew that).

     They say that the best thing to see here is the town itself & this appears to be correct.  We came across several photogenic views & a number of interesting houses.

     There was a lot of colorful flora in Torshavn, as there have been in most of the ports we have visited.

     We had fauna here as well, mostly of the winged variety.

     We returned to the ship, as I mentioned at the beginning, just as the fog was rolling back in, and in the evening we set sail for Norway.

     We arrived at Seydisfjordur on the morning of July 23. Founded in 1848 by Norwegian fishermen, this is a very small town tucked between large mountains.  Its population is less than 1,000 and it is the easternmost port we visit in Iceland.  It was a base for US & British military during World War II, when Iceland was the hub of the convoy system for getting supplies to Britain from the US.  Iceland was where American escort ships turned back and British warships joined the convoys for the rest of the trip to Britain.  Today Seydisfjordur’s primary significance, as far as we could tell, is its status as the terminal for the ferry to Europe, which arrives and departs every Thursday. The name is pronounced SAY-dis-fyaw-der.

     We left early on a shore excursion organized by our travel agents. It took us over the mountain pass above the town where there was still a lot of snow, even in July.  Our tour guide told us that they had a particularly large snowfall over the winter so the waterfalls were still flowing at greater strength than normal for this time of year.  This was good, because we have seen a lot of waterfalls on this trip, & more to come.  Before they built the paved roads through rural Iceland people travelled overland on horseback. Along side the current roads we often saw piles of stones in fairly regular intervals that used to mark the horse trails. Our guide told us that it was considered bad luck to use these paths and fail to add stones to some of the piles, so they were maintained in very good shape.

     Descending from the mountains our first stop was in a little town called Egilsstadir. The bus was full & we had to sit in the very back where it was hot & stuffy, so we were glad to get out for a few minutes, but the purpose of the stop was a mystery. We parked in a parking lot by a supermarket & there did not seem to be anything of interest here.  We strolled through the supermarket & a gift shop, then we all got back on the bus & drove on.

     We drove along the river for a while, then stopped to view a waterfall . . . on the other side of the river.  We didn’t get out of the bus for that brief “photo opportunity,” since we could see it perfectly well from our seats. I believe the guide said this was one of the tallest waterfalls in Iceland. We also saw a mountain in the distance that our guide said was the biggest in Iceland outside the glaciers.

     We drove on (and on) along the river. Finally we crossed over and came at last to . . . a nondescript little church. It turns out this is where our guide grew up. He said it is only used for weddings and funerals now, not weekly services. There was once a 13th Century (I think) church on this spot, but the one there now was built in the 1960’s & looks it.  Apparently its outstanding feature is its front door, which is a copy (!) of a very old carved door now housed in a museum we didn’t visit. Mary looked through the churchyard and found some very old graves though.

     We continued further down the river valley to visit the house of Gunnar Gunnarsson, a writer well known in Iceland. His name means he was Gunnar, son of Gunnar.  Icelanders generally don’t have family names like we do even today.  Instead they are given a first name coupled with a patronymic (although it is permissible now to use a matronymic, especially for single mothers). Under this system my son would be Robert Richardsson & my daughter would be Carrie Richardsdottir.  In the phone book people are alphabetized by first name, then within that class by patronymic.  Its an odd system to us & it sometimes gives them trouble when abroad, such as when applying for visas, but it is well established here & is not really dissimilar to that used in other countries in centuries gone by.

     I don’t know much about him, but we were told Gunnar Gunnarsson was nominated for a Nobel Prize (but never won one).  His first book was published about 100 years ago. This is a house he bought late in life & .never finished renovating. Its most interesting feature (to me) is its grass roof. We have been told that grass is an excellent insulator, but I wouldn’t want to have to get up there to mow it! We were given coffee and donuts & gingersnaps in a nice courtyard, but it was kind of chilly and windy.

Nearby we visited a visitor’s center.  It wasn’t too interesting, but had a deck with a distant view of the valley.  There were a lot of wildflowers on the hill & some ways away was a horse farm.  Icelandic horses are prized work horses because, although they are small, they are very strong & tough. I mentioned once before that Icelanders sometimes let them fend for themselves over the winter, which is not easy to withstand here.  They are descended from the horses brought over by the original Viking settlers and to ensure the breed remains pure it is illegal to import horses to Iceland from anywhere else. Even a horse born & raised in Iceland cannot be brought back here if it is once sent abroad.  We were told that Icelandic horses have an additional gait beyond those of other horses.  The most obvious distinguishing features we noticed are the very full mane of thick hair and pointy ears.

     After this we headed back toward Seydisfjordur. We stopped at the top of the mountain pass where there was a waterfall & an overlook of the town. A dramatic view.

     We descended from there into Seydisfjordur. The excursion was rather a disappointment, since there was little of real interest to see & the bus was hot & uncomfortable.  To their credit, in response to the general dissatisfaction our travel agency refunded a good portion of the cost. And its not like there was a whole lot to see in Seydisfjordur that we missed by taking the excursion.  After we returned we had time to walk all around the town & get back to the ship well before it was time to depart. So here are some views of Seydisfjordur from the ground.

     The one building in town that we entered was the blue church, a nice smaller church pleasantly decorated inside.  It also has an impressive pipe organ for such a small and isolated church.

Last but not least was a whimsical collection of wood sculptures, most of which appear to be trolls, and one of the biggest & floppiest flowers we have seen so far on this trip..

     And so we took our leave from Seydisfjordur, sailing out through yet another beautiful fjord and ending our visit to the northern part of Iceland.  But still there were towel animals, of course.

    On July 16 we sailed down the Eyjafjordur fjord to Akureyri in the north central part of Iceland.  Founded in the 9th Century, this is the second largest city in Iceland but still a small town by American standards with some 30,000 people (we think). Akureyri is pronounced ack-you-RAY-ree.  .Just before leaving home we learned that we know someone who lives here during the summer: Rosemary Shaw, who is Rita Reimer’s sister. Rita told us she was drawn here as a bridge player & we were told on the ship that Iceland has some of the best bridge players anywhere. Unfortunately we did not have a chance to meet up with Rosemary because we had signed up for a land excursion that took up our entire time in port, so we had no opportunity to visit the town. It looked nice from the ship though.  Particularly noticeable on the skyline is the cathedral, with a distinctive modern style.

     We were half an hour later than advertised in docking at Akureyri, and our departure turned out to be a little earlier.  This put a squeeze on our land tour, which was expected to fill all the time available. Then it turned out that our group of 14 had 1 too many to fit in the large 4 wheel drive vehicle used for the tour (it might have fit 14 with some being children or very skinny people, but not our group of older folks). So one couple had to forgo the trip. It was also pretty foggy in the morning, so the trip started out pretty poorly.  Luckily the weather got much better as we neared noon.

     Our guide/driver Giesli had the sensible approach of driving to the furthest sights first, then working our way back, to avoid as much as possible the big bus tours from the ships (there were two in town).  Giesli spoke perfect English with a strong British accent and we assumed at first he was British, but it turned out he was a native Icelander.  Icelanders learn several foreign languages from an early age & these days English is almost always the first.

     So we started out by driving for about 2 hours, over the mountain passes that see deep snow in winter past sheep, horses & cattle grazing in the fields. Icelanders often leave their horses out to fend for themselves in winter because the Icelandic breed is particularly tough.  But sheep left outside will often suffocate in the deep snow, so they are brought indoors in winter.  But in summer the sheep are allowed to roam free and are gathered back again in the fall. On our way we passed Lake Myvatn (which means “midge”), which we would see again later.

     Our first destination was Dettifoss (pronounced like “dental floss”), the largest waterfall in Europe measured by water flow.  But first we travelled down a gravel road downriver to see a smaller (but arguably more beautiful) waterfall called Hafragilsfoss.  This was a short walk over stark volcanic terrain & the waterfall was in an impressive canyon.

     We drove over to Dettifoss, which was a half mile walk each way from the parking lot over a terrain of large boulders & rocks. It was huge & very powerful. I walked down the steep steps to get a closer view & Giesli came down too, probably to make sure the old guy in the red hat could make it back up.  While down there he also took my picture in front of the falls.  Mary stayed on top.

     Hverir is.s a field of steam vents and boiling mud pots. Iceland was formed mostly by volcanoes & there is still a great deal of heat and pressure under the ground.  Some of it is released through these formations. You can see this stuff at Yellowstone National Park & really that is more interesting than here, but these were pretty good ones (much better than what we saw on the island of St. Lucia in March).  The distant mountain background gave it a beautiful setting.

     Iceland uses this thermal heat as its primary power supply.  The bulk of Iceland’s power comes from thermal and hydro sources. Some of the thermal power plants are pretty impressive sights in themselves.

     The North American and European tectonic plates meet in the middle of Iceland. That means that, geologically rather than politically, Iceland is half in North America & half in Europe. These two plates are moving apart (very slowly) which causes a rift between them. We visited a spot where the two plates meet. The land rises on each side and there is a deep but narrow gorge marking the rift between them.

     We visited an unusual lava formation called Dimmulborgir (“Dark Castles‘).  It was explained to us that the lava had formed a lake here. After it began hardening in places the edge broke open and the lava that was still liquid flowed away, leaving the parts that had already cooled & hardened as freestanding sculptural formations. There are peaks & valleys, tunnels & caves, and all of it is very rough and dark.

     As I mentioned, Iceland was mostly formed by volcanoes & most of its mountains were once volcanoes. Some do not look like volcanoes because they are wide and flat.   We were told that this was the result of a volcano erupting under a glacier so that the lava could not build up in the air but instead flowed to the side. Another unusual volcanic feature we saw was a group of pseudo craters.  These look like very small volcanoes, with the ground raised and broken at the top, but in fact (we were told) these were caused by hot lava flowing onto thick ice. Iceland is apparently the only place on Earth where these occur (some have been found on Mars). Unfortunately it was starting to get late so we didn’t stop & it was hard to get photos from a moving vehicle.  But below is a picture of what I think is a pseudo crater (complete with reflections from the car window).

     As you can imagine, we came across a wide variety of flowers on this excursion, many of them tiny plants eking out a living in the rocky volcanic soil. As  usual, I haven’t a clue what they are called but I found them interesting.

     So we passed Lake Mytavn a final time (its a big lake) & headed for the ship.  There was one more feature on our itinerary, a waterfall called Godafoss. It is famous more for its history than its beauty (nowhere near as big as Dettifoss). It seems that when Iceland adopted Christianity, the local leader (law reader, Giesli called him) took all the wooden idols of the old Norse gods & threw them over this falls.  Thus the name, which means Falls of the Gods. Anyway, it was getting late and all the passengers on the tour were beginning to get a little antsy about making it back to the ship before the gangway was pulled in. So we declined Giesli’s offer to stop at Godafoss and contented ourselves with seeing it as we drove past.

     The drive back to the ship took us past several stunning mountain views, and then gave us a different perspective on Akureyri from across the fjord.

     Well, we made it back to the ship with a whole 15 minutes to spare before the “all aboard” deadline. It turned out there were other excursions later than we were, but we were glad to be safely back. We sailed out through the fjord on a beautiful evening that set off the mountainous scenery dramatically. And later that night we crossed the Arctic Circle for the second and last time.

     We had a fairly rough crossing from Greenland to Iceland.  Although there was nothing to see, at 9:30 PM on July 20 we passed within 35 miles of where the Bismarck sank the HMS Hood, the pride of the British fleet, in 1941.  It went down in 3 minutes with all hands in these cold & gray waters. This was pretty shocking to the British because the German fleet was thought to be no match for the British (and really it wasn’t) but the Bismarck was a pretty formidable ship. It was sunk in turn not too much later (which was the subject of a movie around 1960) pretty much ending the German naval threat on the surface. 

   On a brighter note, the late morning of July 21 found us sailing through Isafjardurdjur, the fjord at the end of which is Isafjordur, the town that was our objective for the day.  The fjord was very long with high cliffs on the sides, the lower part of which were deep green and the upper part obscured by long narrow clouds.  Very spooky but also very beautiful. I really don’t think the pictures convey what it was like.

     Mary had an aunt named Isa, but this town was not named after her. As we understand it, “isa” means ice in Icelandic, so this means Icy Fjord. We didn’t see any ice, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot in the winter. It is very difficult to convey how the Icelanders pronounce these names because they tend to slur the syllables together, as if you said it with your hand over your mouth. But that difficulty aside, it seems that this is pronounced ISS-a-fyawrd-er, with the first syllable sounding like the last two letters of “this.”

     The main story here is the fjord, as Isafjordur seemed to us like a pretty ordinary little town in a spectacular setting. It is located in the northwest part of Iceland, an area mostly separated by water from the rest of the country that looks on a map like a ragged extension from the upper left corner of the island.  We were supposed to be docked here, but a ship from the AIDA line snuck in ahead of us and was given our berth, so we had to tender ashore. Which we did & walked around the town.

     We visited the town library (of course), “Bokasafn” in Icelandic, which takes up most of a 90 year old building that is the cultural center. Until 1989 it had been a hospital. Out front was an interesting sculpture of fishermen and inside, in addition to books, was a room of old hospital equipment and a collection of vintage Icelandic dresses along with some lovely old carved furniture.

     Next to the cultural center was the church, which some think looks like a concertina. We didn’t see the inside, but outside its not very attractive.

     We had read that Isafjordur has a whalebone arch.  We had seen one in the Falklands that was quite nice so we wanted to see the arch here.  It was not easy (for us) to find. We walked past a wooded park across from the culture center and up a hill then toward the water, but no arch. This took us through an interesting neighborhood, but no arch.  So we gave up and came back down the hill. We walked into the park and there it was, not far from the entrance. We were glad to find it, but it was a little disappointing, with just two whalebones painted white to look like they could have been wooden. The one in the Falklands is much better.

     There were many colorful flowers in Isafjordur, some wild & some not so much, but all worth noticing. As usual, I’m afraid I don’t know their names.

     Many of the houses in Iceland have corrugated metal siding & sometimes roofs. We were told that these provide good insulation, but I expect in a warmer climate they would make the heat in a house much worse. The day in Isafjordur began with fog & chill but most of the time we were ashore it was warm & sunny. In fact, throughout our 3 day visit to the north side of Iceland the temperatures were in the high 60’s to high 70’s during the day, which the Icelanders called a heat wave, even in July. We noticed that the vintage houses in Isafjordur appear to have their year of construction posted on the side. Near the tender port we came upon what looked like white seal skins drying on a rack.

     So back on the ship we made our way out the way we had come, through the fjord looking a little more bright & colorful in the late afternoon sun. We left around 7:30 PM, but in the North that is still late afternoon, as there were about 3 hours left until sunset. Isafjordur was the most northerly stop on this trip & there were only about 5 hours of night. Fortunately we have pretty good curtains to block out the sun.

     So that was Isafjordur. At 10:22 PM we crossed the Arctic Circle for the first time (we were given a certificate to make it official).  And once again there were towel animals to end the day.

After a fairly rough crossing we reached Greenland on Saturday,  July 19.  While at sea on the way we spotted some whales not too far from the ship. They were hard to photograph because they surfaced only briefly.  I’m not sure what kind of whale they were, but from the dorsal fin I would guess Orca. Not a very good picture, since I had to zoom out to telephoto & then enlarge it, but its the only picture of whales I have so far (hope springs eternal) so I am posting it anyway.. Other whales were spotted at other times by the officers on the bridge but we didn’t see them.

Greenland is the largest island in the world (I mentioned before that Australia doesn’t count as an island because it is a continent).  It was first settled by Europeans in the late 10th Century Eric the Red. The name derived from the color of his beard, not his politics or his baseball loyalties. A thousand years later a baseball player named Eric Davis, who was one of the best players of his era until he got hurt, was sometimes called Eric the Red because he played for the Cincinnati Reds.  But I digress.

Eric was born in Norway, but his family moved to Iceland so his father could evade family vengeance for his murdering a man.  True to the family tradition, Eric was eventually exiled from Iceland for several years for killing several men (he was said to have a bad temper). He sailed west with a group of people & settled at the south end of the island. He decided to call it Greenland, according to the Icelandic Sagas, because he thought it would entice others to move there. Thus, Greenland was the subject of perhaps the world’s first real estate scam.

The Norse lasted in Greenland for a few hundred years, but it was never easy to farm (mostly ice rather than green). We were told that Greenland has no trees, & we certainly didn’t see any there.  Apparently it is not known what became of the last Norse Greenlanders, but they had disappeared completely by about the 15th Century. Today Greenland is an internally autonomous territory of Denmark.

Nanortalik (na NOR ta lick) was founded by Europeans at the end of the 18th Century but today it is pretty much all Inuit people. It has a long history of whaling but today its few hundred citizens seem to concentrate on fishing and a little bit of tourism (we were told that about 6 cruise ships visit here each year).  When several hundred passengers come ashore from a cruise ship the population increases many times over. It is a very colorful town of brightly painted buildings in a bleak but beautiful setting.

We came ashore from the ship in tender boats through a harbor full of icebergs. Very cool (not to mention cold). And remember, this is the middle of summer! Imagine what their winters must be like. I don’t think I would like living here.

We were given a brief & superficial orientation by a couple of crew members then walked around the town a bit. It was still pretty early in the morning. The terrain is very rocky with large expanses of yellow flowers that looked like mats.

We walked past the docks, which had piles of ship containers.  All of the food & supplies come here by ship & prices are, therefore, pretty high. We discovered that Greenland also has its own flag.

Nanortalik means “place where polar bears go,” & we are told that polar bears do float in around here on ice floes in the Spring, but we didn’t see any this time of year. The city coat of arms, appropriately, consists of 3 polar bears. The Kommune (like a city hall) had an unusual sculpture in front that I think represents a whale’s head.

When cruise ships come to town the locals (Nanotorlikans?) put on a show. We attended this folk dancing & choir singing performance at the town cultural center. The dancing style was taught to the Eskimos here by Dutch & Scottish whalers and they have developed it into their own style.  It involves a lot of stomping and dancing in circles and was perfromed by teenage kids to the accompaniment of an electric organ played by an older man. One of the girls was dressed in the full traditional Inuit dress; we saw some just like it in the museum later.

Next was supposed to be a choir singing religious & secular songs in Inuit language & style of 4 part harmony.  But they told us most of the choir were on holiday so there were only 5 people there to do the singing. They sang, in beautiful a capella 4 part harmony, several songs I didn’t recognize and finished with Amazing Grace in Inuit language. The older lady who sang soprano had a particularly powerful voice.

This was also billed as a “Kaffe-mik” (coffee party), in which Greenlanders invite another family into their home for cakes & coffee on special occasions.  The “famous Greenlandic cake” turned out to be more like raisin bread than anything else. It wasn’t bad but it didn’t seem special either.

Nanortalik has an “open air museum,” which consists of a building with some displays and several buildings dating from the 1830’s & 40’s, some of which also contain exhibits.  There are supposed to be artifacts from the original Icelandic Viking settlers of Greenland, but the labels in the museum were all in Inuit which, I am sure you will be surprised to learn, we cannot read. In the museum we saw, among other interesting looking items, some small carvings, about 6” that look like whale bone or ivory, and some expressionist looking masks.

I mentioned that Inuit seems to be the local language, with little English spoken.  Below are some examples from street signs. So you can see why it would be difficult to find your way around without a map. Fortunately we had one.

We walked around the “open air museum,” looking at the old buildings (all pretty similar with walls of granite stones) & climbed the steep steps to a watch tower located there.  This provided an expansive view of the town around it.

In an old cooper’s house were exhibits about kayaks & umiaks, boats covered in seal skin that were used for whaling by the Eskimos (today, Inuit).  They don’t hunt whales any more & kayaks haven’t been used for hunting since the 1980’s. Today they use regular boats.  But the exhibit included a couple of umiaks & old kayaks.

Prominent in town is the church, built in a distinctive style. It is over 100 years old. It was locked when we were there but I took a picture through the window.

There was a lot of fauna in the area, even though it looked like it would be inhospitable to plants. Most of the flowers were pretty small but colorful (like the houses).

Last but not least before leaving town, here are a few random scenes that didn’t fit anywhere else. Among other things, there were more huge ravens here & very craggy peaks I understand were carved by glaciers.

So we left this colorful & friendly remote town & tendered back to the ship.  From there the icebergs in the harbor could be seen clearly & we saw a few more as we sailed carefully away for a two day sail to Iceland. I like icebergs, so I will share a few with you.

Finally, a couple of towel animals to tide you over until we reach Iceland.