Iceland!

I just returned from spending six glorious days in beautiful Iceland! I went with my Vikings and Sagas class, and here's what we did!

Friday:

We arrived in Reykjavik around 9 p.m. local time (11 p.m. for us) and headed out to see if we could catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. It was about 20 degrees but 10 degrees with the wind chill, but it was absolutely gorgeous outside. I've never seen so many stars in my life, and we could actually see them twinkling! Instead of just looking up and seeing the stars, we were actually surrounded by them on all sides. It felt like we were at the top of the world, which we almost were being so far north. 

We waited and waited and waited, until we finally saw a glimmer of the lights around 1 a.m. (3 a.m. for us). The lights grew and stretched across half of the sky. They were a very faint green and I couldn't get a good picture, but some of my classmates could (the picture I posted is my friend Liz's). Even though they were so faint, it was really neat to see them dance around and grow! We ended up staying out until 2:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m. our time) and we headed back to our hotel. I think everyone fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows!

Saturday:

Our professor was an angel and let us sleep in a bit, and then we headed on a walking tour of Reykjavik. We were walking down the main street, which looks like a typical street anywhere, when we turned to look down a block, and saw the most stunning view of the harbor and mountains. Our professor was completely casual about it like it was an every day occurrence, but it was the first time my class had seen mountains in months since Denmark is so flat! 

We kept walking and saw the Harpa, Reykjavik's opera house. They started building it right before the financial crisis hit, but continued building and finished on time. Now they see it as a symbol of overcoming the crisis and maintaining the strong country that they are.

For lunch, we had hot dogs from a stand that Bill Clinton ate at (they're very proud of it) and went on to some museums. The first one was 871, and it's built around an excavation site of a longhouse that they think was built in the year 871, hence the name. It also has the oldest standing wall in Iceland.

Afterwards, we went to the National Museum and learned about Iceland's history, which was pretty neat. And we played dress up, as any mature college students would.

We had some time on our own, so I walked around the city with a couple of classmates and took tons of pictures, as I always do!

For dinner, we went to an Icelandic restaurant, and I had a Viking beer and tried whale meat (you can see my reaction to it below). It tasted similar to steak, but it was more chewy and had a bit of a fishy taste to it. I'm glad I tried it, but I don't think I'll be ordering it again! We also had an Icelandic dessert called skyr, which is a low fat cheese that tastes similar to yogurt, but it's thicker. They usually top it with fruit or sugar. 

Sunday:

We got up bright and early and headed out on a Golden Circle Tour. We started at Thingvellir, which is where their Parliament first began over 1,000 years ago. The Vikings would all gather for about two weeks in June, and the Lawspeaker would recite the laws on the Law Rock (they didn't have any written laws), and disputes would be settled. Fun fact: this is where Erik the Red murdered a man he had a dispute with and was exiled from Iceland, so he left and discovered Greenland. 

Thingvellir is also where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, so we got to walk on the continental rift! It was pretty neat to stand on two different tectonic plates at the same time!

Our next stop was Geysir, a geothermal field with geysers and hot springs. I can't even begin to describe how incredibly windy it was. If you stood up straight with your feet together for two seconds, you would be knocked over! It made for some pretty funny pictures though!

After lunch (no whale meat this time!), we went to Gullfoss, Iceland's famous waterfall. Again, it was horribly wind, but the view was absolutely gorgeous! Part of the waterfall was frozen because it was so cold, so that was neat to see.

We stopped at another waterfall on our way to the next location, but they didn't tell us the name so I'm not sure what it's called.

Our final stop was Skaholt, which was a church and the center of learning for over 700 years. The original cathedral and village were destroyed by an earthquake in the 1700s, so the church there today is much smaller.

We had the evening on our own, so half of my class and I went to a Thai restaurant that Emma Watson has been to three times! It was really good, so I can see why she went there so many times.

Monday:

We started our day riding Icelandic horses across volcanic fields! My horse's name was Lysingur, and he loved going fast and hated being behind the other horses in a line. After a break, he decided to be first in line and kept trying to pass our guide. Icelandic horses are fairly small (they would be considered ponies, but Icelanders get really insulted if you call them ponies instead of horses), and they have an extra gait called a "trolt." It's similar to a canter, but it's much smoother because of the way the horses step with two legs at a time. The best horses can tolt with the rider holding a glass of water and not spill any. An instructor demonstrated it for us, and it was really cool to see! 

We had the afternoon off, so I went window shopping and exploring with Jen. We stopped in a cafe called the Laundromat (they have some in Copenhagen) and had amazingly delicious hot chocolate!

We met our class at the University of Iceland for a lecture on the performance of eddic poetry, which was pretty interesting. His theory is that since a lot of the poems from the Viking age were written similar to a dialogue but without specifying who was speaking, they might have been performed and passed down orally and people later put in names for who was speaking.

We went to dinner at an Italian place for dinner with the professor and some of his students, so we got to talk more with them about sagas and mythology (we're all a bit nerdy). On the way to the restaurant, we passed by a church with Leif Eriksson's statue outside that the U.S. gave to Iceland.

Tuesday:

We had another bus tour, but this one focused on locations we read about in the sagas (mainly Egil's Saga). First stop was a wool outlet store, completely unrelated to the saga tour but really neat! Icelandic wool is really really warm and very durable. My professor told us that she's had an Icelandic wool sweater for 40 years and it's still in perfect condition. Pretty much everyone in my class bought sweaters, and I found an awesome one on sale! Later on our tour we were outside at a location, and some people happened to be standing together wearing their new sweaters, and it looked like an ad for the store. We took lots of pictures of it, of course.

We then stopped to take pictures at Whale Fjord, Hvitanesi in Icelandic (please don't ask me how to pronounce it!). It was a breathtakingly beautiful view of the mountains and fjord! The water in Iceland is similar to what you would see in the Caribbean with light turquoise and changing to a deep sapphire, which was gorgeous! 

We continued our saga tour with stops at Skallagrim's grave and a museum with exhibits about the settlement of Iceland and Egil's Saga. There was another awesome view of the mountains and fjords outside the museum. If it wasn't for the cold, I would love to live in Iceland and see all the beautiful sights every day! 

We visited Borg, which is where both Skallagrim and Snorri Sturluson lived, and a church now stands there.

We visited Snorri's later home Reyholt and got to see his 800 year old hot tub that still has the same pipes that connected to a hot spring near by. 

We had our last dinner at the Viking Village, an ornately styled Viking restaurant. Our waiter would randomly pop up and sing songs in Icelandic, and he anointed four of my classmates as Vikings. My class played a game where we wrote down something interesting about ourselves and everyone would try to guess who it was, which was really fun! Mine was actually the only one that no one could guess. When we left the restaurant, there was a gorgeous sunset over the water! Sadly, my camera couldn't capture all of its beauty. 

Wednesday:

We ended our wonderful trip with a stop at the Blue Lagoon. Since we had a fairly early flight, DIS got the resort to open early for us, so we had the lagoon all to ourselves for an hour! The water was absolutely glorious! It was the perfect temperature with warm steam rising from it, and it was beautiful turquoise colour. I think we all could have spent the whole day there if we had the choice!