Iceland 2009 - More Pictures

Iceland's people are still rooted in some of the Nordic mythologies. Allegedly, they still believe in trolls and elves. We found this troll house at the harbour of Keflavik at our first day in Iceland. Inside, the furniture is three times as big as normal beds or tables and if you listen very hard, you can hear the troll snore in his sleep next door.

Iceland, being an island, has a lot of water around it and many, many lighthouses. I can't show a picture of each one, so this one has to do. It's the one of Akranes on the West coast on a sunny and very quite evening.

We didn't plan to, really, but we happened to be in Reykjavik on Iceland's independence day (17th of June). We saw the prime minister and the president of Iceland lay down a wreath at the stature of Jón Sigurdson (a Icelandic freedom fighter) not twenty meters away from where we stood and then joined the party that broke out all over the city. We also saw some people wearing traditional clothing. I simply loved that one.


One thing I came to Iceland for was the waterfalls. The biggest one is the Dettifoss, which is seriously impressive (maybe not Niagara Falls impressive, but pretty close to it). It's in the middle of nowhere, with one parking lot close by reachable only by a 30 km gravel road (and I'm generous there - the road was terrible). What the picture doesn't show is how friggin' cold it was that day, and how windy and rainy.


Funny enough, this picture of the Godafoss was taken on the same day as the one from the Dettifoss. It's really amazing how fast the weather could change. That day, for example the whale watching tour in Husavik didn't go out at all, because it was so stormy - the next day, the weather was perfect ...

I saw a picture of this waterfall (Svartifoss) in a wall calender I've got for this year and just knew I had to get there. It was a 40 min steep hike to get there, but well worth it.


When driving along the South coast you can see several glaciers - which were in fact all outlets of one single glacier, the Vatnajökull, Europe's largest glacier. Most times, sadly enough, the glaciers were hiding behind clouds, but a couple of times, the sun came through and so I got this lovely shot (during our boat trip on the glacier lagoon)


I love this sculpture in Reykjavik. It's called the Sun Voyager.