Ring Road Day 1: The Saga Begins

The day began with a pre-dawn walk a couple miles out to pick up the car I'd rented. I'd originally planned to travel around the country by bus, but when Lonely Planet said that buses were less frequent in winter, what they really meant was 'buses go to about three places in the country and do so incredibly infrequently.' Travel in Iceland really demands four wheel drive, but my little two wheel drive was cheaper. Actually, to go on grade F roads, all terrain vehicles aren't really enough. Many roads involve fording rivers and using winches to get your vehicle over boulders. I assured the rental place I would stick to the ring road, Iceland's one highway that makes a loop around the entire country's perimeter.

My first stop of the day was Akranes, an hour North plus a quick drive under a fjord from Reykjavik. I went there for the museum, but discovered that it was closed for the winter. This was to become a theme for my trip, along with racing against the six hours of daylight to see everything before returning the car. So it goes. I was still able to see an interesting church and the outdoor exhibits of old fishing boats, as well as some nice old wooden buildings elsewhere in town.

Next up was Borgarnes, where I went to the Saga museum. The saga features here was that of Egill a poet warrior who made his first kill at the age of seven, and the sites where it took place are all nearby in case one wants to try to find the gold buried by Egill's father, Skallagrímur Kveldúlfsson. The epic does not have a traditional structure and it is very clear how foreign their mindset was to our modern ideas. For example, after loosing a game similar to hockey, Egill's father kills the boy's best friend. In retaliation, the seven year old Egill killed his father's favorite servant. The saga dryly states "Relations between father and son became more strained after this." Egil Skallagrimson goes on to become an enemy (then ally, then enemy again) of the Eirik Bloodaxe, viking king of Norway and Northumbria, and had various other adventures to show off his prowess as a berserker and a wordsmith. The museum had various diorama, carvings, and creepy statues to illustrate the highlights of the story.

At this point I took a largish detour to go see some waterfalls and lava tubes. I passed by geothermal areas where steam poured out of the ground. The heat and water pressure are harnessed and used to power Iceland. The first waterfall was a wide cascade that appears from nowhere to join a river. The water flows underground for a ways then suddenly surfaces here.

The second set looked like the liquid cold as a torrent of churning white water spilled under a stone arch. A larger stone bridge once spanned the river here, but one day it collapsed beneath two local children, sweeping them away:

I was unable to get to the caves due to the roads being terrifying:

I backtracked to the Ring Road and pressed onward to the Snaefell Peninsula. I got my first glimpse of Snaefell, the large volcano at the peninsula's end, as the sky and sea seemed to turn to fire around me.

I stayed in a huge guesthouse all to myself (after the one I had intended to stay in proved to be closed for the season). It sat at the head of a trail to Eldborg, the morning's first destination.

Lots more sunset pictures here.