Friday 13 August 2021

Iceland (4): Vik, Skógafoss and Skógar

A Tiny Town, a Big Waterfall and a Folk Museum

A Plan for the Day

Iceland

We left the excellent Magma Hotel and the unpronounceable Kirkjubæjarklaustur and headed westwards, back towards Reykjavik on Route 1, Iceland’s Hringvegur (ring road).

We intended to follow this road, stopping at Vik and Skogar until we turned inland a little before Selfoss. We would then head north through less sparsely inhabited countryside though finishing the day at the isolated Gulfoss Hotel.

Today's Journey with the most important places ringed in a tasteful purple

Kirkjubæjarklaustur to Vik

Our journey to Vik was some 75km long and took an hour. Great speed is neither possible nor legal on the two-lane Hringvegur, but on the other hand there is little to hold you up, either.

Much of the journey was across lava fields, mostly old enough to be covered in grass. It is not beautiful, but the backdrop of the glacial icecap of Mýrdalsjökull makes it more interesting.

Lava field with a distant view of Mýrdalsjökull

Vik

Mýrdalshreppur

Vík í Mýrdal, to give it its full name, is the main population centre of Mýrdalshreppur, Iceland’s southernmost municipality. According to Wikipedia, the town has a population of 318, the metropolitan region 750. ‘Town’ and ‘metropolitan region’ are odd words to use for a tiny village at the heart of the large but sparsely populated municipality between Mýrdalsjökull and the sea.

Vik, sheltered by the Reynisfjall ridge and on a coast washed by the Gulf Stream, is the warmest place in Iceland. In January most days make it above freezing, and the average overnight low is above -2° - remarkably mild for this latitude. The effect is less marked in summer, when the average daily high is a less than balmy 13°C. Vik is also the wettest place in Iceland with an average rainfall of well over 2,000mm.

Vik is said to be the country’s only coastal village without a harbour. Photographs show the early 20th century settlement as a couple of rows of basic dwellings running up from a black sand beach on which fishing boats were parked. It does not look like that now, whether you look down the road….

Vik

…or turn to towards the supermarket and the Icewear Magasín, purveyors of ‘warm but affordable’ clothing (according to their website). The mini-mall also includes a bakery where we had our morning coffee, and a bistro.

Shopping Centre, Vik

We live in a village with twice Vik’s population. Our village shop/post office has closed since we visited Iceland, leaving a pub/restaurant (which has closed on and off  but currently seems secure) and a garage (repairs, no fuel). Google maps show Vik as having its mini-mall, a fuel station, 6 places to eat and drink - one with a bakery, another with its own microbrewery - 3 hotels, an outdoor swimming pool and a church.

Vik's church overlooks the town from a hilltop - not an uncommon situation in Iceland. An eruption of Katla, the volcano beneath the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap, is overdue and when it comes it will be accompanied by flash flooding. The hilltop church serves as a physical as well spiritual refuge and there are regular evacuation drills. Our village has two churches, one C of E, one Catholic, (the only facility we have in more abundance than Vik) but being in a seismically stable region neither has this double function.

Vik Church

Vik has an extra-ordinary range of facilities for such a tiny place, partly due to tourism, though on the cool summer’s morning we passed through it was hardly crowded (but what would it be like without Covid?), partly due to its isolation. Vik is the largest settlement for 70km in all directions so naturally this is where businesses settle. We, on the other hand, have a large village (5,000 people) and a small town (16,000) both within 7km.

Skógar

Rangárþing eystra

Skógar, some 30km west of Vik, is in the adjacent municipality of *Rangárþing eystra, which is larger but no less empty than Mýrdalshreppur. Entirely surrounded by the municipality is the glacial icecap of Eyjafjallajökull. Although one of Iceland’s smaller icecaps the 2010 eruption of the underlying volcano had a dire effect on air travel - and radio and television newsreaders - across much of Europe and North America.

Skógafoss

*Skógar, with a population of 25, is, believe or not, the second largest settlement in Rangárþing eystra. Like many settlements along this coast it sits in the shelter of the ancient sea cliffs, 5km from the present coast.

On the moors above, meltwater from Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull combine to form the *River Skógar and flow across the moorland in a series of waterfalls and through a small canyon. Eventually it works its way down to the bedrock and is rushing over this hard rock when it meets the cliff. The result is *Skógafoss, a waterfall 25m wide with a single drop of 60m.

From the car park you can walk up the side of the river, and if nobody overtakes you, and the people in front in the serious waterproofs walk back, you can find yourself briefly the nearest person to the base of the falls.

Skógafoss

It is possible to walk right up to the pool at the bottom, but it involves a drenching and I stopped at a point where my lightweight waterproof still offered reasonable protection. On a good day a rainbow, or if you are very lucky, a double rainbow forms in the spray. On this sullen summer’s day, there was no chance.

A path sets off to the right of the waterfall, the first steep climb helped by steps.

Nothing Lynne likes more than a long, steep flight of stairs, Skógafoss

From the top we had a view of the water starting its fall….

The top of Skógafoss

….and of the river setting out across the coastal plain – maybe we could have seen the sea, but for the mist.

The River Skógar sets off across the coastal Plain

Looking inland to the river bouncing through its deep channel across the moor we could see the path snaking into the distance. This is a major hiking trail, heading through the pass between Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull to the *Þórsmörk ridge where it joins other trails that lead deep into the Icelandic Highlands.

The River Skógar above the falls

Lunch at Skógar

No longer up to that sort of thing (if I ever was), we took the short walk to the Hotel Skógafoss in search of lunch. I am unused to paying £10+ for a bowl of soup but Icelandic meat soup sounded promising, and nothing is cheap in Iceland. What turned up was two tiny hip-baths of Irish stew, chunks of lamb and root vegetables in a brown broth. It was the perfect lunch for a winter’s day - or a cool one in summer.

Icelandic meat soup, Skógar

Drinks are expensive, too, but the Icelandic habit is to place a carafe of water on every table and very often that is all people drink. The climate means water comes chilled from the tap and everywhere it was fresh, clean and invigorating; it is rare that drinking water actually becomes a pleasure, but it is in Iceland.

Walking back to the car gave us a view of the waterfall that sets it into its local context.

A more distant view of Skógafoss

Skógar Museum - Interior

Skógar may be a tiny place, but it has a large regional museum.

The museum of local life was packed with interesting artefacts. Life was hard and Icelanders were poor, the economic miracle that made modern Iceland wealthy did not start until after the Second World War.

Here are a few of the exhibits that caught my eye.

When a man spent the day working in the fields or fishing on the sea, he took his lunch with him. Americans talk, or used to talk, about a working man having a ‘lunch pail’ but I don’t think it was ever a literal bucket. It was in Iceland, though a bucket with a lid.

Lunch boxes, Skógar Museum

Whale vertebrae were useful objects. Among other uses they can be stools or chopping blocks, or hollowed out to become storage vessels.

Useful whale vertebrae, Skógar Museum

The hardy little Icelandic ponies, now often seen taking strings of tourist for a day’s pony trekking, were once an important means of transport. Icelandic ladies, who generally had to roll up their sleeves and get on with it, still preferred to ride side-saddle and the museum has a collection of more or less elaborate saddles.

Side-saddles, Skógar Museum

North African Barbary Corsairs were a major problem in the western Mediterranean in the 17th and 18th centuries and were not finally put out of business until 1830. They raided ships and coastal communities stealing goods and carrying off people to be enslaved. At their peak they raided across a much larger region, including Ireland and in 1627 they reached Iceland raiding Grindavik near Reykjavik and the Westman Islands just off the coast near Skógar, killing 50 and carrying off 400. I can thoroughly recommend Sally Magnusson’s moving 2018 novel The Sealwoman’s Gift which follows the fate of a fictional pastor’s wife and her two children who were taken to Algiers. To find out what happened to them, read the book but some 50 of the real abductees eventually returned to Iceland, ransomed by the Danish government (Iceland was then ruled by Denmark). The museum has a piece of embroidery worked by one of those who returned.

Embroidery, Skógar Museum

Skógar Open Air Museum

The museum has a transport section, which we found less interesting, and an open-air museum.

Skógar mean forest. Trees are not 'a thing' in Iceland, but there are enough in the background of the pictures below to justify the village name (at least by local standards).

Nearest to the main building is the ‘turf farm’, not really one farm but a collection of turf roofed buildings brought from different places and originally constructed between 1830 and 1896. These are the traditional structures or rural Iceland

Turf Farm, Skógar Museum

The baðstofa - the living/sleeping accommodation – looks reasonably comfortable…

Inside the Turf Farm, Skógar Museum

…other sections look more basic.

Shed at the Turf Farm, Skógar Museum

Nearby is less turf-y shed….

Hydro-electric plant, Skógar Museum

…inside is a Hydro-electric generator built in 1921. The raw material for hydro-electricity is abundant in Iceland and isolated communities took to DIY generation with great enthusiasm. 

Hydro-electric plant, Skógar Museum

A group of four buildings a little further from the main building consist of:

1) Skógar Church.

The undistinguished modern building was consecrated in 1998 and is quite big enough to accommodate the village’s entire population.

Skógar Church

The interior fittings and windows came from disused churches and are 19th century. The ‘ecclesiastical goods’ are 17th and 18th century. The older of the two bells was cast around 1600.

Skógar Church Interior

The candelabra are 16th century and the altarpiece dates from 1768.

Altarpiece and Candelabara, Skógar Church

2) The Skál Farmhouse and Gröf Storehouse (both from the Snæfellsnes peninsula, western Iceland)

Gröf Storehouse with Skál farmhouse behind, Skógar Museum

The 1870 turf storehouse from Gröf sits next to a wooden farmhouse built in 1919/20 in Skál and inhabited until 1970.

Skál Farmhouse kitchen, Skógar Museum

The farmhouse living accommodation was built over the cowshed for warmth - and, of course, fragrance.

Skál Farmhouse Interior, Skógar Museum

3) The Litli-Havammur Schoolhouse

The one-room schoolhouse was moved from near Reykjavik in 1999/2000. The setting forced me to take up a once familiar pose.

Schoolroom, Skógar Museum

4) Holt Farmhouse

Holt Farmhouse, Skógar Museum

The centrepiece is a farmhouse from nearby Holt. The first wooden house in the district, it was constructed in 1878 entirely of driftwood. The wall panels in the west parlour are from the hospital ship St. Paul which ran aground 1899.

Holt Farmhouse panelled interior, Skógar Museum

The house was inhabited until 1974.and was moved to Skógar Museum in 1980.

Holt farmhouse upper floor, Skógar Museum

*Þórður Tómasson

The impressive museum is the life’s work of Þórður Tómasson. He started it in 1949 in the basement of a school, nurtured it as it grew and remained curator until his retirement in 2014 aged 92. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2021. [Update: Sadly, he died on the 27th of January 2022].

To the Hotel Gulfoss

We left Skogar and, following our plan, continued along the ring road before turning north before Selfoss. Hitherto Iceland had been either Reykjavik or the ring road but we were now in the only part of the country where a network of roads links a scattering of villages. One of them, Fluðir, was even big enough to have a roundabout, at which we made the inevitable wrong turn.

By the time we reached our hotel we had left this thinnest haze of urban sprawl and were heading back into the wilderness. The Gulfoss was comfortable and pleasant inside, though outside it resembled a huge grey shed - this is the Icelandic way. There was little memorable about the restaurant except the prices – and this too is often the Icelandic way.

*All those asterisks: Odd spellings and strange letters

The Village and the river are spelled Skógar, the waterfall is Skógafoss. Where did the r go? The same place as the e in Exmouth.by the River Exe.

 

 

Icelandic retains two letters that English abandoned with the invention of printing.

The thorn (Þ, þ) is pronounced like the th in thick

The eth (Ð, ð) is like the th in there


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