Iceland (8): A Day in Reykjavik

An Open-Air Museum, a Remarkable Church and the Sun Voyager

Árbæjarsafn, Árbær Open-Air Museum

Iceland

Reykjavik

On our final day in Reykjavik, we decided to spend the morning at an open-air museum.

In 1900 Reykjavik had a population of 78,000, by 1950 it had almost doubled and there was some concern that ‘old Reykjavik' was disappearing. In 1957, the city council agreed to create an open-air museum with old houses of historical interest. Árbær Farm and Inn, once a rest stop for people travelling to and from Reykjavík was by then abandoned and on the edge of the urban sprawl. It was the perfect place for a building museum.

I like building museums, we have visited several excellent examples in Denmark, Poland and the UK, but these are places that, unlike Iceland, have attractive vernacular buildings. Iceland is volcanic so the rocks are relatively recent and there is little building stone, no raw materials for brickmaking, and very few trees for timber. As a result, most Icelandic buildings look like they were bolted together from a flatpack and then painted in a spectrum of colours stretching from magnolia to grimy grey. The standard of interior decoration is high and they are very comfortable, but the outsides are almost uniformly drab. I was interested to see what a building museum could offer.

Árbæjarsafn was a twenty-minute drive from our city centre hotel. The buildings are well laid out and below are pictures of several of them and their contents – not too many, I am trying to keep this readable, and anyway it is not a guide book.

The ÍR House

In 1859 French Catholic missionaries arrived in Reykjavik, purchased some land and built a chapel. It was the first Catholic Church is Iceland since the Reformation. In 1897 the chapel was replaced by this prefabricated building imported from Norway.

The ÍR House, Árbæjarsafn

In 1929, the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the King made this building redundant and it was given to Reykjavik Sports Club (ÍR). It was relocated and became a sports hall. It now houses an exhibition of toys, and a reminder of its original purpose.

Inside the ÍR House, Árbæjarsafn

Laufásvegur 31

A timber house with corrugated iron cladding, Laufásvegur 31, was built in 1902 and was one of a number of prefabricated Swiss-chalet style buildings brought over from Norway at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century. It was owned by a merchant, Hannes Thorarensen, who lived there with his family until 1967. The Laufásvegur site was then bought by the British government for the construction of a new embassy and the house donated to the museum.

Laufásvegur 31, Árbæjarsafn

Árbær

The Árbær farmhouses are the only museum buildings still in their original locations. Built between 1891 and 1920, turf and stone were used in the oldest construction, but they are mostly timber.

Árbær Farm, the only building in its original location, Árbæjarsafn

Longer than they look from the outside, the living space was larger than we expected…

Árbær Farmhouse interior, Árbæjarsafn

…but seemed somewhat spartan.

Árbær Farmhouse interior, Árbæjarsafn

I am unsure the date of the current furnishing, but the farmhouse was occupied until 1948.

The Sheepshed

The turf house by the farm is undatable, and so is the sheepshed. Many of Iceland’s oldest buildings look like this and some are still in use for storing farm machinery or sheltering animals. In the past I presume they also provided human habitation, but I have encountered little information.

The sheepshed,.Árbæjarsafn. I think the roof needs mowing

Hábær

Hábær was built in Reykjavik in 1867 by a labourer called Jón Vigfússon. It was rebuilt in 1887. This style of house with stacked main walls and a timber roof was peculiar to Reykjavik and most examples were built in the final decades on the 19th century.

Hárbær, Árbæjarsafn

There is much more, but I think that is enough, they do look a bit samey. I will finish with a photo looking over some of the museum houses to modern housing on the hill behind.

Árbæjarsafn and the land beyond on a typically cool, drizzly August morning

The new apartments are, doubtless, more efficient and comfortable, but like the museum houses, functionality is all. Building in Iceland was and is about dealing with the conditions and the scarcity of resources, if you can manage that why bother about anything else.

Lunch

We drove back into central Reykjavik, parked the car near our hotel where it could stay until our crack of dawn departure tomorrow and walked up and down Austurstræti, our nearest road of restaurants. Our search for a cheapish lunch presented some difficulties, cheapish not being a word that has much traction in Iceland. Eventually we settled for a coffee and sharing bowl of haloumi fries, not health-food, but it would do.

Hallgrímskirkja

Skólavörðustigur

Full of carbohydrate, we walked to the end of ‘restaurant street’, crossed the main road into Bankastræti and 200m later turned into Skólavörðustigur.

Skólavörðustigur is dead straight and climbs gently for 500m to Hallgrímskírkja, the biggest church in Iceland. The pedestrianised end of the street was painted, permanently, with a rainbow flag in 2019 for Reykjavik Gay Pride Festival. I am also informed that for those who believe shopping is a recreational activity, this is the place to be.

Skólavörðustigur

The Church of Iceland

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland has a special place in the constitution. It is in full communion with the Lutheran Churches of other Nordic and Baltic Countries, and with the Church of England. The Bishop of Iceland, Agnes Sigurðardóttir, has a modest cathedral in central Reykjavik, the much larger Hallgrímskírkja is only a parish church. There is a story that the original design involved a smaller tower, but the height was increased to 75m to make it higher than the tower of the Catholic Cathedral.

Leif Ericsson

The statue in front is of Leif Erikson, the first European known to have visited the North American continent. He lived from around 970 to 1020 so it could be a good likeness, but nobody knows. Predating the church, it is the work of American sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder and was a gift from the United States to honour the 1930 Alþing Millennium.

Church Exterior

Work started on Hallgrimskirkja after World War II. It was completed in 1986 and named after the 17th century religious poet Hallgrímur Pétursson. The design, by State Architect Guðjón Samúelsson divides Reykjavik opinion. It supposedly represents Iceland’s rocks, mountains and glaciers, and although I can see the basalt columns, I can also see the likeness to a space shuttle.

Leif Erikson and Hallgrímskirkja

From a different angle, it looks like a barn behind an enormous phallus.

Hallgrímskirkja, a barn with a phallus

Having claimed earlier that Icelandic architecture makes little effort to be anything other than grimly functional, I have to give Hallgrimskirkja 10 out 10 for trying, even if I not sure I like it.

Church Interior

The interior is very plain, shockingly plain, Lynne thought, though I quite like a bit of minimalism.

Hallgrímskirkja interior

There is no argument about the organ, though; 15m high with over 5,000 pipes it is an impressive beast.

Organ, Hallgrímskirkja

Sólfar – The Sun Voyager

The older part of Reykjavik sits on a peninsula, and we made our way down to the northern shore where a footpath runs alongside the bay. Zig-zagging through residential streets was required to hit the 4-lane Highway 41 – which also follows the shore – at a crossing. On our way we passed some painted houses. I doubt these would be remarkable elsewhere, but here the unusually cheerful colours make a noticeable and very pleasant change.

Colourful houses, Reykjavik

Highway 41 was not as fierce as the map made it look – well this is Iceland, there’s not so many cars because there’s not so many people – and we followed the footpath westwards towards the tip of the peninsula.

Coastal path, Reykjavik

We soon we reached Sólfar, the Sun Voyager, a sleek contemporary portrayal of a Viking-age ship made of shiny silver steel (Rough Guide). The work of Jón Gunnar Árnason (1931-89), the design won a competition for an outdoor sculpture to celebrate Reykjavik’s 200th anniversary.

Sólfar, The Sun Voyager, Reykjavik

For the artist, Sólfar was not a Viking-age ship but a dream boat and an ode to the sun [representing] the promise of undiscovered territory and a dream of hope, progress and freedom. (Icelandtravel). Jón Gunnar (I am not claiming I knew him, that is the correct formal way to refer to an Icelander) was seriously ill with leukaemia and did not live to see the sculpture installed in 1990. Some have argued that Sun Voyager should be seen as a vessel that transports souls to the realm of the afterlife. (icelandtravel, again). The artist lived long enough to hear this and deny it, but it does have a ‘sailing into the sunset’ feel.

There is no ‘correct’ interpretation, each viewer can make their own. I think this is an extraordinarily beautiful object and am happy to believe several contradictory interpretations simultaneously.

Dinner - and Icelandic Food in General

For our last meal in Iceland we returned to the place where we had started, the café offering the ‘World’s Worst Pizza.’ It is actually a glorified fish and chip shop, though the man of eastern Mediterranean appearance who seems to be in charge actually offers, by local standards, a wide-ranging menu. Lynne chose falafel and a Greek salad while I went for fish and chips, something I rarely order except at the annual Fish and Chip Walk. The chips were good but the cod was like no cod I have ever eaten before; light, fluffy sumptuous. I have a brief list of culinary Pythagorean ideals, the dishes or drinks of which every other version is a pale copy. I had never thought a piece of battered cod could enter such a list, but I was wrong. (Dinner at Hambleton Hall contains a complete list of these ideals.)

Sign outside a Reykjavik Restaurant

Nobody goes to Iceland for the food. Menus are brief and vary little, the cooking while always competent, lacks flair and the prices are eye-watering. But they do have some of the freshest fish available. We always enjoy the fresh fish in Portugal, but this is fresh white fish from cold northern waters and that has never come our way before. The arctic char at the Magma Hotel, Kirkjubæjarklaustur, the plaice at Borganes and now this battered cod will be treasured memories.

Epilogue

And so, our 8 days in Iceland come to an end. It has been a memorable journey; the country has a stark beauty where the traveller is forever being reminded of the immense power of nature. I have long been a fan of desert landscapes, in some ways Iceland is a desert in green and white rather than the usual yellow and brown.

The built environment is less pleasing, but resources are thin on the ground and just to live and thrive in this place is some sort of triumph, and they do thrive, Iceland is affluent and remarkably well organised. And there is not very much built environment, the island of Great Britain is twice the size of Iceland yet has 160 times the population, so the ugliness comes in small and almost ignorable portions.

The climate is generally dismal. We had a wonderful day of warm, gentle sunshine when we visited Þingvellir and I liked the long light evenings, but far too often Iceland’s August was reminiscent of late October in North Staffordshire, itself not noted for the balmiest of climates.

Will we return? Well, there is more to see so I cannot rule it out, but there are other places with more pressing invitations and warmer sunshine which need to be visited first, but I am very glad we went there once.

Iceland

Part 1 Introduction to Reykjavik
Part 2 West from Reykjavik along Route 1
Part 3 A Calving Glacier, a Basalt Pavement and an Otherworldly Canyon
Part 4 Vik, Skógafoss and Skógar
Part 5 The Golden Circle, Gullfoss, Geysir and Þingvellir
Part 6 The Snæfellsnes Peninsula: Whale Watching and Fermented Shark
Part 7: Covid Testing, Grindavik and the Blue Lagoon
Part 8: A Day in Reykjavik

Iceland (7) The Blue Lagoon, Covid Testing and Grindavik

Covid Formalities, a Grim Town and a Notorious Tourist Trap

Skyr

Iceland

We had stuff to do this morning, which meant a half-day off from the hard work of being on holiday.

But first there was breakfast. Fermented shark apart, Icelandic food specialities are thin on the ground. Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy describes three stages of civilization:

1. Will we eat?
2. What shall we eat?
3. Where shall we eat?

British civilization, such that it is, spent an inordinately long time in stage 2. Iceland, by contrast lingered long in Stage 1, the climate hampers almost all food production (except fermented shark) and geological instability can devastate harvests – the 1785 Laki eruption (see Part 3) poisoned the grassland almost wiping out the country’s farm animals and causing a famine that killed a quarter of the human population.

Iceland’s prosperity is relatively recent and in a couple of generations they skipped from Stage 1 to Stage 3. Stage 2, the one they hardly bothered with, is where most local food specialities are born.

They do, though, boast one venerable native product; skyr - described as a ‘fresh sour milk cheese’ - was mentioned in Egil’s Saga so it has been produced for at least 800 years. We had some (freshly made, not 800 years old) with our breakfast at Borganes and it undoubtedly sits somewhere in the yoghurt-y part of the dairy spectrum. It has been promoted in the UK of late, but we already have ordinary yoghurt, Greek yoghurt, crème fraiche and fromage frais and I cannot see that it is distinctive enough to claim a niche in that crowded area (sorry, Iceland, but I might be wrong.)

Skyr (presumably named after the leader of the Labour Party)
This pot, I notice, is made by ARLA, the British Dairy Farmers Coop and is 'Icelandic style yoghurt', so not the real deal

Covid Testing

Stuffed with skyr, and other breakfast goodies, we set out on the 80km drive south from Borganes to Reykjavik. We were on Iceland’s ring road, Route 1, so although it had only one lane in each direction, it was well-made and in good repair. Being important, it does not circumnavigate the two substantial inlets on the way but crosses a 520m long bridge immediately south of Borganes and dives into a 5.7km tunnel under the Hvalfjörður at Akranes.

From Borganes south to Reykjavik and then down to Grindavik on the Reykjanes Peninsula

Reykjavik

When international travel re-opened the British government produced a short green list of countries that could be visited without requiring quarantine. Not all the green list were attractive destinations, South Georgia, for example, has few facilities for tourist who are not penguins, and no permanent population.

Iceland was the best bet (and is much warmer than South Georgia), but there were still hoops to jump through including a covid test before arriving and another before leaving. We had duly made an appointment at the appropriate clinic and followed our sat nav to a part of Reykjavik we had not previously visited.

A long row of large, ugly shops cowered behind several ranks of parked cars. This is where you come to buy electrical goods, furniture, longboats and other necessities of Icelandic life (I may have made one of those up). The sky was grey, the air was chilly and the drizzle intermittent as we found a parking space and walked towards the clinic. It would have been a poor day in November, but this was August.

The queue outside the door marked ‘covid testing’ stretched all the way to the corner and round it, 100 metres or more. We joined the end. Forty minutes later we were close enough to the door to read a small sign pointing those, like us, requiring only a rapid antigen test to a nearby, unmarked, door. There was no queue there, after wasting forty minutes we were in and out in less than five.

Grindavik

Grindavik

With our nasal passages thoroughly probed, we had a couple of hours to find lunch and reach the Blue Lagoon in accordance with the timed ticket purchased for us by Regent Holidays of Bristol. We decided to go to Grindavík.

Fifty kilometres from Reykjavik and six from the Blue Lagoon, Grindavik is the chief town of the Grindavíkurbær Municipality which covers the southern half of the Reykjanes Peninsula. The town has around 2,500 inhabitants, making it a substantial settlement by Icelandic standards.

We approached through a regimented residential district, straight roads lined with white, mainly single storey buildings, many resembling static caravans. I have observed before that Icelandic vernacular architecture is relentlessly functional, though, judging by the hotels we have visited, comfortable and well-designed within. Iceland’s population has increased fivefold since 1900, doubling since 1960, so the housing stock is mostly modern - there very few ‘traditional’ buildings outside museums.

We missed the town centre and reached the docks. Grindavik is an important fishing port, but all the boats must have been at sea as activity at the docks, was notable only by its absence.

Grindavik harbour - a hive of activity

We eventually located what I felt might be the main street. Papa’s Restaurant, on the left, looked basic, but provided us with a tolerable pizza and a good strong cup of coffee at reasonable prices. During lunch, texts from the clinic gave us the all-clear and the magic barcodes required to board a plane

Central Grindavik, Papa's to the left, Salt fish Museum to the right

A few boards around town advertised Grindavik’s Salt Fish Museum. Signage on the building must have been be minimal as it was opposite Papa’s and we never noticed. It must have limited appeal but we might have dropped in had we seen it. As regular visitors to Portugal, we are well aware of the Portuguese love affair with bacalhau (dried salt cod), traditionally obtained from Icelandic waters, which started in the age before refrigeration and continues to this very day.

Another shot of Grindavik harbour. It is no more interesting than the first, but it breaks up the text

From the 16th century until their demise in 1830, Barbary Pirates were a major nuisance in the Mediterranean. They attacked merchant shipping and raided coastal towns and villages to enslave their populations. Their activity was at its peak in the first half of the 17th century, sometimes reaching beyond the Mediterranean. In the summer of 1627 they made several raids on Iceland. 15 people were taken from Grindavik in June and transported into slavery in Algiers. This was minor compared with the 200 taken from the nearby Westman Islands in July. There is more about this in Part 4: Skógar.

The Blue Lagoon

It was time to make the short journey to the Blue Lagoon, easily identifiable from most of the peninsula by the plume of steam hanging above the lagoon and its associated power station.

The Svartsengi Geothermal Power Station was built in 1976, Svartsengi meaning black meadow is a whimsical description of the Reykjanes lava field. Superheated water from beneath the lava runs through turbines to make electricity. The plant has expanded and now has 8 steam and brine wells and 5 steam wells producing 75MW of clean electricity. It also pumps heating water to the 21,000 homes on the peninsula.

The 'black meadow' Reykjanes Peninsula outside the Blue Lagoon

The salty, silica rich water cannot be recycled and run-off produced pools in the lava. These attracted bathers and the minerals were found to alleviated the symptoms of psoriasis. A purpose built bathing area was excavated in 1987. In 1992 it became ‘The Blue Lagoon’ and has developed into one of Iceland’s biggest tourist attractions with 1.3 million visitors in 2017.

We duly joined the crowd and shuffled forward until we received our towels, locker keys and instructions. “Shower before entering the pool,” we were told. “Wash every part of yourself thoroughly.” A young man somewhat ahead of us in the queue whined loudly, “but I prefer to shower afterwards.” Had I been closer I would have told him that I thought that everybody washing before entering the pool was a good idea, and nobody said he could not shower after as well, but I was too far away and do not like to raise my voice. What annoyed me was his tone of entitlement – it is as irritating in a would be bather as in a prime minister [Update July 2022: Resigned, soon to be ex-prime minister].

Once washed and changed we met beside the trough provided for punters to wade from the heated interior to the outdoor pool.

The water is chest deep, 37-39°C and milky blue because of its high silica content. This forms a soft white mud on the bottom which is surprisingly pleasant to walk through. The water is rich in algae and salts, but has an almost neutral pH.

You can sit on the steps round the edge and treat it like a huge communal hot tub, or you can wander around on foot (nobody swims) to the various nooks and crannies of the large irregularly shape pool – and that’s about it.

There is a bar and your entry comes with a free drink, so here is Lynne standing in what for her is uncomfortably deep water, clinging on to a glass of prosecco.

Lynne at the Blue Lagoon

I had popped back to the changing room to fetch my camera for the picture above. Then Lynne got out of the pool to return the compliment. As I eased myself back in my foot slipped resulting in a more precipitate re-entry than intended and a brief immersion in the milky water. Some people spend their time slapping the silica mud all over their skin in the belief it will do them good, I managed to smear it all over my hair by accident. Fortunately, I had handed both my camera and wine-glass to Lynne before my plunge.

Malevolent water-sprite spotted at the Blue Lagoon.

And that was it – and we most certainly had second showers before departure. The Blue Lagoon is a vast tourist trap, ensnaring nearly every first-time visitor, we almost felt we had to go otherwise we would not properly have been to Iceland. But was The Blue Lagoon worth its £50+ a head entry fee? Not for us, it wasn't and and there are other, less commercial geothermal pools dotted around the countryside.

Back to Reykjavik

Back in Reykjavik we checked in to the hotel we had used last week and in the evening, again walked up Austurstræti, a street of restaurants. We found a pub-like place where the food turned out to be simple but wholesome. Why we suddenly felt we should have two beers each, for the one and only time in Iceland, I do not know, but we must have been feeling wealthy

Iceland

Part 1 Introduction to Reykjavik
Part 2 West from Reykjavik along Route 1
Part 3 A Calving Glacier, a Basalt Pavement and an Otherworldly Canyon
Part 4 Vik, Skógafoss and Skógar
Part 5 The Golden Circle, Gullfoss, Geysir and Þingvellir
Part 6 The Snæfellsnes Peninsula: Whale Watching and Fermented Shark
Part 7: Covid Testing, Grindavik and the Blue Lagoon
Part 8: A Day in Reykjavik

Iceland (6): Whale Watching and Fermented Shark on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Stykkishólmur, Bjarnarhöfn and Ólafsvik

North to Snæfellnes

Iceland

After breakfast we drove from our hotel on the tip of the small Borganes peninsula, turned north and after 40 minutes or so reached the base of the much larger Snæfellsnes peninsula which protrudes some 90km into the North Atlantic. The names of both locations end in ‘-nes’, meaning a headland or peninsula, like the English ‘ness.’ Fell means hill or mountain as it does in northern England while Snæ derives from an old Norse word for snow. Snaefell is also the name of the highest point on the Isle of Man.

Snæfellsnesjökull at the tip of the peninsula is a dormant volcano topped with a glacial ice-cap (jökull means ‘glacier’). It was through this volcano that Professor Otto Lidenbrock started his descent in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Snæfellsnes Peninsula (Snæfellsnesjökull is misspelt on the map)
Map by  Maximilian Dörrbecker reproduced under CC BY-SA 2.0

Baulárvallavatn

We arrived on the above map on Highway 54 and turned right to cross the peninsula on Highway 56 aiming for Stykkishólmur as our first destination.

Highway 56 across the Snæfellsnes peninsula

Halfway across is a small lake called Baulárvallavatn and just beyond is a pull off and viewpoint where it is possible to stand atop basalt columns and block out a small part of the lava-lands behind...

The viewpoint near Baulárvallavatn

…but only a small part as they stretch in more than one direction.

Lava plain near Baulárvallavatn

Stykkishólmur

Stykkishólmur

Earning its living from fishing and tourism, Stykkishólmur is a village with just over 1,000 inhabitants that has spread around its harbour at the tip of a small peninsula on the north coast of Snaefellsnes.

On a small map the peninsula appears a solid piece of land, but aerial photographs reveal a landscape that looks shattered, with jagged shards of green land set in a gunmetal sea. In reality it is the volcanic land which is invading the sea, though the sea fights back in a long, slow war of attrition. It is not immediately obvious from above that Stykkishólmur is not on an island but after a straight-line crossing of the flat moor-like land at the base of the peninsula the small but well-made road loops round several inlets and finds its way without need of a bridge.

Stykkishólmur Harbour

Like most Icelandic villages Stykkishólmur is a loose collection of unlovely buildings, knitted together by far more services than might be expected in a place of its size.

Stykkishólmur

They are, though, particularly proud of the ‘Norwegian House’. Constructed in 1832 it was Iceland’s first wood-frame residence with two full-sized storeys. That seems very late, but the wood had to be imported from Norway (hence the name), elsewhere it grow on trees, but not here. It serves as the regional museum, which has mixed reviews, but we had limited time and another museum we wanted to visit.

Norwegian House, Stykkishómur

At 65° 04´ North, Stykkishólmur is the most northerly* point we have ever reached.

Bjarnarhöfn

Bjarnarhöfn, a 20-minute drive from Stykkishólmur, is beside the coast at the end of a minor road off Highway 54. It consists of a church, a farm, maybe two, and a shark museum. This is enough for it to feature on the Snaefellsnes map (above).

Bjarnarhöfn

I am no expert, but I doubt that much of a living can be wrung from a few damp fields between the mountains and a cold sea….

The hay has been cut, Bjarnarhöfn

…and the ‘museum’ is more a random collection of bits and pieces than a carefully curated exhibition…

Shark museum, Bjarnarhöfn

…but that is not what it is really about, though the elaborate tessellation of the floor tiles provides a few minutes distraction. The raison d’être of the shark museum is hakarl.

Shark museum, Bjarnarhöfn

Hakarl – Fermented Greenland Shark

Greenland shark have no kidneys and circulate their urine through their bodies as antifreeze. Although this makes their meat poisonous, fishing for Greenland shark was big business in the 19th century, as their fat produces large quantities of high-grade oil. In those far off days Greenland sharks lit the homes of Icelanders in the long winter nights, their lamps little more than an oil reservoir with an inserted wick.

Once the oil had been extracted, the highly toxic carcass was buried to prevent dogs or farm animals eating them. During one of Iceland’s occasional famines – harvests were variable and food could not be imported during winter months when ships did not sail – a starving person exhumed and then consumed such a shark. They must have been desperate, and were probably unaware that the fermentation of the corpse had destroyed the toxin. When they did not die, old Icelanders, firmly of the opinion that what does not kill you makes you stronger, saw an opportunity.

Abundant cheap hydro and geothermal energy means nobody has fished for Greenland shark for a century or more, but they are occasionally landed after becoming entangled in nets. Such sharks are brough here, their heads and guts removed and they undergo a more modern and hygienic version of being buried for six to twelve weeks, depending on the season. The fish is now safe to eat, but contains too much ammonia to be palatable, so it is cut into strips and hung an open shed at the back of the farm.

Walking up to the curing shed, Bjarnarhöfn

Here fresh air wafts away the ammonia and finishes the curing process.

Curing Hakarl, Bjarnarhöfn

After several months dangling in the breeze, it is vacuum packed and sold to punters.

Vacuum packed hakarl ready for sale, Bjarnarhöfn (750 Is Krona = £4.50 = US $5.80)

Tasting Hakarl

Two bowls sat on the table in the tasting room. One contained small cubes of hakarl, the other slightly larger (dice-sized) cubes of rye bread.

Wikipedia quotes a list of culinary luminaries, including Gordon Ramsey, Anthony Bourdain and Ainsley Harriott describing the horrors of Hakarl. We preferred to start from a different position: if the good people of Iceland think this is fine traditional food, then we should approach it with an open mind (and mouth).

Lynne skewered cubes of hakarl and rye bread on a cocktail stick (the usual way to eat Hakarl) and had a go…

Lynne eats hakarl and rye bread, Bjarnarhöfn

…I did the same. It looks like cheese in the vacuum packs and the rind is removed in the same way. It softer than a hard cheese but there is something blue cheesy about the flavour, which is actually surprisingly mild. It worked well with the earthy, nutty rye bread and the contrast of textures was pleasing. Although I could have done without the background of ammonia, I was wondering what all the fuss was about.

It was suggested we should then try again, but without the rye bread. So, we did.

Just hakarl, Bjarnarhöfn. The mad starring eyes and the nutty professor hair really help to get the stuff down

It starts soft and blue cheesy, perhaps more blue than cheese and then suddenly the ammonia kicks in, a smell rather than a flavour, but it takes up residence in your nose and your mouth and quickly becomes overwhelming. This is not how food should taste or smell. The rye bread had magically neutralised the ammonia; either Gordon Ramsey and others ignored the rye bread affect, or it was never suggested to them.

Hakarl is widely available throughout the year, but is largely consumed as part of a selection of traditional Icelandic foods at the midwinter festival of þorrablót. There is an element of machismo about eating it, like ordering the hottest vindaloo, but with rye bread and a shot of brennivin (see Introduction to Rejkyavik), the caraway flavoured vodka that is Iceland’s national drink, it would be tolerable (though we had to imagine the brennivin).

Grundarfjörður

Grundarfjörður

We returned to Highway 54 reaching it in the middle of a lava field. I have no photo (it was just another lava field) but this one features in the Eyrbyggja saga – another tale of a multi-generational feuding - first written down in the 13th century. The lava field is called Berserkjahraun as two beserkers were killed here by their master after one of them fell in love with the master’s daughter. Beserkers, men who fought in a trance-like fury, were valuable soldiers but not, apparently, son-in-law material.

Further along, the road picked its away around and sometimes across the many inlets of the sea…

Bjarnarhöfn to Grundarfjörður

…until it reached Grundarfjörður – more a bay than a fjord. The village, despite having less than 1,000 inhabitants, is one of Iceland’s most important fishing ports, and is also a stop for cruise ships. Kirkjufell (Church Mountain), the hill behind the harbour, is claimed to be Iceland’s most photographed mountain.

Grundarfjörður and Kirkjufell

Beyond Grundarfjörður, as the highway continued towards Olafsvik we saw Kirkjufell from the south. This very different aspect features as Arrowhead Mountain in Game of Thrones series 6 & 7 when the Hound and company travel north of the wall.

Kirkjufell from the south

Ólafsvik

Ólafsvik

Ólafsvik is 25km west of Grundarfjörður.

In 1687 authorization from the King of Denmark made Ólafsvik Iceland’s first certified trading centre and for two centuries commercial vessels sailed directly from here to Denmark. It is less important now but still has a population over 1,000 and claims to be the westernmost settlement of that size in Europe (though geologically western Iceland is on the North American tectonic plate). Ólafsvik remains an important local centre for the fishing and agricultural industries and for tourism, including whale watching, the reason for our presence.

After locating the relevant company on the docks and finding a place to park, we walked back into the village. There was no time for lunch, but coffee seemed important.

Back on the dock, other would-be whale watchers had arrived and we were soon being kitted up for our afternoon. One size fits all, a bit tight around top, but plenty of folds round the ankles.

Ready for the whales, but looking a tad uncertain

We shuffled on board,...

Ready to board, Ólafsvik

...the crew cast off and we chugged out of the harbour.

Leaving Ólafsvik harbour

The boat’s crew were experienced and Icelandic, the whale watching crew young and British (students with a holiday job?). It was not long before the lookout at the top rail found a humpback whale. Typically 14-17m long and weighing around 40t, humpbacks were once hunted to the verge of extinction, but are now relatively common.

You have to be looking in the right direction when the whale rolls its back above the surface of the water, or you miss it. To take a photo your camera must be raised and pointing in the appropirate (though largely unspecified) direction at precisely the right moment. To photograph anything except water requires persistence and luck.

Humpback whale - the fruit of persistence and luck

The photo below appears to be of a group of people waiting for a whale to appear, but the froth of white water in the centre suggests they (and I) have just missed one. It is clear that those on the starboard rail were rather lower than I was on the port rail. The sea looks calm, there are no waves, but there was a swell. The boat heeled over further and I found myself looking down not just at my fellows but at the two-metre trough of water beyond. I knew what would happen next, there would be a lurching slide into that trough, a wallow at the bottom and then we would go up the other side and repeat. My stomach wanted none of it.

Just missed a whale

I headed aft to a bench across the beam of the boat and sat down to get myself together. I would fail spectacularly.

While I concentrated on my discomfort the lad on the roof kept up his commentary. Dolphins were buzzing the whale, swimming alongside and jumping over it, just, it appeared, to be annoying. Lynne’s luck and persistence gave us a picture of two dolphin fins.

Dolphins

I have done more than my share of travelling and some of it has been by sea. I have crossed the North Sea on a blowy autumn day and the English Channel in all sorts of conditions, and never before been sea sick so I was unprepared for what happened next. Perhaps the member of the crew who tapped me on the shoulder had a fair idea. She offered me a sympathetic smile and a white paper bag.

I had not expected it to take over my whole body. First there was a tingling in my hands and feet which grew to take over my arms and legs. After a while my skin began to crawl, my skull felt like it was shrinking and the little hairs on my back and neck bristled. Then I deployed the white bag, not that I needed it, I had gone without lunch. Sounding like a particularly demented hellfire preacher speaking in tongues, I heard myself shouting very loudly and totally incoherently into a paper bag. I had largely lost control of my body and totally lost control of my vocal cords.

Then it stopped and I felt a little better. The look-out became very excited when the whale breached. Everybody else sounded thrilled, I felt a flicker of interest, then realised the tingling was returning.

I went round that block a couple of times, eventually surrendering my coffee and fermented shark (too much information?) and then settled into grim endurance. I began to wonder how quickly I would recover once back on dry land; would it be like shellfish poisoning (some symptoms in common!) which lasted days, or would there be instant relief like altitude sickness.

For those feeling well, the sea here is beautiful with or without whales

We were out for three hours, the first 20 minutes I quite enjoyed, the last 2½ hours were dire. Many people had spoken to me about whale watching, some with enthusiasm, others with awe, I must be a disappointment to them. I dislike hyperbole, so I will merely say, with total confidence, that they were the worst 2½ hours I have ever spent in Iceland. Lynne enjoyed it, though.

Recovery, Return and Dinner

Despite my earlier doubts, I felt much better once I had planted my feet on the solidly immobile dockside and soon I felt well enough to start the 90-minute drive back to Borganes. I did stop on the way for a brief rest, heaving tires you out, but we arrived safely and having had no lunch I was ready for dinner.

We had eschewed the hotel restaurant yesterday, it was an elderly, dowdy building and we feared the restaurant might be the same, but although Borganes offers much fast food there are few proper restaurants, so we risked it.

We soon found we had seriously underestimated the hotel restaurant. I had the catch of the day which was the fattest, freshest plaice I it has ever been my pleasure to encounter.

Plaice, Borganes Hotel

Lynne found her Icelandic lamb very acceptable, too.

Icelandic lamb, Borganes Hotel

I retired to bed with the strange feeling that I was one of the few people to have set out to eat fermented shark and watch whales, and enjoyed the shark more than the whale.

*Our most southerly point is Malacca in Malaysia at 2° 12´N - we have yet to visited the southern Hemisphere.
The blog's most westerly point is the Crooked River High Bridge in Oregon, USA at 121° 12´W, though unblogged we have been to La Push, Washington, USA at 124° 38´W
Our most easterly point is Kaesong, North Korea at 126° 33´E.

Iceland

Part 1 Introduction to Reykjavik
Part 2 West from Reykjavik along Route 1
Part 3 A Calving Glacier, a Basalt Pavement and an Otherworldly Canyon
Part 4 Vik, Skógafoss and Skógar
Part 5 The Golden Circle, Gullfoss, Geysir and Þingvellir
Part 6 The Snæfellsnes Peninsula: Whale Watching and Fermented Shark
Part 7: Covid Testing, Grindavik and the Blue Lagoon
Part 8: A Day in Reykjavik