A Tiny Town, a Big Waterfall and a Folk Museum
A Plan for the Day
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Lava field with a distant view of Mýrdalsjökull |
Vik
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| 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….
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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
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.
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| 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.
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| 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….
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| Turf Farm, Skógar Museum |
The baðstofa - the living/sleeping
accommodation – looks reasonably comfortable…
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| Inside the Turf Farm, Skógar Museum |
…other sections look more basic.
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| Shed at the Turf Farm, Skógar Museum |
Nearby is less turf-y shed….
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Skógar Church Interior |
The candelabra are 16th century and the altarpiece dates from 1768.
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| Altarpiece and Candelabara, Skógar Church |
2) The Skál Farmhouse and Gröf Storehouse (both from the Snæfellsnes peninsula, western Iceland)
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| 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.
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| Skál Farmhouse kitchen, Skógar Museum |
The farmhouse living accommodation was built over the cowshed for warmth - and, of course, fragrance.
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| 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.
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| Schoolroom, Skógar Museum |
4) Holt Farmhouse
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| 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.
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| Holt Farmhouse panelled interior, Skógar Museum |
The house was inhabited until 1974.and was moved to Skógar Museum in 1980.
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| 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
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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.
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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 |
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
