Iceland in Pictures

This is my favorite video from Iceland this year. Beautiful cinematography, wonderful stories and the amazing landscape of Hornstrandir.

The video, by Jordan Manley, documents a ski adventure around the remote Hornstrandir region in Iceland. Their mode of transportation from one fjord to the next was one of Iceland’s largest sailboats, Aurora. The ship’s captain, Siggi, is the one who tells the wonderful stories of the people who used to live in the now abandoned Hornstrandir. People have often asked me whether Icelanders truly believe in elves. I think Siggi’s answer in the video is perfect “I can’t say I believe in it, but my grandmother believed in it, and who am I to say that she is wrong.”

I recently dropped in for a cup of coffee when Aurora was in the Reykjavík harbor  The boat is beautiful, tough and practical. It’s quite different to see a sailboat rigged with ski racks though… I hope I’ll be able to go on one of their ski trips one day.

This is actually not the first ski movie to feature Aurora and the Hornstrandir region. Skiers in a recent Warren Miller movie described the area as “It was like every day, every place we went, it was the new coolest place I’ve ever been.”

Iceland Mountain Ski Expedition

A couple of friends of mine, Atli and Arnar of Trekking Travel, recently helped a group of pro skiers find new off piste ski routes in Iceland. Check out the video and see their Iceland photos at their blog, Explore Iceland 2011.

“It was like everyday, every place we went, it was the new coolest place I’ve ever been.” - From the Warren Miller movie

World famous off piste and freestyle skiersr came to Iceland to film the Warren Miller movie, Children of Winter. They explored the country by car and sailboat. The main part was the sailboat skiing with my friends on the Aurora sailboat. They headed out to the completely uninhabited Hornstrandir in northwest Iceland. Sailed into a fjord, skied some unskied lines, sailed into the next fjord and repeated. Using the boat as their “movable mountain hut”.

Läser du svenska kan du läsa om Aurora i svenska Outside.

Crazy Icelandic Waterskiing

Two Icelandic skiiers, Steingrímur and Anton, discover how far they are able to skate their skis into a lake in the Krafla volcano. I believe this lake might be a little bit over freezing, since it is in a very geothermally active area. Still I don’t think it is warm.

If you are interested in off piste skiing, then the Tröllaskagi area in north Iceland is prime. At this time of year, the weather tends to be good and you get great days of skiing from the peaks of mountains around 1.300 meters high and all the way down to sea level. This video is shot by a friend, Leifur Örn on the trip Mountains and Fjords of the North.

Fancy skiing in Iceland? 

Stuck in the snow on skis but driving through on a Land Rover

Here’s an interesting video I made after a trip about a year ago. We’re having some trouble skiing through the endless powder snow around Landmannalaugar before getting picked up. When we are finally picked up by the Land Rover he’s able to plow through the deep powder with amazing ease. I was guiding the Landmannalaugar in Winter cross country ski tour. You can see more pictures from it, mostly taken in better weather, in my gallery. And a video of the xc skiing on youtube

I really want to get into paragliding one day. Here’s a video from Tomasz Chrapek paragliding up in the Bláfjöll (E. Blue Mountains) ski area just outside Reykjavík. Nice views on a beautiful day. I was kind of expecting him to get wrapped around that radio tower in the beginning though.

(Source: icelandwantstobeyourfriend)