Iceland in Pictures

Nice story. I know completely what you mean by wandering around the black desert searching for a plane wreck and I guess the photo was taken by this Siggi.

myicelandic:

Iceland, a place where five of us met for the very first time and spending 8 days together on the ring road.

I’d never forget how we survived the stormy rain in Gulfoss, how we wandered around the black desert searching for the plane wreck, how we fell off from the snowmobile, how we got through the Oxi bypass crisis and the dark night seeking for northern light in Akureyri.

See you guys in other part of the world, maybe Iceland again!

< Pic taken by Siggi

I sometimes live here

Here’s my tent pitched at the foot of Hvannadalshnúkur, Iceland’s highest peak on top of Vatnajökull, Europe’s largest glacier. More photos from the trip and a video.

Hey that is completely pronounceable! This is Skaftafellsjökull, part of the great Vatnajökull glacier. Let’s break it down a bit. Skafti is a mans name and fell is a word for a mountain, typically used for small mountains or mountains that stand alone. Skaftafell therefor means the “mountain of Skafti” and is the mountain on the left. Jökull is glacier and Skaftafellsjökull is the “glacier of Skaftafell”

Anglophones can pronounce it something like this: Ska-fta-fedls-yeah-kudl. Ska as in the music style, with fta added. The double LL is tough but something like the ddle sound in cuddle. Jökull is tough. The first part is something like a victorious yeah sound, kind of with a u in it as if a deep voiced wrestler was shouting it with clenched fists… and then the cuddle thing again.

Think you got that?

kaemila:

A lovely unpronounceable glacier in the south of Iceland

(via v1xens)

You know I actually walk along this path every day on my way to work. Although it is part of the daily routine, I guess you could have a lot of worse things in your daily routine.

Check out other great Iceland photos by UnaLei.

(Source: gotdreamstoremember)

One of my own pictures for a change. This is Hvannadalshnúkur, at 2111m it is Iceland’s highest peak. The picture is of my camp there while skiing around the summit caldera.

The peak sits on the brim of the Öræfajökull glacier, part of Europe’s largest glacier Vatnajökull. A huge volcanic caldera filled up with glacier ice. The volcano is actually one of the most powerful active volcanoes in the world. Luckily it is not too active though. There have been only two eruptions in it since Iceland was settled, in 1362 and 1727. The most recent one was not too serious, thought to have killed two people. But the one in 1362 is perhaps the most devastating eruption Icelanders have experienced, competing with the Laki eruption in 1783 (tough century…). It killed everybody in a very large surrounding area and left what had been a prosperous farming area, uninhabitable for decades. The output of ash was over 10 cubic kilometers, at least ten times greater than from the famous Eyjafjallajökull eruption last year. However the ash was not the only danger. The major problem was water. When an eruption occurs under glacier ice, the volcano must melt through the ice, causing massive flash floods.

What people therefor most likely experienced was something like this. Massive earthquakes that caused houses and shelters to collapse. This was followed by a powerful rumble from the mountains, strong sulfur smell from the rivers (like rotten eggs) and a glimpse of glowing lava up on the peaks. The distant red glow would soon disappear as the black cloud of ash covered the farms and glowing rocks up to a meter in diameter rained on the lowlands. Visibility would have been limited to only a few meters when the massive flash floods of glacial melt-water, icebergs and volcanic mud came charging down the valleys. This would have been the last thing these poor souls experienced before being washed away or blanketed under meters of ash. It was said that there was only one survivor in the whole Litla Hérað (E. Little Shire) area, later named Öræfi (E. Wasteland).

Quite a wonderful feeling to sleep on top of such lurking power :)

The Grímsvötn Eruption is Over

Well hopefully at least. The eruption began calming down yesterday evening and has dwindled down to a puff of steam today. A group of people drove across the glacier last night to experience the last breaths of the volcano. Kristján Kristjánsson from Mountain Taxi was part of the group and took the above picture. It shows the middle of the crater burping up small spouts of steam and ash. This small crater in the middle is essentially a new island. Grímsvötn is a very peculiar volcano, as it is situated in a lake under a glacier. Lakes of course do not normally form under glaciers, but due to the constant geothermal heat, there is a large lake under the ice cap. This lake is usually not exposed, but covered completely by the glacier. It is only exposed when an eruption occurs.

I have been up to Grímsvötn a few times, but never shortly after an eruption. I hope I’ll have an opportunity to go up there this summer. On top of the volcano, there is a mountain hut, the most unique mountain hut in Iceland. To get there you either have to ski for 2-3 days or drive up on super modified 4x4s. Once you get there you can go into the warm hut and relax. The Icelandic Glaciology Society which owns the hut has harnessed the heat of the volcano to keep the hut warm all year long. It even has a hot sauna heated up by the volcano. The temperature of the sauna varies depending on the activity in the volcano. I’m guessing that in the past few days, the sauna has been very very hot.

Oh nice picture. As I just posted with more detailed info, an eruption has just begun in Iceland. Don’t worry, eruptions in Grímsvötn are quite routine and do not pose any danger to people. They are very remote underneath the Vatnajökull glacier, Europe’s largest glacier.

soupsoup:

Iceland Volcano by @valurthor via @rafat

Fjallkirkjan (E. The Mountain Church)

Perhaps my best picture ever. It’s actually amazing how cropping can change a picture. Before being cropped as a panorama, it wasn’t all that great. But the Fjallkirkjan is an awesome jagged peak on the Öræfajökull glacier. My favorite place in Iceland, might actually be precisely where I was standing when I took this picture. You can see a video of this trip.

XC skiing on Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull, Part of the 8 day Vatnajökull XC ski tour in Iceland. The peak we are arriving at is Hvannadalshnúkur, Iceland’s highest summit. My own picture.

(Source: Flickr / steinarsig)

The downside to many days of cross country skiing.

(Source: Flickr / steinarsig)