Did you know that the Icelandic horse has a thick winter coat that it sheds in the summer?
The Icelandic horse has been completely isolated in Iceland for over a thousand years. Not a single horse has been brought to the country in all this time. This has allowed it to adapt to the harsh environment and become a strong breed of its own.
Photo by Skarpi.
(via nicelandic)
Like the thought. I often look at the Icelandic landscape and imagine what it was like before anybody came here. Of course, it looks mostly the same (except for some new volcanoes), but nobody had seen it. And imagine all of the spectacular eruptions, not disturbing any flights, the flowing waterfalls with nobody to see them and the boiling hot springs with nobody bathing. Actually imagine right now, a boiling hot spring all alone up in the Icelandic highlands, patiently steaming, summer and winter, night and day while it waits for you to come have a bath.
Photograph by Orsolya and Erlend Haarberg
When Hverfjall erupted 2,500 years ago, no one saw it—no one lived in Iceland. On a March evening photographer Orsolya Haarberg watched alone as a north wind scoured Mývatn lake’s thin ice, sweeping snow into a drift that looked like a path to the crater.
Reykjavík Winter Lights Festival Opening Scene
A few days ago I posted some great photos of the Hallgrímskirkja church in Reykjavík lit up for the Reykjavík Winter Lights Festival. Well here’s the video. Quite a show.
The music you hear in the video is the music that was actually played on scene. It is music by Icelandic band, For a Minor Reflection.
An Icelandic horse in its thick winter coat. Photo by Gígja
(via 7000stars)
The picture I posted of a car full of snow in Iceland yesterday has been spreading around 9gag as well. As good and plausible as the story was, It turned out to be old. This picture of the door is authentic though (as authentic as viral media gets anyways) I had a look in 9gag again and there I found this picture of a doorway entirely blocked by snow. This is what happens when the wind starts blowing, it takes redistributes it like crazy, clearly packing it up against the door in this case.
There’s a saying in Iceland “If you don’t like the weather in Iceland, just wait fifteen minutes.” This often holds true, because since we are a small mountaineous island in the North Atlantic, nothing is stable. Even though we’ve had all this crazy snow in the past few days and an unusually snowy winter overall, the forecast is for up to 11°C and rain this weekend. This will cause lots of problems as all that snow melting this fast will clog up drains, filling the streets with snowmelt. Everybody will have to be careful to clear away their drains to prevent their cellars from flooding.
Here’s another pic from Reykjavík yesterday, found on 9gag.
As I reported earlier, many Icelanders are stuck at home, snowed in. This gives them a lot of time to hang out on Facebook, allowing this picture to quickly spread. The picture, apparently of a car owned by a guy in the town of Hafnarfjörður (just outside Reykjavík), has been shared by about 500 people.
The thing is, in Iceland it doesn’t snow or rain vertically, but due to wind it tends to come in sideways. This means that even a small opening in the car’s window allowed it to fill with snow in a short period of time. The funny thing is that plenty of those who shared the picture have added that similar things have happened to them or their friends before.
![Iceland winter conditions
[Update] Check out the TV’s report on the weather. Just click play. You may not understand the language, but you can see what the weather is like in Reykjavík and on the road to the airport. Not every day that you see snowcats driving around downtown.
As I posted before, Iceland has had a serious winter this year. Somehow it just keeps getting worse and worse or better and better. Depends on your point of view. A significant part of Icelanders are completely snowed in today. In Reykjavík, only the largest streets have been cleared forcing many to either stay at home or walk or ski to work. Even many schools have been encouraging parents to keep their children home for the day. This I can tell you is very unusual, it’s not like in much of the US where schools simply close on snow days. Icelandic kids usually just march on to school, no matter the weather.
The map above shows the state of the roads at the moment, according to the Icelandic Road Authority. As you see, there are no clear roads in the country.
Green = Clear
Yellow = Patches of ice
Light Blue = Icy
Dark Blue = Crazy slippery
White = Snow
Pink = More snow
Black = Very much snow
Red = Impassable
Truck = We’re working on it
Crossing arrows = snow blowing in the wind
It is normal, that all of the roads in the middle of the country (the Highlands) are red. They are usually impassable from sometime early in the fall and until mid June. However, most of the rest should be open and either clear or icy on a normal day winter day.
Some major roads, such as the road between Reykjavík and the Keflavík Airport were closed today. As you can see on the pic to the right, it is open now, but the Police is discouraging people from using it. This has caused some flight delays in the past 24 hours.
In Vestfirðir, the north western part of Iceland, you see virtually all the roads are closed (red). That is actually the smallest of their problems, because they are worried about avalanches. Many of the roads are closed due to avalanche risk and some of the towns are on alert for evacuation of some neighborhoods. In 1995, dozens of people died in a series of avalanches that hit towns in that area. This is Iceland’s greatest natural disaster in the past couple of centuries.
Plenty of people have been making good use of the snow though. The skiing area in Bláfjöll just outside Reykjavík, has been bustling with activity and great conditions in the past few days. Many have also been enjoying mountain ski trips around Reykjavík. Here are some great pictures from a few friends of mine skiing on Móskarðshnjúkar, a mountain right on the city limits.
Would be great to hear from tourists enjoying Iceland right now. As long as your plans are not too rigid, there’s plenty of fun possible.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyeosuQfQW1qdghoso1_1280.gif)
[Update] Check out the TV’s report on the weather. Just click play. You may not understand the language, but you can see what the weather is like in Reykjavík and on the road to the airport. Not every day that you see snowcats driving around downtown.
As I posted before, Iceland has had a serious winter this year. Somehow it just keeps getting worse and worse or better and better. Depends on your point of view. A significant part of Icelanders are completely snowed in today. In Reykjavík, only the largest streets have been cleared forcing many to either stay at home or walk or ski to work. Even many schools have been encouraging parents to keep their children home for the day. This I can tell you is very unusual, it’s not like in much of the US where schools simply close on snow days. Icelandic kids usually just march on to school, no matter the weather.
The map above shows the state of the roads at the moment, according to the Icelandic Road Authority. As you see, there are no clear roads in the country.
It is normal, that all of the roads in the middle of the country (the Highlands) are red. They are usually impassable from sometime early in the fall and until mid June. However, most of the rest should be open and either clear or icy on a normal day winter day.
Some major roads, such as the road between Reykjavík and the Keflavík Airport were closed today. As you can see on the pic to the right, it is open now, but the Police is discouraging people from using it. This has caused some flight delays in the past 24 hours.
In Vestfirðir, the north western part of Iceland, you see virtually all the roads are closed (red). That is actually the smallest of their problems, because they are worried about avalanches. Many of the roads are closed due to avalanche risk and some of the towns are on alert for evacuation of some neighborhoods. In 1995, dozens of people died in a series of avalanches that hit towns in that area. This is Iceland’s greatest natural disaster in the past couple of centuries.
Plenty of people have been making good use of the snow though. The skiing area in Bláfjöll just outside Reykjavík, has been bustling with activity and great conditions in the past few days. Many have also been enjoying mountain ski trips around Reykjavík. Here are some great pictures from a few friends of mine skiing on Móskarðshnjúkar, a mountain right on the city limits.
Would be great to hear from tourists enjoying Iceland right now. As long as your plans are not too rigid, there’s plenty of fun possible.
These pictures are all taken by Valdi and published by the Icelandic news site Vísir.is. Check out this video of taken by two news reporters driving on the Hellisheiði plateau just outside Reykjavík. Their car spins off the road in the icy conditions (just click the “Horfa á myndskeið með frétt” button.
mycardiganromance asked: Hi! I'm going to Iceland in late February/early March. Any suggestions on what can be done during that time? I know not all tours are open since it's icy. Do you know what sorts of cool things there are to see in winter?
Iceland in winter is an unpredictable, but wonderful place. More and more tours and such run all year long now, so you should find plenty to do. Most winter travelers base themselves in Reykjavík and do day tours from there. This is by no means, the only way, but driving yourself outside the city in winter conditions is not for everybody.
Just about every Reykjavík activity is up and running, summer as winter. So museums, restaurants, super jeep tours, glacier tours etc. mostly run as in the summer.
To enjoy the specialties of winter, you should go swimming and try to see the northern lights. The Reykjavík public outdoor swimming pools are open all year long, rain, snow or shine and are equally warm and popular summer or winter. On a good day you can see the northern lights in Reykjavík. However, due to the cheap Icelandic electricity, Reykjavík is a very bright city and the aurora is much easier to see outside the city. There are a handful of northern lights tours, but since there is never any guarantee that you’ll see them, I’d recommend one that does something else as well. The one I know is Northern Lights and Lobster with Iceland Rovers. I’m maybe not impartial as I used to work there, but I can tell you that if you don’t see the lights, you’ll at least have a great lobster meal in a cool little village and some super jeep driving.
The video shows clips from the news. I spent a sleepless night out in the snow driving a super jeep from the rescue team pulling stuck cars and a helping out. The snow cover also made yesterday’s New Year’s Eve particularly nice. If you missed the Icelandic New Year’s Eve fireworks bonanza, the formerly live webcam is now showing a rerun of midnight.
We are having a wonderful winter in Iceland this year. It’s been snowing more or less all December and this is the result. Every little spec of Iceland is covered in snow. The photo was taken by Nasa’s MODIS satellite. The big lakes don’t seem to be frozen yet, so they are easy to make out. The little one out on the Reykjanes peninsula (lower left hand corner) is Kleifarvatn (E. Cliff Lake), the big one close to Reykjavík is Þingvallavatn (Parliament Fields’ Lake), the one in the bottom middle is Þórisvatn (E. Lake of Þórir) and the long skinny one on the right is Lögurinn (Can’t translate that, but I’ll tell you it’s full of monsters).
Check out previous summer and winter satellite pictures of Iceland to compare.
There has been an unusually cold period in Iceland for the past week or so and the country has really been living up to its name. There was quite a lot of frost around the country, and at Lake Mývatn in the north east it was -27.3°C (-17.14° F). Although not that cold, it has been quite cold in Reykjavík and Tjörnin, the pond in Reykjavík is officially safe for ice skating. Yesterday I posted a video of a morning bicycle commute in the snow in Reykjavík.
Reykjavík is full of snow right now. The ski slopes inside Reykjavík have opened. Kids are sculpting snow men. The Reykjavík Pond is frozen for ice skating. But with a little determination you can still go out for a bike ride. That is one way to travel in Iceland. Just remember to have some good lights. The sun hardly comes up these days.
Video by Árni.
Icelandic balls of steel.
I once met a mountain guide in Switzerland who had been ski guiding in Iceland. What amazed him the most was seeing guys on snowmobiles racing up gullies that he himself had to consider carefully before skiing down.
This video shows a couple of guys like that playing in a non natural gully, part of a hydroelectric power plant.
EDIT: Just discovered that those are my former employers…
Sitting on a hot rock in the Icelandic mountains
This is one of my own pictures from a cross country ski tour in the Landmannalaugar area up in the Icelandic highlands. This man is taking a rest from skiing and sitting on a warm rock in the steaming hot spring area in Vondugil (E. Evil Gulleys). See more pics from the tour, a funny video I posted before or a promo video I made for the tour.
The most interesting pictures from Iceland. Photos of Reykjavík, photos of Icelandic People, pictures of Icelandic Nature and Iceland Travel.
I'm heavily affiliated with Iceland and proud of it. Lived most of my life in Iceland but spent enough time abroad to truly appreciate Iceland's uniqueness.
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