Here are a few pictures from this day

Alan rose early this morning and went to recover the car from the parking, which was just 3 blocks away. He hoped to get to one of the OB gas stations to try and use the discount fob we got with the rental car, but the one-way streets foiled him again. He fairly quickly gave up, counting that there was some sort of station near the airport, and the rental car company. He was right.

Getting to the rental car returned was easy enough from there, and the car was deemed to be in good condition. It turned out we drove 706 kilometers over the last 2 days! (439 miles for those of you stuck in the Imperial system!). Alan told them about the defective internet hotspot, that had conked out on us after about 5 hours. They mostly just smiled and said ‘sorry’.

The shuttle driver that was supposed to take Alan back to the hotel forgot to get Alan, so it took another 1/2 hour beyond what was expected, but we didn’t have much on our agenda before our noon pickup to go to the boat.

We hadn’t gotten our Iceland key ring for our Christmas ornament yet, so after breakfast and Alan getting cleaned up and packed, we headed out for one last exploration of our neighborhood. We found one we liked at a nearby souvenir store, and still had more time.

We realized that we hadn’t really walked down the Rainbow Street, and we knew that it was just a block over from our street. The problem is that Rainbow Street angles, and it’s more than a block by the time it is closest to out hotel, and the intervening streets that don’t exactly make a nice grid got us confused. It turns out, we probably stopped our trek toward it about a 1/2 block short. So we turned a different direction, and ended up back at the church, getting to see more places we hadn’t been. Alan was sure that the street running into Hallgrimskirkja, the big church, was the right one, so we walked down the length. Just when Joyce was about to throw in the towel, we came to the one-block section that is rainbow painted!

On the way back up to the hotel, we ran across a Christmas shop that had a nice, reasonably priced Iceland ornament that we really liked. So now we have 2 Iceland ornament’s for you to look for on our Christmas tree!

Back at the hotel, we marshaled our luggage down to the lobby. We waited a little bit for the private transfer driver, but he was a lot of fun to talk to on the way to the port.

At the port, getting through security and getting checked in for the cruise was pretty straightforward. Some of that probably comes from this being our 3rd Viking Ocean cruise. They are efficient, consistent, and friendly. Our guy was a young Icelander, who was curious about Indiana and the US. He told us he wanted to study Chemistry and Engineering in the US, so of course we plugged Purdue!

After our brief “how to put on your life vest…that we don’t ever plan on you using” talk, we headed up to the buffet for a quick lunch while waiting on our stateroom to be ready. They made the announcement during lunch, so we headed down one floor to our room, with one piece of our luggage already there! We did some quick exploration of the room and noted the differences than our previous ships. This is one of the newer ships in the Viking fleet (it has been in service about a year) and had a few nice changes. Three drawers were added to the closet which made a short side for hanging shirts and a long side for hanging dresses, pants. Another welcome addition was a sofa instead of two chairs. The sofa was very comfortable. But overall, all the Viking ocean ships are basically the same layout.

We caught the shuttle to the Harpa Concert Hall. It’s a beautiful building that we had seen from the road and from a little park several blocks away. The windows on the exterior are three-dimensional units that have some coloration to them. We read that they are designed to mimic the Northern Lights. Even without the lights, it’s a pretty impressive structure.

We found a sizable shop inside with Icelandic usable art, of course at a premium price. Nothing that we couldn’t live without. There were a couple of other entertainment venues inside, one being The Volcano Experience. We decided to give it a go, especially after our experiences driving through some recent volcanic activity areas.

We got there just in time for the safety briefing, which might give you some clues as to what we were about to experience. The three rows in the main theater were equipped with seatbelts that would be locked in place during the ‘experience’. The screen filled the whole front wall in front of us.

Then it started. Our seats rose up so that our feet were no longer touching the floor. Warm and warmer air blew from tubes in front of us, depending on what was on the screen. What we saw was like riding on a drone that took us around Iceland, over and into volcanoes, and lava fields. We saw several places that we had already visited, and it was fun to see it from a different perspective.

After that experience, there were several short video experiences around the lobby that were very informative, and gave us better understanding of what we had been experiencing the last few days.

Viking always seems to be pretty good at giving us a sense of local history and culture. The Historian talk today was by Dennis Fitzsimmons, a University of Victoria trained teacher and lecturer of pre-modern and 20th Century European history. He covered the Icelandic history from the original inhabitants, Irish monks in the 8th century to the present.

While the Vikings are known to be the first people on the island, recent research has shown those monks were here in 700’s. When the Vikings came in 870, the monks left because their ‘barbarian’ ways and religion didn’t mix with their own. However, the Vikings were very thorough in documenting the arrivals and the land acquisition from an early day, so there is an extensive lengthy recorded history for Iceland that hardly any other nation can claim.

40% of the Island was forested when the Vikings came, but within 100 years, that percentage was down to 1%! Efforts are being made to bring the percentage back up, but volcanos and people make that difficult. The first parliament met in 930 and continues to today. While the residents are among the most literate (1 in 10 Icelanders will write a book! Apparently they have a lot to say!!), until the 1940’s, about 1/2 lived in sod houses. Today, there are about 500,000 Icelandic speakers, an ancient language that is like old Norse. Apparently the locals would be able to read Beowulf in the original language.

The population has ebbed several times, largely because of natural disasters (Little Ice Ages between 1275 and 1500, major volcanic activity), and disease.

The 1783 major volcanic eruption in Iceland occurred at the Laki fissure system (part of the Grímsvötn system) and is known as the Skaftáreldar (Fires of Skaftá). Lasting eight months from June 8, 1783, to February 7, 1784, it poured out 14.7 cubic kilometers of lava and poisoned the atmosphere with toxic fluorine and sulfur dioxide. This caused a catastrophic famine (Móðuharðindin) that killed one-fifth of Iceland’s human population and over 50% of its livestock, while a choking sulfuric “dry fog” spread across Europe and dropped global temperatures. 

WWII brought Iceland into modern times. Their isolation kept them out of the main confrontations, but the US set up a military base here that fundamentally changed economic and cultural life here. Just after D-Day in 1944, when the rest of the world was otherwise occupied, Iceland quietly declared themselves to be independent from Norway. And no one seemed to care.

Today, about half of the economy is from fishing, and the other half from tourism.

Because Iceland is isolated, there is concern about genetic lines. Apparently there is an app that allows dating couples to check out their relationships. Their ad said “Are you related to the person you are dating? Bump phones before you bump in bed!”

We also learned a little more about the Christmas traditions here that include ‘bad guy’ elves that are used to keep the behavior of children in line!

We had dinner in the dining room, and enjoyed Reyt Ysa, Blomakal, Fennikka Sulta Og Sitrusdressing, Roasted Carrot Soup, Iceberg Lettuce Wedge, Steiktur Lax, Grasker, Blomkai, Hvitvinssdsa, Skyr Brulee, and Crème Brûlée, along with the appropriate wine supplied with the dinner. Afterwards, we enjoyed some Roikos tea, after asking for some Chai. When the waiter didn’t know of any, the Head Waiter came over and offered to go get some for us from the WinterGarden. We declined his kind offer, but he promised to have some for us in future evenings!

We retired to the cabin, watched a documentary about a lake hidden deep beneath the ice in Antartica, did some blogging, and Alan tried to sort out what life is like dealing with pictures without his laptop. He and Claude worked on some possibilities, and he’ll explore that more in the coming days.