Yesterday, we started out with yet another waterfall. This one is called Gothafoss. The story goes that the guy in charge of the Northern Iceland assembly in the year 1000 meditated upon the decision of what to declare as the religion of Iceland. Twenty-four hours later, he announced Iceland would be a Christian nation (no one seems to know what went into that decision; it  couldn’t have been that he thought it would change the murderous behavior of the Vikings as we’ve seen how that’s worked out for other Christian nations over the centuries,) Anyway, to show his commitment, on the way home this assembly leader threw all his pagan idols and amulets into this waterfall, hence the name God-foss, or Gothafoss.

We traveled on through the northern region, now heading ever west. We stopped in the closest thing to a city outside of Reykjavik, the northern urban hub of Akureyri. We wandered the botanical gardens there, the furthest north of any botanical gardens in the world. It was fascinating, mainly because nearly every single plant in there, including those that are native to Iceland, are familiar and grow in neighborhood gardens all over Seattle. Iceland, especially just a few miles below the Arctic Circle, is colder than Seattle for sure, but the villages and towns and the moors protected in the fjords must be warmed to some semblance of temperate by the proximity to ocean waters.

We took a long diversion north off the Ring Road to circumnavigate the Trollskagi, or the Troll peninsula to explore the tiny fishing villages at the ends of numerous fjords: Dalvik, Olafsfjordur, Siglufjordur and traced the entirety of the longest fjord in Iceland, Eyjafjordur. Below Eyafjordur is opening up into the Arctic Ocean.

We stayed overnight in the town Saudarkrokur, which appears to be economically depressed, at the end of Skagfjordur, although their residents would have you believe otherwise.

Today, we had a quite the adventure. First of all, David nearly lost a game of chicken with a flock of 5 sheep that suddenly decided to vault into the road directly in front of us. Like DIRECTLY in front of us, one of them being about 2 inches from the front right tire. Shortly thereafter, the wind picked up, which is a phrase that does not do the wind of today justice by any stretch. We barely made it on foot from the car to this stone church, Thingeyrar (built on the site of an 1100’s era Benedictine monastery) the wind was blowing so hard.

Then the wind went totally berserk. As you can see, it was a lovely clear day, but the wind . . . I, seriously, nearly blew off the trail coming back from seeing this odd sea stack, which a saga says was a troll that was caught by the sunrise just before it was about to set out to destroy the monastery of which I just spoke, and turned him to stone. I literally had to wrap my arms around a sign post to keep from taking flight over the ocean until there was a tiny momentary decrease in the wind.

The wind this afternoon was clocked sustained at 65 mph, with sustained gusts at 37 meters/second, which—believe or not—translates to 82.7 mph, nearly hurricane strength. Walking was truly impossible and driving was nearly so.

There were salt spray rainbows around every bend, there was so much salt spray in the air, flung off the wind waves on the very angry Arctic Ocean. Our proprietor tonight tells us, this is the worst wind she has seen in her life here, and she should know. Let’s hope it’s gone tomorrow.