We started today off with a walk around Hotel Laugarhóll (LOY-gar-hoht’l), to see the Sorcerer’s Cottage and the pool of Guðmundur the Good. The Cottage is connected to the Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft back in Hólmavík, and is a reconstruction of the sort of home poorer people might have lived in back in the 1600s. It is a bit like Glaumbær but doesn’t have any windows, and is much smaller. There are magical symbols carved onto the beams…life was hard, and people looked for any help they could get. Of course, during the witchcraft trials, having anything that implied a belief in magic could get you killed. Oddly, all of those executed for sorcery in the 1600s were poor people….
Not too far from this cottage is the “hot pot” supposedly blessed by the bishop Guðmundur the Good in the 13th Century. Sheila was really looking forward to hanging out in this yesterday, but the weather gods weren’t with us. Water runs from this pool down the hill and fills the full-size swimming pool below, plus a newer “hot pot” and a cooler kids’ pool. All fed by a network of pipes that run up the mountain behind the hotel.
The hotel pool and hot pot requires guests to shower fully, with soap and without a bathing suit, before entering. This is actually true throughout Iceland, in all public pools, hot tubs, etc. There are even posted directions, in six languages:
We finally hit the road at about 10, but had to go back to Hólmavík for fuel. Then we headed for Ísafjörður (EES-ah-fyur-thur). We spent the day driving up one side of one fjord and down the other, much like yesterday. We did have to heave ourselves up and over the highlands between fjords a couple of times – the highest areas were snow covered and in the clouds, where everything was white except the yellow posts marking the edges of the black road. Lars says the yellow posts made driving easy…just keep it on the long black ribbon between them!
OK, so when we asked for the rain to go away, we didn’t mean it should snow instead! Luckily, we weren’t intending to take Road 641, as it seems to have been closed for quite some time. Probably since last October.
The fjord scenery is breathtaking, on a huge scale and with striking landscape features from the Ice Ages, such as huge U-shaped valleys and truncated ridges…simple photos don’t really do it justice. But here are some, anyway.
Not so many birds today….gulls, cormorants, and about a zillion eiders (this is where much of the world’s supply of eiderdown is harvested), but we managed to definitely identify an odd duck we had been seeing only at a distance…I think we mentioned it in an earlier post, but now we have proof of seeing the Hávella (HOW-vet-la), or Long-tailed Duck:
So far, we’ve positively identified about 47 of the 81 species known to nest in Iceland, and we have yet to get to the major bird cliffs. Not too bad!
We were only half an hour or so from Ísafjörður, our destination for the day, but were getting hungry at about 1:30. As we came to the tiny town of Suðavík (SOOTH-ah-vik), Sheila noticed a sign for the Arctic Fox Center, with a café. We stopped, darted in through the snow that had started falling at fjord level, and were greeted with a surprised “Goðan daginn!” (GO-than DYE-inn—Good day!). Suspect they don’t get a lot of tourists this time of year. But we had a nice lunch of lentil/vegetable soup, fresh biscuits with sun-dried tomato tapenade, and rhubarb/oatmeal cake with whipped cream. We chatted a bit with the young lady who served us, Rune (ROO-neh), and then got a private tour of the Center, which was so interesting we ended up spending about 3 hours there—eating, talking, looking at exhibits, and watching a very nice film called “Wild Scandinavia: Iceland”. Rune’s husband is a fairly well-known musician, and was actually in Denver back in October for IcelandAir’s inaugural flight into DIA.
When we got to our lodging for the next two nights, Gamla Gistihusið (The Old Guesthouse), we met up again with our friends from Texas, who are also travelling with Nordic Visitor. We stayed an extra night at Mývatn, but two nights in Ísafjörður is apparently standard, so they haven’t left yet. This turned out to be a good thing, as they steered us to a very good restaurant we never would have found otherwise, as there is no sign that we could see. Lars had the wonderful seafood chowder, and Sheila had perfectly-grilled lamb chops (with Bearnaise….). And not terribly expensive, either—bearing in mind that everything is expensive here. Norway and Sweden are going to seem like real bargains when we get there.
We had a lovely evening chatting with John and Sandra, who are right down the hall from us. The rooms here are quite nice, and include bathrobes! That’s a first….
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