MIDGES & MYVATN GEOLOGY

On past trips, we have learnt the value of investing in having a guide (human as opposed to soft toy puffin!!). For Iceland, we felt that THIS was the place we'd like local knowledge the most, so we booked a day with Kristinn. It didn't take us long to realise that we'd made a very good choice.

What followed was a day packed with geology, information, stories & midges.....LOTS of midges.. but we were prepared!!

 

We had already noticed the  use of 'dry stone walls' in this area & wondered if we'd taken a very wrong turn & ended up in the North Yorkshire dales!  The rock used in these fences is lava rock, so relatively light & abundantly available.  It is used to make holding pens for the sheep, when they have been herded back down from spending the summer roaming free on the mountains.  There are similar pens further up the slopes as well.

 

After a brief stop we climbed aboard Kristinn's super jeep again for some serious 4WD travelling.  He took us to a place that our little car would not have been able to get to... if it had survived the journey; Sejahjallagil.  There we walked for a few kilometres over loose rocks to get to the most incredible location within a volcanic fissure.  Here the basalt columns, on rising to the surface, had cooled very quickly & formed these incredible twisting columns.

 

The patterns in the rock were amazing.  We were glad to hear that this is now a protected site.

As we were hiking throughout the day, Kristinn would suddenly stop & show us native plants growing in this environment.  We were introduced to wild juniper (for gin!!), crowberry (which we'd had in a cocktail the night before) & this tiny little flower that we'd seen quite frequently.  It is Holta Soley the national flower of Iceland.  The Icelanders voted & this little treasure was their choice. 

As we drove around the lake, we were amazed at the lush vegetation & the views across it.  This photo shows Hverfell crater, which we had stopped at earlier & seem areas of oxidised iron in the lava, leaving it a red colour. From the other side of the lake we could really see the crater shape.

After a delicious lunch of traditional lamb soup, our next stop was to a museum!  Lake Myvatn is a haven for birds & on it's banks is a purpose built museum; Sigurgeirs Bird Museum, which was the bird collection of one man.  At one time collecting taxidermied birds was a very popular form of household décor.  It is a beautiful museum & a great opportunity for us to identify birds we'd seen, but hadn't known the names of.  One was this beautiful Northern Diver, which is a large water bird & very territorial, so there will often be only one pair on a body water.  Because Lake Myvatn is a large lake (for Iceland) there are more than one pair here & we were lucky that Kristinn has good spotting skills, as just as we left the museum... he spotted one in the water!

Being attracted to the quirky & unusual, the other reason I wanted to stop at this museum, was to see the marimo balls on display here.  They are very rare & only appear in a handful of lakes around the world.  Created by a species of green algae, they form balls & grow, sometimes getting to be as big as 20cm.  These are babies, but they had some older ones as well, although only about 10cm. 

A viewing platform gave us an opportunity to look out over Skutustadagigar, an area covered in pseudo craters that sit right on the edge of the lake. Being up high gave us a much better perspective, but I imagine it would be particularly impressive from the air.

From there we went for a walk through  Dimmuborgir which is an area of fantastical lava formations.  It was here that we heard about the 'Yule Lads', who are part of the Christmas tradition in this part of Iceland.  The tradition is brought to life amidst these formations each Christmas as a treat for the Children, when they never know when a Yule Lad will leap out from one of the formations to frighten them!
This area is also dense with birth trees.  The Birch is the only native tree here in Iceland & it is INCREDIBLE how it grows in the lava fields!  Up in the mountain area it doesn't get very tall, as the sheep like to eat it, so it remains scrubby, but in areas where sheep don't gravitate to.... they are actually allowed to be trees!

It really was quite spectacular & we were grateful that we'd become quite accustomed to putting on our anti-midge nets, as it enabled us to enjoy where we were without forming unusual body formations with wild gesticulations!!

Along our travels in geothermal areas we have noticed what look like lava bubbles, where the lava has solidified in that extended bubble shape & then cracked.  Our next stop was at Grjotagja which looked like one of those bubbles, but bending over to enter a crack that became a cave, we saw that in it was a pool of geothermally heated water.  This was once the bathing place for the locals, who must have been hardy people because it would definitely be too hot for me to bathe in!  It was beautiful though.

One of the things I had most wanted to see & taste here in Myvatn, was the Geyser Bread!  We were staying on a farm 'resort' whilst here, & they make their own geyser bread & geyser bread ice cream!  We'd sampled both the night before & now I was keen to see where it was made.  I hadn't expected a small hill covered in pot lids!! Steam is used to cook the bread in pots set within the soil. We could only look in one of the 'ovens' if there was nothing in it.  I was surprised how shallow they were.  Amazing.

We finished up our tour in the Krafla area, where we had a brief look at the Bjarnarflag Geothermal Station, the Leirhnjukur area covered in boiling mud , sulphur colour & steam vents, and this stunning crater lake.
It had been a full, wonderful day & the only thing to do once we'd said goodbye to Kristinn was to get our bathing suits & soak in the warm waters of the Myrvatn Nature Baths, as we looked out over this incredible landscape. Bliss!