Sunday July 14 – Reykjavik Iceland

We arrived in Iceland expecting the earth to be covered in ice but it was green like the green of Ireland.  Evidently Greenland is covered in ice and Iceland is covered in green.  However, it was cold and there were showers throughout the day.

It must be the long cold nights that cause the people here to be quite superstitious. Our guide told us that many people believe that there are hidden people living in Iceland.  They live under rocks.  Some people have claimed to have seen them.  The problems occur when the rock, which is their home, is moved.  Recently, when rocks were moved to make a road many mysterious and serious accidents occurred.  She told us that 10% of the population believe that the hidden people exist, 10% do not believe and the other 80% are not sure.  Literature is important to the people of Iceland and they have books about the early settlement of this country going back to the 12^th century.  An Icelandic person has won a Nobel Prize for literature.  In 1944 the country gained its independence from Denmark but it had taken them 100 years to achieve this.  It was not done using the sword, but rather by using the pen.

Iceland has water and natural underground heating in abundance.

We saw a geyser that shot hot water into the air once every five minutes.  Some of the spouts of water were about 40 metres high.  The waterfall that we saw was broad and the flow from it is enough to fill 60 transportation containers with water in one second.

The Rift Valley was amazing.  It is 7 km long and there is 40 metres between the American and the Eurasian plates which are drifting apart and creating this enormous gorge.  The people looked like ants beneath these vast lava rock faces.  The Game of Thrones was filmed in this area. 

There are many horses in Iceland.  They were introduced into the country over 1000 years ago and all horses here are descended from this initial stock. No other horses are allowed into this country and the people are enormously proud of their horses.  I did not see any bicycle tracks in Iceland, but there were many tracks specifically for horses.

These horses are like a pony and are gentle in nature.  They are unusual because the have five natural gaits: Walk, tote, trot, pace, and canter.  I had never heard of tote before.  It is an elegant style of movement and when the rider is on a horse moving in this style, he can carry a full glass of beer and not spill a drop.  We saw a demonstration of the different gaits when the horses were ridden by children between the ages of six and sixteen.  Evidently the horses are not trained in these gaits, as It just comes naturally to them.

At the horse stud we visited, the husband of the family is the one who looks after the horses while his wife is the gardener.  They had a huge green house where they grow 80% of the tomatoes for Iceland.  She even manages to grow sunflowers!