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Why go to
Iceland
By Thomas E Fletcher.
I am delighted to print the following article and would
welcome more of a similar nature. Ed.
I was invited to join a party of there
Cambridge
undergraduates going to
Iceland
this summer. The aim of the expedition
was primarily scientific studying aquatic insects and making a botanical
collection in the northern part of the island bordering on the central desert,
for which we gratefully received a grant from the University. However each member was keen to explore and
learn about the country as much as possible and a great deal of time was
devoted to this end. We spent some four
and a half weeks there and really got to know the limited area around
Lake
Myvatn
and around Askja,
Europes largest volcano,
some fifty miles to the south.
Everyone knows
Iceland
is a volcanic island, but did you know it still has active volcanoes
Hekla last erupting in 1947-48? Volcanic country has to be seen to be
believed. It is a land off great
contrast a land of barren lava deserts and lush green valleys, a land of
majestic snow and ice capped mountains and gushing
hot springs, a land of magnificent waterfalls
and of shimmering calm lakes, and to crown it all, a land of 24 hours daylight
in midsummer. We spent three of our weeks
around Myvatn with our base camp in the crater of a small ash volcano. Myvatnssveit, as the area is called, contains
practically every sample of volcanic action, cinder cones 50 feet high and no
larger that half an acre in extent to great volcanoes long since eroded into
mountains 3,000 ft. high. Spouts of
steam some 50 feet high with boiling and mud pools nearby were not far away
over the ridge of a red burnt-out looking mountain with great patches of
sulphur occurring on its slopes. Great
lava fields extend to the south west, sometimes with smooth expanse like boiler
plates called stratified lava, and sometimes with block lava the other extreme,
where it is twisted into all sorts of weird shapes like rock seracs, and
impedes progress so that 2 miles an hour is extremely good going. Often great rock crevasses occur anything up
to 30 yards across and 100 feet deep though generally not so spectacular.
Lake
Myvatn is quite shallow
and has many attractive islets and abounds in trout and ducks. It is the breeding ground of tens of
thousands of wild duck of probably some 20 or more species of which some are
North American, and attracts such people as Ludwig Koch and Peter Scott, and is
in fact an ornithologists paradise.
We took all our food with us and lived on Arctic regions
pemmican, porridge oats, margarine, sugar, biscuits, chocolate, etc., to the
extent of 1½ lbs. each per day. This was
essential when we went to Askja 50 miles away across uninhabited and often
waterless desert. We were interested in
the fauna of the crater lake to see if life had started again since the last
eruption in 1922. We found the water
still sulphurous and without insect life. The crater lake is 9sq. miles in extent surrounded in part by 150 foot
basalt cliffs and is in places over 1,500 feet deep. The crater itself is 25sq. miles in extent
and is surrounded by mountains and is extremely seldom visited.
In a country practically devoid of sedimentary rocks there
are of course no caves of the limestone variety. However, I spent some few hours caving in the
lava. When there has been a vast
outpouring of lava it slowly cools and crusts over and then sometimes the
reservoir is broken and the lava starts to flow out leaving an air space up to
3 feet beneath the crust. Solidification
of the newly formed surface starts anew and the process sometimes repeats. Where the crust is too thin it collapses and
then one finds the entry to a magnificent system with several floors. Around Myvatn there are several acres of such
formations and partly filled with water an ideal place for a speleaologist
searching for aquatic insects.
However there are other good reasons for going to
Iceland. A
delightful 2½ day sea voyage of over 1,000 miles each way for £17 return
accompanied by some of the finest food I have ever eaten. What an advantage it is to have a rest period
on board after all the mad rush of finishing off work, organising and packing
before the vigorous weeks ahead. Similarly on the return, a rest before the everyday routine starts again
is ideal. The mountains are good from
the snow mountaineering aspect, but being made up of layers of basaltic lava,
they are very rotten and are not suitable for rock climbing. I shall go back again sometime taking a
vehicle like a Land Rover for the extremely rough roads, and spend some time in
the mountains around Akureyil, crossing one of the smaller ice-caps such as
Myradalsjokull in the south or Hofsjokull in the centre, and climbing their
most beautiful mountain Herdubreid as well as looking at the magnificent fjords
of the east coast.
So instead Why go to
Iceland? I say, Why not go to
Iceland yourselves and experience the contrasts
of scenery, enjoy weather as hot as
Northern Italy
with magnificent sunsets and surprises rolled into one and meet some of the
most kind and hospitable people in the world?
Thomas Fletcher.
