Big Sky Country and the Eastern Fjords

 Our cabin last night overlooked Lake Myvatn and if not for the midges that seemed fond of my ears and nose, it was nearly perfect. Lake Myvatn is a great place for birders with almost every kind of duck living there. It has craters, mountains, lava formations with lambs grazing around them, a Yellowstone-like geothermal area, thermal caves, and more.

View of Lake Myvatn from our cabin at 10 p.m.

The church in Myvatn has a special carving on it’s pulpit. A nearby volcano erupted in 1724-1729. The lava flowed around the church, leaving it intact. You can see the lava flow around the church and the pulpit carving is a beautiful depiction of the event. We couldn't get in this time, but I have a pic from our last visit, which I hope you can see.

Near Myvatn, is the beautiful Viti Crater on the top of Mt. Krafla, with it’s turquoise water. It was formed in the 1720s eruption. Along the road to Viti, someone put a working shower fixture, either for art or as a prank. Doug got near enough to verify that it was coming out warm with natural thermal water.

We drove from Myvatn to the Eastern Fjords today, across the most barren landscape imaginable. Rick Steves calls it “Iceland’s Big Sky country.” It is almost 100 km of barrenness without any town or gas station and only one café along the way. It is as close to a lunar landscape as I’ll ever get. Occasionally there will be a small patch of grass and off in the distance are some beautiful snow-capped mountains. Despite the eerie, other-world quality to this landscape, it also possesses a strange attractiveness.

However, it was nice to come out of it and into the Jökulsá á Dal Valley with its farms, rivers, and ubiquitous waterfalls. We stopped at Rjukandafoss, one of the many waterfalls.

We ended up in the East Fjords and had lunch at the artsy little town of Seyðisfjörður, on the fjord where the ferry from Denmark arrives every week. One of the downsides of living in this idyllic spot is avalanches. The town has a monument made from the beams of a factory destroyed in an avalanche in 1996.

This beautiful fjord town has become an art center for the country, complete with an art institute. The town is full of murals and it has a “rainbow walk” on one street near the little blue church. It was started for Pride Week and is now kept up and repainted when all the tourists take selfies on it and scuff it up. Like me. Although there is not much here, it was a great place to lunch. We would have wandered more except it began to rain. We’ve been in Iceland NINE days without rain, so we won’t complain.