Today we visited Grundarfjörður which, with somewhere between 800 and 900 residents, is Iceland’s 35th largest city. So for those keeping score at home, the three most recent stops (including today) have a combined population of somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 residents. I just learned that the local high school has six(!) swimming pools….my high school which had considerably more than 900 students did not have an onsite swimming pool when I attended.
Today’s Icelandic lesson part 1, which we learned shortly after arriving at the dock, is that the word “ugla” means owl. There was a lovely woman who presumably owns the Ugla store — which is inside of a bus — who provided that nugget to us. After we explored I ended up purchasing a magnet from her.
We did some walking around town to visit the local art then ventured a bit further west to see a very nice two-level waterfall. The town’s buildings appear to be relatively new, and quite a bit of construction was happening. I can report that, unlike in Greenland, we did not find any yarn in the local grocery store (no, I’m not a knitter, but some of my fellow travelers are). But we did see painted flower pots at many intersections.
But the highlights were Kirkjufell (“church mountain” — with kirk being the Germanic root of church and fell meaning mountain) and Kirkjufellsfoss (foss being the Icelandic suffix for falls, so Kirkjufellsfoss is the “church mountain waterfall”). The walk to the falls was 2.7km (1.7 miles) each way so we definitely got our steps in….I ended up with over 19,000 steps today.
Along the way we passed some Icelandic horses, mother of thyme (pink), scurvy grass (blue; apparently it contains lots of Vitamin C), and common cotton-grass. There were also lots of birds — snipes, redwings, terns, and many others — though today I enjoyed them visually and auditorily but not photographically.
Kirkjufell is one of the most photographed mountains in Iceland. It’s very accessible and visible from a relatively main road. It’s also pretty, and sits along the shore. It’s quite steep and symmetric, and has green plants growing most of the way up it.
Today was cloudy so while at times we could see the top of the mountain, we were never able to see all of it at the same time. The first one was taken about half way from town to the waterfall, the second was taken shortly after we returned from visiting the waterfall.
The waterfall was stunning. We noticed a path going “down” to start at the bottom but, with apologies to Robert Frost, we chose the path more traveled and started at the top. We then descended and took the other path back. As an aside, someone who had taken the lower path warned us that she had stepped in a “poodle” (in fairness, English was almost definitely not her first language) so we enjoyed trying to avoid the many poodles as we traversed the lower path back to the main trail/road (it’s hard to know which term is accurate when it appears to have once been an unsaved road).
The river seemed both narrow and shallow, and the water didn’t seem to be going especially fast. However, the waterfall could be heard a long distance away, and clearly a lot of water was falling at a time so apparently it wasn’t quite so narrow, quite so shallow, or moving quite so slowly. We also noticed a particularly graphic “danger” sign which was itself falling over.
The top part of the waterfall reminded me of Triple Falls in the gorge (one of my favorite waterfalls) because the water went down in three separate sections.
As we descended, we could see the lower section and the entire waterfall was impressive. Definitely worth the long walk there and back.
Icelandic lesson part 2. As we were nearing the port we saw a street sign for Borgarbraut. That sounded like the perfect insult an elementary schooler might use. It also sounded like perhaps a place where meats (perhaps sausages) were prepared. Turns out that “borgarbraut” means “city lane.” A much prettier meaning.
I declined to walk a similar distance in the opposite direction to see a different waterfall. Probably a wise choice given that we tomorrow will include a 10-hour tour in Reykjavik.
Looking forward to being back to our “regularly scheduled” itinerary tomorrow. Part of travel is improvisation — and we got to experience the amazing Prince Christian Sound — so while the itinerary change wasn’t my preference, it wasn’t too disappointing in the end.
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