It's Icelandic Independence Day today, so we decided to hang around Reykjavík for the festivities before
our journey to our next stop at Snæfellsbær.
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This is the statue of Ingólfur Arnarsson, the official first settler of Iceland, on Arnarhóll hill, Reykjavík. Ingólfur came to Iceland with his blood brother Hjörleifur who was later killed by his slaves. Ingólfur then found them sitting around a meal of roast puffins and avenged his brother with the help of his own slaves. Serves them right for eating cute, chubby birds. |
| We visited the Culture House which was quite good. It has some very old books in it, but not very exciting otherwise. They don't allow pictures in there, so if you have a camera or a backpack, they make you use one of their lockers (100 Icelandic Krónur). |
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By 10am, the streets near Austurvöllur Square (the old town square) were quite packed. |
| Some Icelanders were really dressed up for the occasion. |
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The mayor placed flowers at the Jón Sigurðsson memorial at Austurvöllur Square. Many kids came to take pictures and play around it. |
| My wife found a flea market nearby and lost track of the mission for awhile. Útsala means 'sale' - one of a few Icelandic words she picked up during our trip. |
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Right outside, there was some kind of vintage car show, so that's where I took the camera. |
| They had some really old trucks there, like this fire engine. |
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A stage was set for an outdoor concert. People gathered around the grassy hills. We didn't go near but we heard some sort of African world music with lots of drums in it. |
| Many people queued up for the hotdogs at Bæjarins Betzu, the most famous hotdog stand in Iceland. |
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We were supposed to drive over to Snæfellsbær in the north, but my wife surfed the Internet at the helpful information center run by www.this.is/iceland and found out about a Viking Festival at Hafnarfjörður, just 15 minutes south of Reykjavík, so that's where we went. Many of the 'Vikings' came from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, UK, North America. The guy on the right here is from Alaska. |
| They were mostly making and selling things. Some were singing and dancing while others were cooking, weaving, carving, or smithing one thing or another. This guy had a traditional, but very ingenius, contraption that weaves rope out of smaller strings of hemp very quickly. |
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There was even a guy who appeared to be building a boat. |
| This woman was braiding colourful belts that would have traditionally been used as horse reins. |
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Girls *ahem* could get their hair braided Viking women style. |
| The highlight of the festival was this mock battle between the warriors. They were really hammering into each other's shields with their swords and axes. I was surprised none of their shields broke. |
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More of those crazy Vikings. |
| We got in our car and drove on to Snæfellsbær. Since we are driving clockwise around Iceland, we usually see some mountains on our right... |
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... and water to our left (usually some fjord). |
| Sometimes the roads were long and straight without any other cars around, so we'd stop for photos. |
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To skip driving around the huge fjord, we took this underwater tunnel to get to the Snæfellsnes peninsula. |
| We had to drive slow in some places because the views were just breathtaking. |
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It never really gets very dark at night, but we're required to switch on the headlights at all times. We arrived at Guesthouse Langaholt in Snæfellsbær at 10:30pm. |
| Back to Day 1 <<< | >>> Day 3: The drive to Grundarfjörður |
