Day 5, June 20, 2005: the drive to Holmavik (Holmavík)
Icelandic names can be quite confusing for travellers because. Ísafjörður means ice fjord, and it is both the name of
a fjord as well as a town. However, Ísafjörður the town is not on Ísafjörður the fjord, but on Skulturfjörður instead.
There is a Keflavík in northern as well as southwestern Iceland. The Grimsey that we will be driving pass is
different from the Grimsey that we will be flying to. And so it goes for many of the other places in Iceland.
When we arrived at Kirkjuból(outside Holmavík) today, we mentioned to the lady who owned the guesthouse that we
drove past another Kirkjuból along the way. She said she was not surprised since there were at least 19 Kirkjubóls
around the West Fjords.
|
Áslaug's guesthouse had this very ornate looking oven. You'd never guess it from the outside of the house, but it is
very old, built by her grandfather who also built boats in the early days of Ísafjörður. Áslaug has a big collection
of old family photographs including some dating back from 1930.
|
|
See Ming took this nice picture of Ísafjörður despite the bleak weather.
|
|
|
One last look before we go. Still cloudy.
|
|
A view from one of the mountain passes we drove through. In many places in Iceland, we saw piles of stones stacked
together like the one here. I was told by Daniel Kristjansson who also has
a page on Iceland that they are put up by Iceland's travelers
society to guide travelers. Thanks, Daniel.
|
|
|
Taking a break at a scenic spot on the mountain pass.
|
|
It was a day for waterfalls. We saw quite a few of them on the drive today. This is the bottom of one.
|
|
|
Here is another.
|
|
An abandoned turf house, overgrown with grass.
|
|
|
Another waterfall.
|
|
The same one.
|
|
|
Some of the mountain shelters had a futuristic touch to them.
|
|
Some did not.
|
|
|
When we arrived in Holmavík, I went to the Sorcery and Witchcraft museum and they put this raven on my arm.
You can see, I was quite scared of him. Among the exhibits was a plastic replica of a pair of necropants.
In the old days, one man owned most of the lands in the West Fjords, so many people resorted to sorcery to gain
wealth. One of the ways was to wear necropants. The sorcerer had to make a guy agree to be skinned from the
waist down after he has died and then wear this skin and put a coin in the scrotum. According to the believe,
whenever this little pocket was checked from then on, it would never be empty.
|
|
The lady at Holmavík's information center was showing us where we were on the map, and she pointed on the map and
out her big main window to various points - Holmavík, Drangsnes, and an iceberg. We stared out her window and saw
a distant block of bluish white floating in the distance - our first iceberg. (This picture was taken from a
different point in Holmavík).
|
|
|
Holmavík is not a fishing town. The main industry here is shrimp.
|
