Travel overland to Stykkisholmur

The day started out with blue skies, but turned overcast, windy, and eventually very rainy. We were on the road from Reykjavik at 8 AM in a large tour bus driven by Joi, a long time friend of Gulli. Our direction: north to the Snaefellsnes peninsula along the west coast of Iceland to the town of Stykkisholmur.

We drove through a 4-mile tunnel under a fjord before stopping in the town of Borgarnes. We went through an interactive Iceland settlement museum, complete with headphones for audio narrations and push button light locations on relief maps. There was also a prow section of a Viking ship that you stepped on as it listed from side to side to give you a sense of what it was like to sail on the northern seas in times long past.

A maker and organic colorer of yarn. Off the main (but narrow) road lived a woman who colors yarn using organic ingredients: roots, flowers, urine, insects… to make virtually any color. She's quite good at it, having a botany-related masters degree and teaching a college class to back up her expertise.

Next stop was a sort of rock wall of octagonal columns that will eventually crumble and fall.

The Greenland shark is the longest living vertebrate on the planet. 400 years… and is quite large (10-12 feet) and lives deep in the ocean off the coast of Iceland, coming close to the surface to feed. We visited a local company that gets these sharksfor their meat from fishing vessels whose nets inadvertently snare them.

Quick Photo Links: Organic colorer of yarn | Rock wall | Shark farm