A trip to Strandir, Iceland (Part 2)

A trip to Strandir, Iceland (Part 2)

The advantage of living where we live in Kopavogur Iceland is that it takes us 8 minutes to drive to the old central Reykjavik and a half an hour to drive out of the city to experience real nature. Even so, we can walk a cross he street to be at the seaside, almost like having our own private beach. It feels very privileged.

(The sceen over Breiðafjörður)

The day we went on our trip to Strandir it took us a little bit longer to drive out of town as we took on on a Friday afternoon (a bit hectic traffic out of town) but in a beautiful weather even though it was not so warm. We live in Iceland and we are used to cold and even very wet summers at times. These days it is around 9 to 13 degrees celsius and it was similar the 7th of july when we traveled west. We drove through the tunnel in Hvalfjörður and then stopped for a while in a beautiful small town called Borgarnes where I gave my dogs a walk and water to drink and we ate dinner at the drive through diner. After that we drove for approximately one and a half hour passing a lot of farms and cottages on this sparsely populated land. We decided to take a little detour to the harbor of a small drive trough village called Búðardalur.

Búðardalur is a village of 270 inhabitants and usually we just drive straight trough it and don´t think about it as an important place but when checked out it has its history and a long one.
It´s history, is dated from the time of the first settlements in Iceland. The name "Búðardalur" means "Camp Valley", or more directly "dale of booths"; it is where settlers had temporary camps when coming to the area. In 1899, Búðardalur was officially granted the right of commerce. An old house from this time still exists there.
At a short distance from the village is Eiríksstaðir, the homestead of Erik the Red, who discovered Greenland and whose son Leif Erikson, was born at and later discovered America (ahead of Columbus).

Today Búðardalur has it´s one local store and an hair saloon, a health care center as well as a café and folk museum. But for us the photography lovers the harbor is the most interesting place. We love to take photos of rusty stuff and trash so of course we stoped there for some shooting.

I photographed the sunset seen out the fjord Hvammsfjörður as well as a broken car window and some more stuff on the harbor.

We went on the trip driving two cars. My husband drove our old VR (Almost an antique Ford Transit) and I, my daughter and our two dogs drove our Toyota Corolla. The reason why we went on two cars is to be able to plant our VR on one spot but be mobile at the same time without having to spend an hour on the camping site every time we move around. The camping sites in Iceland all have a rather uneven grass ground. The second reson is probably me being very fearful when a passenger in a car (consequence of a car crash 25 years ago) and my husbands fear driving the VR with his most pressious people on board. I know we are a bit crazy couple ;)

(Króksfjarðarnes)

After our stop in Búðardalur we drove the rest of the road through Hvammsfjörður, Gilsfjörður and the mountain passage called Kambarnir where we had to stop to snap some photos as we were both in the different cars stunned by the landscape around Króksfjarðarnes.

There has been growing tourism in Iceland the past few years and many locals complain about tourists stopping on the middle of the road to take pictures. We joked about it that the passers-by would probably take us for foreign tourists ;) The locals that have horses also complain a lot about tourists stopping to feed the horses all kinds of rubbish like candy and stuff. Well we don´t do that as I grew up with horses in my back yard in Kopavogur and Bragi my husband lived at times in his childhood on a farm so we know better.

But even if I don´t feed the horses I don´t hesitate taking their photo if I can but mostly I am a bit obsessed with the sheep´s that go loose everywhere in Iceland and I often stop my car trying to catch a good cheep photo which can be a bit hard as they are not that friendly toward people. That´s actually good as recently some tourists in Iceland took a lamb and slaughtered it for dinner like it was free food on the loose. Of course the sheep´s are owned by the farmers even though they go loose over the summer time. Then they collaborate in the fall by sheperding them together. In the old ages you would get a very strict verdict if you stole or killed a sheep. You would even be doomed to become an outlaw or an outcast from the island (that is if anyone would farm you over seas). Then again if you were doomed to be an outlaw you would have to steal a sheep to eat. Tricky living! I´ll get more into that later when I tell you the story about Fjalla Eyvindur and Halla (Mountain Eyvind and his lover Halla) later. But anyway, today you don´t get a sentence for killing a lamb, but you get fined for harming an animal.

(I think this is Hafrafell though I´m not 100% shure as every hill in Iceland has a name and the map shows a lot of them)

After our photo stop at Hafrafell we drove a bit longer until we took a right turn into the passage of Strandir and our destination the small town Hólmavík. It was a bit spooky to see the torn fabric blowing mildly in the breeze and the troll like clifts so it was quite evident that we were heading to the place of black magic.

We arrived in Hólmavík around 11:00 in the evening but still almost bright as daylight as usually during summers on our island in the north.

More to come tomorrow but I´ll tel you a bit about the wedding we attended the next day and more about Strandir. Sleep tight!
M.