Iceland 2: Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Dec 29: Our landlady declared yesterday, in her grim icelandic accent, "NObody is going ANYwhere tomorrow."

I thought she was going to lock us up and swallow the key. And then add us into a winter soup for her children.

SW, all wrapped up against the Wind. Note the candles.

Turned out she was merely informing us about the weather report: 30m/s gusts of wind = unsafe to drive. 30m/s! Insane! That's 108km/h. The Wind howled all night. I'm beginning to understand why Iceland has so many stories about trolls and ogres.

We dutifully stayed indoors, except for a brief walk to the Bonus supermarket and harbor.  By 'brief walk', I mean 'epic struggle to attain desired displacement while fighting errant gusts of 20-30m/s wind'...

It was nice to see the advent candles lighted up at every window. I felt they were standing vigil over us, the foolish tourists out on such a day.
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Dec 30th: The storm is slightly abated. Safe to explore the peninsula. Enroute, we drive on a bridge across a lake/lagoon. Big black birds flying overhead. Very Alfred Hitchcock. Along the coast, we see wind-battered barns and houses. Everything blanketed in snow. Seok kept mentioning some movie in which an isolated village was in the path of ravenous vampires...

Kirkjufellfoss. Very pretty waterfall, with kirkjufell (mountain) in the distance. Some icelandic ponies grazing atop a knoll. These horses are tough! We see them out in the scrub/fields everywhere. Wikipedia says: "There are about 80,000 Icelandic horses in Iceland (compared to a human population of 317,000), and around 100,000 abroad... Some horses are bred for slaughter, and much of the meat is exported to Japan. Farmers still use the breed to round up sheep in the Icelandic highlands, but most horses are used for competition and leisure riding... no livestock of any species can be imported into Iceland, and once horses leave the country they are not allowed to return... As a result, disesase in the breed within Iceland is mostly unknown. Native horses have no acquired immunity to disease; an outbreak on the island would be likely to be devastating."

Well... the good news is that the icelandic horses abroad would presumably still have a pretty pure gene pool. If anything happens, can repopulate from those.

Photo credit: YH

YH and the Lighthouse. Photo credit: SQ

Lóndrangar. Didn't see very much of the basalt volcanic plugs, but the lighthouse was extremely photogenic. The Wind was a constant presence that day, swirling snow drifts across the road (severely limiting vision at times). One memorable gust had the car sliding a little, evoking a response from the otherwise unflappable Seok.

Cemetery at Stykki: lighted crosses at every tombstone! Gave the place a cheerful aspect. Later, we realized that practically every cemetery had lighted crosses. Am trying to figure out why. One website said it's so the dead can celebrate Christmas. Another said it looks nice and is a good way to find the grave in the dark. erm. I guess they are probably all true to some extent.

Church at Stykki. I like the exteriors of the churches in iceland. Even some random seaside village will have a simple, minimalist, but beautiful church.

View of church from our living room. Photo credit: Seok