27/08/2008 Iceland: The Journey Home

Last night, we ate out in Reykjavík, at a three-storey pizza house. To end my Icelandic culinary mission, I had a snail pizza, which was actually surprisingly nice. We returned to the Hotel Cabín, to our separate twin rooms (which unlike the third floor rooms on our arrival, were now on the sixth floor, with widescreen TV and fancy tiled bi-colour bathrooms.

Waking up the next morning, we had a leisurely breakfast, said goodbye to John (who had a two day journey with the van and my rock samples to catch his ferry up in the northeast), and then wandered round the city. Bumped into Issy, who returned with us on the same flight, and then got back in time to catch our 12:00 bus from the hotel to Keflavik Airport. The journey back was uneventful - we had a good tailwind, and so despite leaving half an hour late we arrived at Stansted five minutes early. Catching our mammoth taxi back to Cambridge, I spent the night at Dan and Indira's, before heading home the following afternoon. A great end to a perfect trip, and a great start to what I hope will be a fantastic PhD.

26/08/2008 Iceland: Unflattenable

Today started off relatively clear and bright, but soon deteriorated, so that by the time we were at our first stop, at Miðfell (a hyaloclastite ridge at the edge of Þingvallavatn) it was already raining. At Miðfell, the pillows (with good thick glassy rims) also have crustal nodules of gabbro and troctolite. These nodules have been transported from the mid and lower crust all the way to the surface in their host melts - absolutely amazing. There was no way I was going to escape sampling these!

Returning to the van, we found our third vehicle-related disaster of the trip - we had a flat tyre. And not just a flat tyre... this was a proper flat, complete with rips in the side and a large nail sticking out of the rim. And so we began unpacking the van. Myself and James H made pretty quick work of removing all of our bags to get at the spare tyre, with which Dan then replaced the other tyre.

And so, once again, we had to return to the wonderful world of Selfoss to get another two tyres (to balance the back, as the other rear tyre was very worn).

After our daily excitement, we continued our journey, making our way back to Þingvellir National Park, and Þingvellir, in order to visit the Lögberg, where the Icelandic Parliament was started in 934 AD.

Being right on the active rift, the site (on the North American side) afforded spectacular views across the graben. Since the founding of the parliament, the Law Rock itself is believed to have foundered 4 metres due to the 1000 years of rifting.

Our next stop was the Nesjavellir power plant, which we visited after a brief lunch at a hotel just outside the plant, where a very nice smiling girl offered to make us toasted sandwiches despite the place not being open. The plant itself delivers heat and electricity not only to the local area, but also to large parts of Reykjavík. The turbines were being serviced whilst we were there, giving us an opportunity (on the German tour which we subtlely gatecrashed) to see the inner workings of the beautiful brushed steel cylinders. The tour also gave us an opportunity to see the engineering genius of the Icelandic, who, realising that they were building the place on a system of active faults, allowed the entire building to take up strain by breaking along specially designed joints. These, we are assured, are completely safe, despite looking extremely worrying.

Our last stop of the day was Reykjanes, where the ridge meets the mainland. Past the flat-topped island of Eldey, the ridge disappeared beneath the waves, and yet even here there are signs of the ice which once covered the island, in the pillow lavas constantly pounded by the waves

25/08/2008 Iceland: A Short Trip

This morning we had breakfast at the Geirland hotel before leaving for Laki. We dropped the two Jameses off to buy lunch whilst we got Diesel, and then returned for them. And there our troubles began.

John turned the ignition on the car, and ... nothing. He tried the front lights. A whine emanated from the front of the car, and then failed. Turning the warning lights on produced a similar effect. The battery was completely dead.

However, the car had two batteries, and luckily (we thought) the second one wasn't connected, so Dan connected it, and we drove gingerly to the nearest garage. After a little bit of miscommunication from a German (he told us that the garage only did tyres, presumably so that he could be first in the queue whilst we left, the b***ard) we finally got the guy to hook our generator up to an old fashionned analogue ammeter, after which he told us that it wasn't charging. And so, nursing the engine all the way, we returned and apologised to the hotel at Geirland that we wouldn't be staying another night, and travelled to Selfoss.

There, we left our car, and walked to the Ölfusá river, to the edge of Þjórsárhraun, where we had lunch under a rather unattractive bridge, which had clearly been haunted by more jokers believing themselves to be the new Banksy (not!). Anyway, there we found some rather strange formations, which John thought were man-made, until a sign told us that they were in fact volcanic in origin, and probably caused by collapsing bubbles of volcanic gas. It'll take a while for him to live that down!


After a swift espresso, we returned to the truck to find that the mechanic (this time with a fancy digital multimeter) had found nothing wrong, and that we could continue on our way. In fact, all that had happened was that the wire meant to connect the second battery had touched the chassis and shorted the first.

By this stage, it was too late and too far to return to Laki, so we continued to Geysir, to watch Strokkur erupt. Apparently it does so every 8-10 minutes, although not in quite as impressive a manner as Geysir, which became dormant in 2000.

The last stop of the day was Gullfoss (in English, lit. trans. Golden Waterfall). Gullfoss is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country, produced as the wide Hvítá river rushes towards the south and flows down into a wide curved three-step milky glacial blue "staircase" before plunging abruptly in two stages (11 and 21 m) into a crevice 32 m deep.

Our accommodation for the night was at Úthlíð, a tiny village quite nearby Geysir. For only £120, we stayed in a wooden chalet, complete with four beds and a leather sofa (my bed)... and... wait for it... a geothermal hot tub! We arrived after a quick meal of Víking beer and fried cod and chips, and travelled to the nearby bar (John had driven back, and felt a need to catch up with our drinking!). Afterwards, everyone but myself went to bed. I spent a couple of enjoyable hours in the hottub on the darkened veranda, before I followed suit, drifting into a pleasant sleep.

24/08/2008 Iceland: Land of Fire and Ice

Today we drove down from the north, around the east side of the island. The journey took most of the day, but was not without at least some interesting sites.

Our journey took us on the main road across the north-east of Iceland before reaching the coast just in time for lunch. We stopped just before one of the longest tunnels I've ever travelled through (where we took some nice pictures of rift-wards dipping lava flows, and a small waterfall), called Reyðarfjörður. The food was what John aptly called an 'EssoBurger' and the drink Appelsin (which, strangely enough, was orange-flavoured and remarkably like Fanta).

After that came a drive through more and more spectacular scenery until we reached a spot on the edge of a fjörð with some particularly strange formations - pillow lavas intruding into felsic material! At least, that's what John assures us was happening - we couldn't find the best exposures.

Our next stop was a geological center dedicated to British geologist George Walker (1926-2005), who mapped the geology of east Iceland. The center was in Breiðdalsvík, a very small village, and had only opened the day before. Dan thought it looked like a shrine - and hopes that no one does anything like that for him when he goes!

Next, we continued along the coast to Gígjukvísl, where a bridge was washed away by a jökulhlaup that took place from about 07:00 to 16:00 h on 5 November 1996. A small piece remains, removed from where it was left by the flood for tourists to look at, and, it appears, youngsters to graffiti. So far away from civilisation, it seems strange that anyone would want to do that to a bridge that wasn't even standing anymore!

Our final stop was at Jökulsárlón (glacial lagoon). Every year, more bergs float into this lagoon, which also appears to be a holiday home for numerous gulls and seals. I don't blame them either - it's the first time I've seen 'blue-ice' - it's beautiful.

Eventually we left, in what was now driving rain, to arrive at Kirkjubæjarklaustur, at the edge of the Skaftáreldar (Skaftá river fires), produced by the Lakagígar (Craters of Laki) in the 18th Century. We stayed the night in Geirland, just inland, in a rather nice hotel where Arctic Char and Iced Skyr-cake were enough to make the day complete.

23/08/2008 Iceland: Krafla and the Mývatn Fires

Karl and John arrived at Mývatn this morning, at around 11am. Karl decided to take us round the Krafla area.

Our first stop was up Krafla itself, where we could overlook the lavas of the Mývatn Fires in the 18th Century, and the Krafla fires of 1984. We then drove down, and walked over the lava flows themselves, onto the main line of fissures, where lava channels still emit thick sulphurous gases.

We returned home early, and Karl cooked us a meal of potatoes, salad and Fiskeboller (fish slab rather than balls ... looks incredibly unappetising, but fried it is actually tasty!

Tomorrow we head to the south. Hopefully it will be as impressive as the north...

22/08/2008 Iceland: A Force of Nature

We arrived 9:20 at the mechanics. Considering their day started at 9:00, we were slightly surprised to find that they had already gone for coffee. Anyway, we left the car and keys, and went to look down at the harbour for some fish for James. After a futile search and an hour attempting to see a whale near one of the tourist boats, we picked up the car with its brand new window, and drove to Ásbyrgi, where an old river channel cascaded down old basalt flows in what must have once been a tremendous waterfall. Only the river notch and plunge pool survive, remnants of an ancient wonder of nature now inhabited only by fulmars.

Setting off along the gravel road we had arrived on yesterday, we visited Hljóðaklettahringur, where lavas once flowed into a river valley, preserving as immortal proof that columnar basalts need not always be vertical. Most of the columns intersected the large blocks at right angles to the surface, suggesting:

1. Very little erosion, and
2. Jointing perpendicular to isotherms whilst still hot

i.e. the river likely cuased significant erosion to subhorizontally flowing lava flows during initial cooling. Many regions appeared glassy, even well within the large forms, suggesting extremely rapid, fluid-aided cooling.

After leaving the site, we returned via the route we had come along, then travelled east to join the Dettafoss road on the other side of the river.

Our final stop of the day was Dimmuborgir ('Dark Fortresses' in Icelandic), where lava had once flowed over marshland, heating the water and forcing steam up through vents during solidification. Apparently the lake then breached its lava-dam, causing the molten material to flow between the vents and into a lava channel, resulting in subsidence of the upper cooled crust and leaving columns and ridges of lava where the vents were once active, or the lava was unable to drain.

21/08/2008 Iceland: Through the Looking Glass

First of the tourism days! Amazingly, it remained warm and dry, with only scattered clouds all day.

We first drove to the next valley to the east. There, geothermal springs and mud pools bubble and boil, depositing sulphur and gypsum around their vents.

Continuing our drive along the north road, we spotted small renovated cairns on the basalt flows. These marked the old horse tracks across the island - it must have been very different from today, with our well graded road raised above the landscape to allow not even the snow to gather on its surface. Further along the road, we stopped to see Herðubreið, 60km away, and to find out just how far it would be to the next petrol station, if we were to travel to the south (268km!).

Taking the north road, we then travelled to Dettifoss, situated on the Jökulsá á Fjöllum river, two amazing waterfalls over, under and between thick columnar basalts and volcanic sediments. The levels along which the river flows are controlled by weak sediments and ashes in the interbasalt layers. Chisel marks in the columnar jointing are mostly horizontal, and seem to follow isotherms, despite actually propogating horizontally.

Continuing to the north in the van, we turned off at Hólyatungur, where the path to the coast rejoins the road, and where smaller waterfalls can be seen running down the basalt. Thick jointing here is in narrow bands, overlain by thinner jointing, still mostly subvertical, but in places considerably oblique to this.

We then returned to the van, to find that Dan had unfortunately locked us out! James H had unfortunately left the other set of keys in the vehicle too, so we were stuck. After a brief and futile attempt to open my half-open door by using steel plating kindly lent to us by some Icelanders in their mid-20s who were busy fixing the toilets, and with a Spanish tourist in his 40s trying to unlock the door with his penknife, Dan finally decided to break one of the windows to get in. So, with a rock and his jumper, one of the windows was no more. My window to be precise. After a quick sweep up, a short lunch and a rapid change of dress (fleece, coat, gloves and hat), we decided to cut the day short and travel back to Húsavík to replace the window. Unfortunately, the men in the Hjólbarðaþjónusta (don't ask) only had a window for the left hand window - and so a return the following morning was required.

We then adjourned to the supermarket and booze shop to pick up 6l more wine and 7.5l more beer. But that wasn't the end of our excitement. On the way through, James Jackson had seen a bizarre oddity - The National Phallological Museum. Common consensus led this to be our next stop! Actually, the inside was less 'intriguing' than the outside, comprising 202 Icelandic 'parts' from blue whale to arctic fox - and even to homo sapiens! The 'erotic section' was a small cabinet covered with a black veil, with all the exhibits apparently the result of one man's search for the perfect sexual trinket - mostly bronze and plastic male and female figurines in various compromising positions. One poster caught JJs eye - a poster of a naked man, standing, with a woman doing a handstand on his member. I can't believe this feat was ever performed, but if it was, I'm stunned!

Finally, we had a meal in the Skuld restaurant in Húsavík - warm puffin and blueberries (JJ gave us a piece of his rare reindeer carpaccio too), followed by a pizza and with Egils Gull on draft. The trip home proved, I think, how useful good waterproofs can be - I didn't feel the cold at all.

20/08/2008 Iceland: Picking Picrites

Woke again at 7:00 to complete James' fieldwork. We returned to the same place (marked with a cairn off the road to locate the base point).

We decided to cover the area with two more traverses and by van with the roving GPSs. James Jackson and myself took the first walk, making a zig-zagging path crossing a step in the DEM between two sets of stereo pairs.

With the weather warm and sunny, we started in a gap between two ridges on the western side of the valley. The area was extremely barren, looking very similar to some of the Mars Rover images, with flat basaltic cobbles lying horizontally over windblown ash, a natural mosaic in a featureless landscape. We completed the route in less than an hour, and so picked bilberries whilst waiting for the van (to use in James' Pork Tenderloin in the evening).

After being picked up, we went to Þeistareykja Farm, where sulphuric acid bubbles up to the surface at pH 1. Apparently about a tourist a year loses their lower limbs (or worse) to this boiling liquid poison.

Quite nearby, a geothermal drill bit was being dismantled, and we sat watching whilst eating lunch. Following this, we peeked into the farmhouse, and then headed round the valley to collect picrites, at N65°55.918' W017°04.350', which contained perfectly fresh lime-green olivines... to 12mm! Another sample required, then.

The two Jameses then left, whilst Dan and I drove round to meet them. Their traverse took significantly longer than that of the morning (2 hours) due to difficult terrain.

Returning to Mývatn, work complete, we bought a little more food, and then laid back for a relaxing evening in.

Thomas arrived that evening, and briefly leapt over the garden fence for a chat. His conference is significantly smaller than that of IAVCEI (20 versus 900 participants) - clearly geothermal energy is not as exciting as volcanic eruptions!

19/08/2008 Iceland: A Shock Awaits

Our first field day in Þeistareykja began at 7:00. After an extremely leisurely breakfast we drove west and then north up a small dirt track.

Our plan was to take four traverses (two in each pair) across the valley with accurate GPS ground systems, in order to test a DEM (Digital Elevation Model) which James H had constructed from stereo aerial images.

Whilst James was setting up the base station on the east side of the valley, Dan, James Jackson and I traversed over the first large fault cutting north-south up the area, through the Storaviti shield flows and to the edge of Borgarhraun. I collected samples from both the ropey pāhoehoe of the former, and phenocryst-rich (olivine and diopside) a'a from the latter.

As we returned, James H told us that the electric fence separating our area from the road was off. Resting my hand on it, we chatted for about a minute before my hand started vibrating. Before I realised what was going on, I felt a huge thump pass up my left arm and into my body. No-one touched the fence again that day!

I traversed with James H, whilst the two 'silverbacks' (thanks for the word, Nicky!) took the route further to the north. It took us 90 minutes to traverse the site, over Storaviti, Borgarhraun, Hekla ash (H3, orange) and 'patterned ground', caused by freeze-thaw, at either side of the valley. We then climbed the larger fault at the edge of the area, significantly older than the three flows of interest, below the large extremely high bounding fault at the western edge of the valley.

Walking along to the north round the tip of the fault, we then walked back towards the others. Our orginal plan was to do another traverse to the south of our first, but Dan decided instead to show us the young Þeistareykja flows to the north (2800a), which contained large milky plagioclases. We then traversed back to the east road along the edge of Borgarhraun.

Our last stop of the day was to a small dig into hyaloclastite. There, we saw an Icelander who very rapidly stopped reading the paper in the cab of his truck and returned to the JCB to continue digging. He clearly thought we were his superiors, coming to check on him! I also had my first touch of Icelandic ice. It was cold.

We continued further north in the van, to Húsavík in order to pick up some more food and booze from the Vín Búð (expensive government run outlet, but the only shop allowed to sell alcohol). James Jackson cooked that evening, whilst the other James processed all of the GPS data - which revealed a tilt and offset requiring correction. In order to do this, one more day of fieldwork was required to constrain the magnitude of the artefact.

18/08/2008 Iceland: 66° North

After a light breakfast, we left Reykjavík for the North, along the west road. The journey was relatively uneventful - three hours out we stopped for petrol (self-service, with credit card!) and a coffee served by a tall, slender, and extremely pretty local girl.

Our next stop was Akureyri, the 'Capital of North Iceland', despite a population of only 17,304 (versus 119,900 in Reykjavík). By this time, the weather was clear and bright, and the sun pleasantly warm. After a short stop for soup and salad, we were back on the road to Mývatn.

We arrived in glorious sunshine, with several hours with which to make the round trip walking to Hverfjall, the nearest large caldera to the east of the village. Covered with grey ash, it afforded fantastic views to the west of the fissures marking the top of several normal faults cutting across the area, and also towards the lake, where several small circular cavities can be seen in the lava. These are known as pseudocraters or rootless vents, and can be clearly seen at Skútustaðir on the south shore of the lake.

17/08/2008 Iceland: The Journey Begins

Indira drove us to James Jackson's house, from where we took a rather large taxi to the airport. The flight out to Iceland from Stansted was very easy, and from Keflavík it was even easier to find a bus taking us to the Hotel Cabín, a rather swanky hotel which doesn't have single rooms. To avoid the horrible business of sharing rooms on the first night (!) Dan got us each twin rooms on the third floor.

At 6:30, John Maclennan arrived with the Toyota Van with which we'd be driving round the island. Our first trip out, however, was to downtown Reykjavík, and to the 'ice-breaker' for the IAVCEI conference in the Nordic Volcanology Centre, modelled, it appears, on a rather back-to-front volcanic crater. There we met Issy Sides, Marie Edmonds, and Seb Watt, now going into his third year of the PhD at Oxford. I was also introduced to Karl Grönvold, apparently a big name in Volcanology, with whom I chatted for maybe 15 minutes about everything from volcano-seismicity to melt compositions and movement (he now believes that melt is transported directly up through the crust, with relatively little lateral transport).

After one glass of wine, we said our hasty goodbyes (after all, we had gatecrashed without invite or name labels!) and adjourned to a very fancy lobster restaurant, guided by Karl, who went to school in the area.

To eat, the elders (Dan, JJ and Karl) had whale sashimi, whilst we had smooth, slightly oily, beautifully tender Guillemot with apricot (1800Kr). The main meal was extremely fine Arctic Char with Goat's Cheese (3480Kr) with Skyr for dessert, which is a thick, strained white cheese (much like Bulgarian yoghurt, great to clean the palate; 1400Kr). Even without wine, that came to £44 per head. I dread to think how much the Chablis was ... but the meal was nevertheless easily one of the best I've ever had (although The Crown in Southwold still wins!).

Returning to the hotel was amusing - the roads were nearly empty, despite us being in downtown Reykjavík. Getting back to the hotel was fine, but finding the way in (which was round to the right) was too much for Dan, who was forced to take us a very long way round the road system and ended up taking a short cut up over the pavement, kerb and grass, and into the car park that way!

16/08/2008 Iceland: To Cambridge and Beyond

Today I travelled up to Cambridge. Catching the 10:50 train from Lowestoft just in time, I thought I'd arrive in Cambridge at 13:00. Of course, public transport had other plans for me. Catching a bus from Norwich to Thetford ended up taking an extra hour, and so I finally made it into the department rather tired at 14:25, for the open day in the museum. There then followed a pleasant hour and a half leaving Darwin, Wordsworth, Anning and Sedgwick trying to persuade the general public that they were, in fact, young - and more importantly, not dead, whilst I chatted to Anne and Bryony downstairs.

In my hurry to buy new boots before I left, I forgot to pick up the wine and chocolates for Dan and Indira, so I quickly stopped at Sainsbury's and OddBins on my way to our regular post-open day haunt, the Cambridge Blue on Gwydir Street. I was recommended the Fox Creek Duet as a good wine - have to see how good it is in practise!

After a little garlic bread and a pint (thanks Nets!) we retired to the Koh-i-Noor for a selection of very mild (but pleasant) curries, after which I hiked to Dan's via the boat shed bridge.

The minute I got in, I was made to feel very much at home - Indira is lovely, as is Dan. Little James had been working in London all day - I think we interrupted him in the middle of dinner. Anyway, after briefly petting their cat and having a shower, it was time for bed.