Last night a group of us decided to go camping. We arrived at the camping spot around 11 pm feeling a little bit tired after the hike. However, we didn’t want to sleep right away, so Arlo and I went exploring our surroundings while the rest were playing Euchre (well, except Faith who went to sleep.)

The next morning started with Eli’s alarm and then with the pleasant sounds of the nearby waterfall. After some morning stretching, we decided to have a few minutes alone to enjoy the beautiful scenery around us. We then headed back to the house for breakfast and joined the 9 am briefing meeting.

Today marked a special day for the entire nation of Iceland. At 1 pm, Iceland marked its debut on the World Cup against Argentina. To be part of such occasion, Oli made sure we had a bus pick us up and drive us to Seyðisfjörður where we would watch the game. While most of us were getting ready for the kickoff, Dan, Emi and I had already our Iceland jerseys and scarfs on. Before leaving, Dan sparked our excitement by presenting a brief history of Iceland’s national team.

We arrived at Seyðisfjörður around noon. Having one hour available before the kickoff, we went to a local market and then ate lunch at a nearby restaurant. At 1 pm we were at a community center were locals from Seyðisfjörður had set up a giant projector to watch the game. Finally, the moment I had personally been waiting since I joined this program arrived. It was kick off time. After a slow start, Argentina got the early lead with Aguero. Luckily, Iceland responded right away, and after four minutes Finnbogason equalized. Everyone stood up celebrating and chanting; it was an unforgettable moment. Those were the highlights of the first half.

The second half began with Argentina pressing up high and trying to get the lead again while Iceland was well organized and closed all the spaces in defense. Then, in the sixty-fourth minute, Argentina had a penalty awarded. The community center went quiet waiting for Messi to take the penalty. And then, Halldórsson saves the penalty, and everyone is again celebrating and chanting as if Iceland scored again. The last minutes of the game were nerve-wracking as we witnessed Iceland draw its first ever World Cup game.

After the game, we went to Oli’s house where his son, probably inspired and motivated by the brave performance of his country, invited us to play football in one of the nearby fields. Some of us accepted the invitation, and we decided to play Europe-USA (if you were wondering which of the teams won, Europe did, twice (: ). It was really fun playing football again, even though we quickly realized we were out of shape. Yet, we continued to play until it was time to get back to Skálanes.

All of us, except Andy who decided to run from Seyðisfjörður back to Skálanes, got rides in groups from Oli and Charlie. It is worth mentioning that it took Andy only one hour and twenty-four minutes to complete the run (17.4 km) and reach Skálanes before the last group did. Once we were back, we had a delicious meal cooked by Ahsan, Nick, and Sallie, and discussed the plan for tomorrow. After dinner, another group went camping while we continued working, spending time with each other, and resting.

To conclude, today was an unforgettable day for Iceland and me personally. Stay tuned for another update tomorrow, and as always Áfram Ísland.

On Monday June 11, we journeyed to our home for the next week or so, Skalanes! We had to check out of the hostel in Egilsstaðir by 11:00 am, but our ride to Skalanes didn’t leave until 5:30 pm, so we had some free time in town. Emi, Charlie, Arlo, and Dan met with a group of professors and students from various universities at the Salt Cafe to discuss overlapping research interests. Afterwards, a handful of us met up with our fellow Earlham folk and spent a good chunk of the afternoon hanging out, playing Euchre and Carcassonne, drinking tea, and hitting our heads on the wonderfully decorative and incredibly low-hanging ceiling lamps. Charlie went back and forth to the post office to drop off the postcards that some of us wanted to send to friends and family. Another group of Earlhamites went with Andy and Eli to the Snaefell visitor center and went to see some nearby ruins of an old monastery, a forest (a very rare thing in Iceland), and the third tallest waterfall in Iceland, Hengifoss. Meanwhile, Kellan, Nic, Gail, and Faith spent the afternoon walking all the way from Egilsstaðir to Seyðisfjörður! Google maps puts this down as a 26.7 km hike which takes 5 hours and 48 minutes to walk.

The rest of us went to the Egilsstaðir airport around 5:00 pm to drop off the vans and wait to be picked up by the bus for Skalanes. After loading up the bus and heading out of town, we had a very scenic drive through the mountain pass which separates Egilsstaðir from Seyðisfjörður. Along the way we picked up our hiking friends, who had almost made it to Seyðisfjörður!

To get to the house at Skalanes, you need to traverse a gravel road and three rivers, so the bus dropped us off as close as it could get. From there, we walked for about an hour, and then finally arrived!

For dinner, potato leek soup, smoked lamb on bread (a traditional icelandic dish), smoked salmon on bread, unsmoked cheese on bread, and hard boiled eggs on bread. There was also butter. And bread.

Our journey east has brought us to part of Iceland with many unsolved mysteries and intriguing stories. Today, a fearless, soil sampling, drone-toting team of six went on a mission to the archeological site at Stöð, while the rest of the group divided and conquered to explore Egilsstaðir.

Rannveig, one of our hosts while we are at Skalanes, is currently studying the Stöð site as part of her Masters project. It is potentially one of the earliest Viking sites, dating from pre-settlement times. The dig is still at its early stages, but has revealed structural elements of two or more long houses and associated artefacts. Following up on an idea hatched on last year’s IFS trip, today Emi, Faith and Eila sampled 5 parts of the dig site in preparation for extracting the ancient DNA from the soil. We hope that the results will provide an extra dimension to our understanding of the inhabitants, giving us clues about what they hunted, ate and used for resources. Lilly, Merg and Andy were able to get aerial views of the site with the drone, similar to this one from 2017:

Meanwhile, in Egilsstaðir, delicious morsels were discovered and consumed in the excellent Salt café, and several went on to soak away the aches and pains of the travel days in the hot tubs and sauna of the local swimming pool. While some got a view of Lagarfljót, the lake that forms the picturesque backdrop to the town, none reported seeing the “Lagarfljót wyrm”, the legendary lake monster first sighted in 1345, and more recently capturing international attention via this “live footage”:

In the morning we said goodbye to our guesthouse outside of Kirkjubæjarklaustur and the herd of sheep that hung out around the yard and began our longest drive of the trip. A six-hour adventure past outlet glaciers and picturesque fjords all the way to Egilsstaðir in eastern Iceland.

We had a couple goals along the way including scouting out a different outlet glacier for future research, seeing a pretty glacial lagoon, stopping at the ancient Viking site at Stoð and finally getting to our guesthouse in Egilsstaðir. Also Emi challenged everyone to stay awake the whole drive in order to soak in the incredible scenery. Not to brag but I met the challenge head on and yes the dramatic landscape was worth it.

As mentioned before we are studying how nature seeps back into previously frozen/glacial-covered soil. We look at the soil composition at sample sites where the glacier was in 1996 years ago all the way to where it was pre 1900. This year and the year before we have been studying the glacial forelands of Solheimjokull. However, some colleagues from other schools suggested another outlet glacier that had more constrained movements and less tourists.

We decided to do some scouting and made our first stop of the drive at Kvíárjökull. The outlet glacier was stunning and in the clear weather we were able to see all the way up to where the cascade of ice disappeared into the mountains.

After walking around for a bit we got back in the cars and headed about an hour and a half down the road to Jökulsárlón a lake filled with icebergs that has formed in front of a melting outlet glacier.

After the lagoon we hopped in the vans for the long drive to the east. The landscape was breathtaking as promised. We stayed on Route 1 which hugs the coast of Iceland. With the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other we drove through little fishing villages tucked back in the fjords and passed grazing sheep and reindeer.

Our last stop at Stoð was a picturesque valley next to the ocean that is believed to be the first Viking settlement on Iceland. Archaeologists have begun digging there and unearthing ruins and tomorrow a group of us will return to extract some ancient DNA samples from the soil. After checking out the dig sites and soaking up the sun and the stunning valley we headed to our final destination for the day.

At our guesthouse in Egilsstaðir we were joined by Gail Connerley who flew in from Indiana to complete our four leader powerhouse team. We were also joined by Nic Arnold and Kellan Steele who were on the 2016 trip to Iceland. With our group finally complete we hung out into the evening, playing games, working on various projects as the fog rolled in off the mountains surrounding us.

After a few days of glacial hiking and science at Sólheimajökull, we enjoyed a relatively laid back and unstructured day exploring the history and environs of Kirkjubæjarklaustur (Klaustur for short – pronounced something like “cloister”), a tiny village near the South coast of Iceland.

We’re staying at a small guesthouse on a farm about half an hour out of town, nestled between old craggy lava flows and sheep pastures with a clear view of two massive glaciers – Mýrdalsjökull to the West, and Vatnajökull to the East. The uncommonly clear weather coupled with a shortage of beds led a few of us to sleep out in a tent last night, myself included. The sheep’s bleating, bird’s singing and the midnight sun conspired to keep us up, but the cool breeze, fresh air and past few days of hard work and hikes aligned to allow us all a sound night’s sleep.

Our itinerary today was flexible, but we begun as a group by visiting the memorial chapel for the 1783 eruption of Laki. While preparing for the trip, we all read the book Island on Fire, which detailed that particular eruption as well as shared information about Volcanic processes in general. The town of Klaustur was the site of Jón Steingrímsson’s famous “fire sermon,” where his congregation prayed to be saved from the eruption as lava flows advanced all around them. Their church was spared, and their survival was touted as a miracle and lives on in the Icelandic consciousness.

The nearby Skaftárstofa information center featured an interesting exhibit on Icelandic moss, which we’ve been seeing a lot of. It detailed different kinds of moss and the conditions in which they grow. The staff at Skaftárstofa also showed us a short film detailing the dramatic events of the 1783 eruption of Laki.

Following our time at Skaftárstofa, the large group split into several smaller groups as we explored the trails weaving throughout and around the town. A number of us took the scenic “Love Path” that wound up and around the cliffs above the town. This trail included a few sites of note. The tallest tree in Iceland was visible from the trail, a sitka spruce measuring approximately 25 meters tall (around 80 feet – shorter than plenty of trees on Earlham’s campus!). Other highlights included Systravatn, a pond where nuns bathed, Hildishaugr, a fabled burial mound (more likely a lava column), and Kirkugólfið, the “church floor,” where the tops of columns of basalt protrude from the earth and look like a man-made construction.

Some other folks explored other trails as well. After our various hikes, we took a short ice cream break and headed back to the guesthouse. A delicious dinner of mac and cheese was prepared by Charlie, and for the evening we set about packing up and preparing for the long day of transit ahead. Tomorrow, we’ll be making the long drive to Egilsstaðir along the fjords of the South East coast.