Skaftafell

Skaftafell has played such an important part in my life over the years that I'm sure it will crop up in many posts to come. I'm not even going to attempt to do a short comprehensive piece. It's unique and very beautiful. Unsurprisingly, it's immensely popular with tourists, both Icelandic and foreign. This, given its small size and fragility, keeps managers, rangers and volunteers constantly busy looking after it.

Skaftafell is centred on a small raised heathland of about 500 sq.km. surrounded on three sides by the vast bulk of Vatnajökull  and on the fourth, to the south, by gravel plains created by the glacier's outwash. 

Once one of the most inaccessible places in Europe, it was home to a farming community for centuries. It was made into a national park in 1967 and is now within the Vatnajökull National Park.

This picture shows the view from the heath looking south east. You can see two outlet glaciers coming down from  Vatnajökull, and the gravel plain, which extends upwards of 20 km in places, to the sea.

Here's WhysWhys posing on the east side of the heath, overlooking the nearest of those glacier tongues, Skaftafellsjökull, in sight of the point where it starts its descent from the Vatnajökull ice cap.

Summertime on the heath

The northern end of the heath. The near peak, with a collar of clouds, is Krístinartindar, an easy climb rewarded with beautiful views from the top.

 Looking across Skaftafellsjökull  from the eastern path to Krístinartindar.

Krístinartindar summit, looking out over Vatnajökull to the north. On the left (west) of the picture is Morsàjökull, another outlet glacier, with ice falls over the cliff. 

Volunteers relaxing at the top of Krístinartindar

Here a volunteer works on the restoration of an old sheep enclosure, with a view west to Skeiðaràjökull, another outlet glacier from Vatnajökull. 

Old bridges are brought for dismantling ...

... to be recycled into boardwalks, steps and ...

... new bridges.


The black basalt cove and waterfall, Svartifoss, can be seen in the background.



















The black basalt columns of Svartifoss.

Volunteer lunch break at the top of Huntafoss ('Dogs' Waterfall')

Traditional Farm Buildings

Volunteers putting in drainage and repairing one of Skaftafell's busy paths. 

When we dig into the ground at Skaftafell we come across banded layers like these. They are deposits from volcanic eruptions. They can be checked against written records and cross-referenced to similar deposits to provide dating information, so each one can be connected with a specific eruption. One of the uses of this information is to help in the dating of archaeological remains.

The start of a busy summer weekend at Skaftafell campsite

...and a Poem

This conical mountain 25km or so from Thingvellir, is called Skjaldbreiður - 'Broad Shield' - for obvious reasons. It's the volcano which poured out the lava upon which Þingvellir now stands.

Jonas Hallgrimsson wrote this poem after traveling in the area.

Mount Broadshield

(A travel poem from summer 1841)

Queen of all our country's mountains,
crowned with snow sublime and pure!
Once you poured from fiery fountains
floods of lava down the moor.
Years have passed since rage and riot
ravaged meadow, glade, and field:
now you bear your name in quiet,
noble, broadly swelling shield!

Bound for Broadshield, I am riding
barren leagues of lava rills.
In the east the sun is striding
upward, gilding dales and hills.
Laboring hoofbeats clatter loudly;
Lambside edges into sight;
northward, Broadshield bulges proudly,
Barn Crag looming on its right.

Baldur, nostrils briskly steaming,
bears me through the frozen sound.
When did lava last go streaming
loudly here across the ground?
Iceland knew no human creatures,
horse or cow; no startled flock
glimpsed its fierce primeval features,
flooded now in depths of rock.

Broadshield's icecap opens! brawling
earthquakes wrench and tear the land,
stunned as if the stars were falling,
strewn to earth by heaven's hand;
spitting like a spray of midges
sparks go hissing through the air;
lava, spewed from rents and ridges,
wreaks destruction everywhere.

Fiery surges snarl and thunder,
smoke is roiling, bluish-grey;
birch and ash-tree both go under,
bush and shrub are seared away;
valley flowers, scorched to vapor,
vanish with a fragrant hiss;
grasses glow like burning paper; —
God alone beheld all this.

Playful brooks that once went plashing
past the hillsides all around
flee in dismal panic, dashing
down a channel underground.
When their waters reassemble
where the lava ends, they break
out in freedom, flash and tremble,
forming Iceland's greatest lake.

Later Broadshield's leashless violence
lulls, its furnace falls asleep.
Starlight, sifting through the silence,
sows its peace on vale and steep.
Later still the lava's fringes
lurch into the vault below;
thunder rattles heaven's hinges,
haze and dust sweep to and fro.

Thus did fierce resistless forces
fashion Iceland's sacred shrine.
Bound, now, at their burning sources,
Broadshield's restless firewolves pine.
Streams of grass flow down the gracious
glens where lava used to spill;
sited soundly, Iceland's spacious
citadel is standing still.

Who unleashed such lethal power?
Listen! no mere mortal hand
built the battlements that tower
boldly over freedom's land!
God, the prince of force and passion
planned these bulwarks in his mind:
who but God — and fire — could fashion
fortress walls of such a kind?

Eastward, stony steeps are leaping
stalwartly from Raven Gorge;
westward, walls of rock are keeping
watch above our nation's forge.
Grímur Goatshoe, sage and clever,
grasped the promise of this place:
Almanna Gorge, on guard for ever,
girds the councils of my race.

Highland powers, approve my lonely
passage through your vast domain!
Horse and hound are now my only
helpers, parted from my train.
Curious sights in countless numbers
crowd upon my hungry eye!
Let no ghost assault my slumbers —
sleeping out beneath the sky!

His biographer and translator, Dick Ringler, to whom I am indebted for the above, has loads of good stuff about him here:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/Jonas/Skjald/Skjald.html

An Artist and a Poet

The Artist

In the west of Iceland, in the green and pleasant pasture land to the west of Langjőkull, lives the artist Pàll Guðmundsson, at Húsafell. 

Public art can sometimes be intrusive in nature I think, as when one is confronted by a chainsaw statue in an otherwise natural woodland. But Pàll's work is something quite different. His outdoor sculptures do not thrust themselves into your consciousness; you become aware of them by degrees as you walk the area surrounding his studio. You become aware a stone is somehow looking back at you as you approach.





We enjoyed our first visit so much that we had to go back again when we had more time, and doing so found lots of stuff we had missed first time round.








These sculptures are not his only work by any means. At the same place he has a gallery of portraits, many of them of local people. And he has his wonderful steinharpa, a xylophone-like instrument made of stones picked up around the place. It's by no means a gimmick - he plays proper music on it.
See for yourself here (you also get to see some of his pictures too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDjpIIYlmZg

The Poet

Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807 - 1845) was a poet, author, naturalist, translator, promoter of the Icelandic language and campaigner for Icelandic independence. He was co-founder of the journal Fjőlnir, in which he published essays and poetry, and which strove to raise Icelandic national consciousness. He is one of Iceland's best known and widely read poets.

His home in Öxnadalur, under the spectacular peak of Hraundrangi, is kept as a museum to his memory. It's a beautiful house in a beautiful place.

And from time to time some of us have been lucky enough to work there, staying in the house for a few days or a week.

Preparing waymarkers for the walking trail in the mountains behind the house.

A spot of gardening

The view down Öxnadalur. Route 1 passes through here on its way to Akureyri. A layby is provided giving good views of the house and mountains.

His biographer and translator, Dick Ringler, has loads of good stuff about him here:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/Jonas/Skjald/Skjald.html

Here We Go Again

Leader Training and Skills Development

20-odd leaders and would-be leaders assembled at the National Trust's High Wray Basecamp in the Lake District for seminars and practical work during 11th to 15th March 2015.

Trainer Toby from TCV teaching principles of Leadership

Rene, ICV coordinator, preparing a unit on path surveying

Active learning outdoors

Tool talk before practical trail work - and by the way you've got to carry this lot up the hill.

Introductory talk at the beginning of the work site...

...which goes a lot further up yet.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho...

How to pick up a big rock - Jamie from the National Trust

Trail work...

In a beautiful place.

In a couple of months time a new intake of Trail Team volunteers will gather at Skaftafell in South East Iceland for their own brand of training. It will be conducted by some of the leaders here, and others will be leading the Trail Teams around Iceland during the 2015 season.

Iceland Conservation Volunteers (ICV) is the volunteer arm of Umhverfisstofnun, the Environment Agency of Iceland.  For more information about ICV see:

http://www.ust.is/the-environment-agency-of-iceland/volunteers