I’m starting with an attraction we didn’t visit. The geothermal power plants take hot water from deep wells. This water has many dissolved minerals. The plant must separate the minerals from the water, or else the pipes and pumps will quickly get clogged. After separation, they pump the mineral water back into the ground, closing the water loop. Unfortunately, the injected mineral water backed up in one of the plants. By the time they got everything fixed, they were stuck with a 4-foot deep pond of warm mineral water that covered 2 acres. Oops. Before long, an employee who had a skin problem decided to try sitting in the pond. They claimed the mineral water helped. Before long, somebody decided to give the pond a slick name and charge admission. Today, a ticket to the Blue Lagoon costs $100 (or more, with various optional packages). It is one of the most visited attractions in Iceland.

Staying with the theme of failures, here’s a picture of a grinding stone. It is impossible to grow wheat this far north. The Vikings decided to try their luck grinding the local lyme grass. The stone ended up as part of the floor in the entry of a building.

Failure

We visited the Viking museum. Besides the stone, we saw that somebody built the ship 01_Vésteinn, very nearly identical to a Viking longboat. They sailed it to North America. The boat is indoors. It isn’t possible to get a decent pic. Fortunately, the people who did this were anxious to brag about their achievement. Here’s their pic.

Vésteinn

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the other thing I learned about the Vikings. They weren’t the first people in Iceland. That honor goes to the Inuit. The Vikings were farmers, looking for land they could use to grow crops. There wasn’t a lot of conflict between the two groups. It wasn’t that the Vikings were afraid of conflict. There simply wasn’t much overlap in how they used resources.

We saw some more prosaic stuff. I’ll leave those pics to the website, for those who are interested. Tomorrow we move to our last stop in Iceland.

Continuous water squirter

Lighthouse

Rugged landscape