Orn's Travel Blog

It has been a bit strange for me to write about us travelling through Iceland and that might be one of the reasons I haven’t posted as often as I would have liked. Things might seem normal to us since this is our home country and I’ve been afraid that I’ll miss out on the how different Iceland really is from other countries – at least those I’ve been to. Therefore I asked my friend Deepak who travelled with us around the island to write a few posts here on the blog and here is the first gush from Deepak:

Traveling with Örn and Elínborg in their home country was an enlightening experience. I would never have been able to give visitors to the US such detail about my country’s history, flora, fauna and general trivia. So far, we had only been around the places closer to Reykjavik so Judith and I were super excited to go north and visit Örn’s hometown of Húsavík – a place we heard a lot about.

The road trip to Húsavík takes about between 5-8 hours depending on how many cool things you see on the way and want to stop to enjoy. Much of the landscape is rough and rocky but relatively flat so when we came upon hill like mounds of dirt all over the place, we knew we were in the presence of trolls. Legend has it that trolls were digging out land and threw the dirt from their shovels over their shoulder. As we were driving along, it was clear that Mother Nature had no part in the making of those hills.

We stopped for lunch along the way (Potturinn & Pannan in Blöndós) and I hit the jackpot of deliciousness when I ordered the monkfish. Before arriving in Iceland, I thought I was going to have to prepare myself for boiled lamb, boiled fish and boiled you-name-it – after what I had heard from Örn. Well, I didn’t have a bad meal the entire trip! A delicious meal put away, we continued on our journey to the Promised Land = Húsavik.

On the road we stopped by a fantastic waterfall – Goðafoss -for a quick photo op. In the year 1.000 the Law speaker Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði decided that Christianity should from then on be the official religion in Iceland. On his way from the parliament session Þorgeir threw his statues of the Norse gods into the waterfall and from that act the waterfall got it’s name (Goð=God, foss=waterfall).

The weather was turning sour but Örn kept promising that it would be sunny in Húsavík. According to him it’s always sunny in Húsavík but the outlook wasn’t good at all. Despite the sun not going down until about two in the morning the previous days the clouds were now dark, threatening heavy rain. But there is always hope – as we drove in to Húsavík the sun was shining through a blue hole in the dark sky as if it were welcoming Örn back home !!! …unfortunately for us it didn’t last long.

More on Húsavík and surroundings soon with more action and exciting photos so stay tuned.