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Copyright 2010 Andrew Mork
My apologies to Andy for taking so long to get his post up! Andy is an avid traveler and has been to Iceland on several occasions. His work has been highlighted here in the past and I thought with the current volcanic eruption I should get him to voice his opinion. With that, take it away Andy!
Iceland has been receiving some serious press recently, with its "Land of Fire and Ice" moniker in the forefront.
Perhaps my favorite place in all my travels is Skeiðarársandur in Southeast Iceland, seen above. The Sandur, or sand plain, is a 1300km2 amphitheatre of flat coastal sand surrounded by ominous promontories, glacier coated volcanoes, and the North Atlantic.
My connection to this area was unexpected, and I took in much more than I imagined while stepping out of the car for a quick photo. The sky was clear, the morning air cool, and a gentle breeze flipped my hair around. Standing in center of that enormous space was a very metaphysical experience; I felt like something was gently pulling from all directions. As if the atmospheric pressure was slightly less than that of my blood. Maybe it was the gravitation of those massive mountains and the Vatnajökull icecap. Maybe it was sheer entropy acting through osmosis - one very large expanse of chaotic wilderness surrounding the speck of a single man. Was it the opposite case? Was it the complexity of a living organism and its modern world, seeping out into the air, rock, and ice? Whatever it was, I expanded here.
I had read about this place. The mineral rich sand composed of flattened mountain pulverized over thousands of millennia, with streams comprised of freshly thawed water frozen long before the beginning of time made an ideal place for farmland in centuries past without a single consideration for the aesthetic. Ideal until a volcano not unlike the one we've become familiar, perhaps Öræfajökull seen here, erupted high above, creating a lake underneath the glacier. Slowly but surely the water weakened the ice, and like it had done thousands of times before, ruptured its ice dam, creating a speeding wall of ice water - a backwards tsunami known as a Jökulhlaup (a word loaned to English), depositing anything out of place in the ocean. Twisted remains of a bridge demolished from a 1996 Jökulhlaup can be seen along the road here. In addition, this area is known to have sandstorms fierce enough to overturn cars. Who would have guessed such a mystical place could be so fierce?
The volcano Eyjafjallajökull, a small spot on the map several degrees south of the Arctic circle has for a time severely impaired air travel in the North Atlantic. Much of South Iceland, now covered in a soot blanket, has undoubtedly been reported as stark, hostile, and grim.
And it can be. But I've had the completely opposite experience.
