Iceland Adventure Part 1

 By Richard B. Primack

“How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us!” Henry David Thoreau in Excursions.

From May 24 to June 2, we traveled to Iceland. The purpose of the trip was to teach a short course in conservation biology, with weekends before and after reserved for sightseeing and learning about conservation and national park issues in Iceland.  

During our first weekend, we traveled the Golden Circle, a wonderful circular route to the east of Reykjavik that includes many amazing geological features. One of the most surprising features of the trip was constantly contending with strong gusts of wind. As a result, people in Iceland tend to avoid umbrellas and baseball caps. 

Among the most notable features:

Video 1: The Geothermal Park of bubbling pools and geysers, including a small geothermal power plant. 

 

Video 2: The Secret Lagoon where people swim in a pool heated with geothermal water.

 

Video 3: Geysir National Park featuring a geyser that shoots up hot water about every five minutes and is extremely variable in its height and form. Tourism to the area depends on this one geyser; what will happen if it becomes inactive, as has happened to other geysers after past earthquakes? 

 

Video 4. Gullfoss Waterfall with torrents of water changing direction and plunging into a deep gorge. This amazing natural feature would have been destroyed if citizens of Iceland had not stopped a proposed hydropower plan. 

 

Photo 1: Thingvellir National Park has dramatic fissures where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are pulling apart.

Photo 2: At Thingvellir, Ingibjörg Svala Jónsdóttir showed us her long-term open-top chamber warming experiments.