Blast from the Past: Greenland Shark

Perhaps the most interesting experience I had in Iceland was eating Greenland Shark! We spent part of our day at Bjarnarhofn (Byar-nar-hoff-en), where Greenland shark is processed and sold. There is no active hunting for the shark; most of the time, they come to the farm as bycatch from other fishing lines.

If any of you have seen Anthony Bourdain's encounter with this Icelandic delicacy, than you probably already know most of what I'm going to say. Greenland shark is prepared in a very special way, due to the fact that sharks do not have kidneys. This means that their bodies are full of uric acid. (Hopefully I don't have to explain what that is.) In its raw state, Greenland shark is very toxic. So, to make it more edible, Icelanders bury the carcass and allow it to ferment for 6-8 months. It is then dug up, cut into strips, and allowed to hang in an open shed for a year.

Eating one makes for quite an interesting experience.

However, you shouldn't take my word for it! If you're adventurous, this is definitely something you should try.

Oh, and the Icelanders get a huge kick out of tourist's reactions. :)

Blast from the Past: The Watering Hole

Somehow, the name of this place was never recorded in my travel diary! I do know it was a natural spring on a small farm in Iceland, probably in the Western part of the country. What was really interesting about this spring is that it is both naturally carbonated and has a lot of natural iron in it- hence the orange-ish color of the water! The farmers who own it simply have a bucket hanging next to the spigot, so for a donation you can take as much as you'd like. I personally found the iron to be a bit much, but one of my classmates really liked it. If you ever find yourself in Iceland, try looking for one of these naturally carbonated springs. It really is a one-of-a-kind experience!

Blast from the Past: Laufskálavarða

Sorry there was no post on Friday! I was feeling a bit under the weather, and classes just started at my university. So, here's today's post, full of lots of cool stuff!

We had to drive through an area of Iceland known for it's jokulhaups. This occurs when a glacier breaks and the water behind it gushes out. Jokulhaups (YOKE-ell-ups) are perhaps the most dangerous thing in all of Iceland. The wall of water moves so fast that few can outrun it. One of the sagas relates how one man on horseback narrowly escaped with his life after a jokulhaup swept in behind his steed!

That's why we stopped at Laufskálavarða. (It's pronounced LAHF-skowt-la-VARDTH-ah.) Remember that rock pile I mentioned in my post about Vik? Laufskálavarða is a rock pile, too, but one with a very important purpose. It is believed that leaving a rock here will ensure that one can cross the jokulhaup field unscathed. It's like leaving a token of good faith to the many spirits and creatures that inhabit Iceland.

One of the students suggested that Stitch leave a rock, too, just in case. After all, better not take any chances!

Blast from the Past: Seljalandsfoss

If you remember my post about Skogarfoss, I mentioned the smaller Seljalandsfoss but had no photos. I guess I somehow skipped it! So, here is a photo from behind the waterfall. Pretty neat, huh?

Blast from the Past: Búðir

Búðir (Booth-ear) is a small, lovely beach in the Western part of Iceland. The beach is quite isolated but is still very popular with tourists. There is a church, which is quite old, and an inn. But what makes Búðir really special is its sand. The sand is the most extroadinary color because it is made up of seashells, basalt, quartz, and olivine. We spent a lovely, quiet afternoon here, digging in the sand and even found a wolf fish skull in the surf! If ever you find yourself in Iceland, make sure you stop at Búðir; otherwise, you're missing out on one of the prettiest places on the whole island.

Blast From the Past: Skogafoss

Skógafoss (Skoh-gah-foss) is a very big, very wet, and very famous Icelandic waterfall! This thing is SO huge that a group of students were standing about 300 yards away and still got completely drenched. There is also a path along the waterfall's right side that leads to the top. The view from there is just amazing, making the long steep trip completely worth every step!

Later, we drove a short way to visit Seljalandsfoss (Sell-ya-lands-foss), which also flows from the Skoga River. This waterfall is very well-known for having a path the goes behind the water! One of our friends very nearly got a cold shower when she stood directly behind the falls and a gust of wind tore through them. Luckily she was wearing her rain gear! Seljalandsfoss had many pretty trails and caves around them that we got to explore, and where I took this photo.

Blast from the Past: Thorsmork

Thorsmork (which means "Thor's Forest in Icelandic) is a beautiful nature preserve in the south of Iceland. It is also very secluded, due to the fact that it is surrounded by mountains, glaciers, and rivers. In fact, the only way to reach the park is by a special all-terrain bus!

These photos chronicle the climb we made up the mountain Valanukur. The going was steep, but fun was had by all. When we reached the top, we actually had to shed our coats because we were burning up (no mean feat when the average temperature was somewhere between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or 13 to 16 degrees Celsius!) The river below is called Krossá (KROES-ow) which means "Cross River". This river is fed by glaciers, and the streambed changes so much that no permanent bridges can be built!

And here we are at the top of Valanukur! (Stitch is being held in place by my classmate Sarah, as there is a long, steep drop just behind them!) We had a lecture about cataclysmic volcanoes here, then we wound our way back down to explore the riverbed.

Blast from the Past: Soloheimajokull

Sorry today's entry is a bit late! The Labor Day festivities here in America kind of put me behind. :)

Sólheimajökull (Soh-loh-HAME-a-JOH-kult) is a glacier that we visited during our trip to Iceland. This glacier is part of the larger Mýrdalsjökull ice cap. I'd always thought that glaciers would end in a mile-high wall of ice, like the one that covered much of the American Midwest at the end of the last Ice Age, but I was mistaken. Sólheimajökull is a retreating outlet glacier, which means that it is melting. As we approached the glacier, we could see the moraines that marked where the glacier had once stood in the past. Another thing we found was quicksand! Luckily, the worst that happened was that Yours Truly got mud in her boots when she fell in, though a few other students found some quicksand as well.

If you want to learn more about glaciers, check out this fun program that allows you to play with different climates to create or melt a glacier!

Buckin' Ohio at Creek Bend Ranch

First post of September! I hope you're enjoying reliving some of my past trips as much as I am. :)

Today we're going to take a break from Iceland and look at something closer to home. Every summer, the good folks at Creek Bend Ranch host Buckin' Ohio. Buckin' Ohio is a rodeo featuring bull riding, ladies barrel racing, and children's Mutton Bustin'. It's a lot of fun and what makes it better is that we get to support a local business at the same time!

In this photo is Stitch, Yours Truly, and rodeo clown Craig Miller, one of the funniest guys East of Missouri! Rodeo clowns don't just entertain the crowd or throw freebies; they have the most dangerous job at any rodeo: keeping the cowboys safe. Luckily, there were only one or two close calls when we went, and everyone went home in one piece. After the rodeo, a local country group serenaded the crowd as we ate ice cream and BBQ, the competitors signed autographs, and the ranch hands bedded the bulls down for the night. It's a nice way to end the summer and pretend that you're a cowboy too, if only for one night!

Blast from the Past: Vik

Today's Blast from the Past brings us to Vik, the southernmost town in Iceland! Rock piles like this one are common throughout Iceland, and many serve a cultural purpose (which I will explain in detail at a later date.) As far as I know, this one was just for fun.

The sand at Vik is black because of the basaltic rocks that form the area (and most of the island, to be honest!) From here, one can see the famous Westman Islands poking up from the ocean. There is also no landmass between here and Antarctica! If the world were flat, you'd be able to see the southernmost continent from this beach. It really is a remarkable and pretty place.

Blast from the Past: A Geothermal Energy Plant!

I thought it was awfully brave of me to sit on a drill for this photo. Why a drill you ask? I'm at the Orkuveita-Reykjavikur Geothermal Energy Plant! The plant was established in 1987, but didn't start providing hot water to Reykjavik until 1990, and electricity in 1998. This drill is one of several that the company uses to drill into the rock where there are energy hotspots.

Geothermal energy provides Iceland with most of its power. It is used for everything from producing electricity to de-icing roads to heating swimming pools! There are many swimming pools in Iceland, and one of our most bizarre experiences was swimming in a comfortable 80-degree swimming pool while it snowed around us! The Blue Lagoon, one of Iceland's most famous resorts, was created when a geothermal plant closed down.

Blast from the Past: Kot

Continuing my trip down memory lane is the brief stop we had at an old, abandoned farm in Iceland called Kot (pronounce like "coat".)

While Iceland isn't a terribly big country, with a population of about 319,000, this farm was quite in the middle of nowhere! It had been abandoned due to the scarcity of water in the area, but the old foundations still remained.



Here you can see the old foundations of the farmhouse that had once stood here. Because of its northern location, Iceland doesn't have many good trees for timber, so houses were made of stone and sod. This house had one interesting feature: a bath for sheep! Sheep were, and still are, an important part of Iceland's culture and economy.


In this photo, you can see how truly isolated this place is. In the background is the volcano Hekla. She's one of Iceland's most famous and unique volcanoes. Many Icelanders believed that she was the opening to Hell!

Blast from the Past: More Thingvellir!

Today, we continue reminiscing about my trip to Thingvellir National Park in Iceland. As I said before, this place is pretty special for a lot of reasons. Last time we talked about its natural history, and today we'll talk about its culture!

Thingvellir is most famous for being the place where the Thing would meet every year. Waaaaay back in the day, "Thing" actually meant a government! Everyone from all over Iceland would travel on foot or on horseback to meet for a few weeks every summer. At the Thing, the Lawspeaker would recite the law and trials would be held. It was also a chance for people to see friends and family, arrange marriages, and that sort of thing.



This pool reminded me of Ariel's Grotto. There are tons of coins down there, from all over the world! It all started when the King of Denmark came to visit, back when Denmark had control over Iceland. The water is so clear that it's hard to judge its depth, so the king threw a coin in to see how deep it was. Hundreds of years later, people are still doing it! Every once in a while, a staff member will suit up and go down to collect the coins. He or she must be very brave, because that water is from glacial runoff, and is very, very cold!



This pool was kind of creepy and sad, because this is where convicted witches were drowned. Men who were convicted of witchcraft were hung nearby. Magic in Iceland wasn't nearly as big a deal as it was in Europe, and by time the witch burnings got to Iceland, it had pretty much petered out on the mainland anyway. Women have many magics they would perform, but it was considered un-manly if a man tried to do magic. And in Iceland, being called "argr" (ar-kur) is a pretty bad thing. Men have killed each other over this!

Blast from the Past: Thingvellir

Today's flashback looks at Thingvellir National Park. This park is absolutely gorgeous, and it's huge! There's many reasons why it's one of the most famous sites in Iceland. In this photo, you can see both the North American and Eurasian plates. This is the only place in the world you can see a plate boundary- all the others are underwater!



The rocks in and around Thingvellir are volcanic basalt. Due to the way that basalt cools, it often forms these honeycomb-shaped columns. Basalt is the most common rock on Earth! The waterfall here has a story behind it; according to the stories, early Icelanders took it upon themselves to change the coarse of the stream and actually created this waterfall. There is actually some archaeological evidence that suggests this may be true!

Blast from the Past: Geysir

One of the coolest things we got to see in Iceland was Geysir (GAY-seer). I'd never seen a geyser before, and for some reason I thought it would be more or less continuous, like a fountain. Instead, it's like a shotgun throwing super-boiled water dozens of feet into the air, complete with a loud, instantaneous woosh.



Actually, Geysir has been dormant for some time now. The geyser that is erupting in this photo is Strokkur (STROKE-er), a younger geyser that is only about 50 feet away. It was still pretty scary!

If you thought that "Geysir" and "geyser" look and sound similar, you're right. Geyser actually came from Geysir! Every geyser discovered after Geysir now proudly bears its name.

Blast from the Past: Hvanneyri, Iceland

Stitch's first trip was to the Land of Fire and Ice (in other words, Iceland) in 2009. We stayed at Hvanneyri (KWAN-er-ee), the agricultural college near Borgarnes. This photo was taken the first day we'd arrived in Iceland, and believe it or not, it's only 3 in the morning! That's about as dark as it got, because Iceland is so far north, the sun skims the horizon in the summer and is almost completely absent in the winter.

Because classes were out for the summer, we were practically the only people on campus. We didn't do much exploring on our own, though; the days were action-packed and by time we came back, all we wanted to do was to finish our trip reports and go to sleep!

Beginnings

Welcome to the Hitchhiking Stitch blog! Personally, I don't know why it never occurred to me to make a blog before my brother mentioned it to me a few days ago, but I have one now. Live and learn, I suppose!

Hitchhiking Stitch just kind of happened on a whim. A friend of mine (and fellow model horse enthusiast) has a Breyer donkey named Brighty that she has been traveling with ever since she was a child, and who has his own website. (Shameless plug) I always thought that was a cool idea, but never would have imagined that one day I would have my own gnome! (Gnomes are just objects that travelers bring with them and photograph at touristy spots to "prove" they've been there. Most people achieve this by "liberating" a neighbor's garden gnome, but there are just as many types of traveling companions as there are travel destinations. The Travelocity Gnome is the most famous of these.)

My freshman year of college, I got the amazing opportunity to spend two weeks in Iceland. It was (and currently still is) my first time traveling outside the United States. Understandably, I was kind of nervous, and slightly jealous of my brother, who was in Orlando with our high school band, with people he knew well and in familiar places. He got back just before I left, and being the sweet guy he is, he'd bought me a little Stitch plush at Disney World. Then it hit me: With Backpacking Brighty as my inspiration, why not make Stitch into a gnome? Thus, Hitchhiking Stitch was born. And, for the record, my time in Iceland was well spent, and I would just love to go back!

Stitch's adventures have been mostly chronicled on FaceBook, but everyone loves Blogs (right?) and Blogger can be customized much more easily than FaceBook can. And I've wanted a Blog for a while, so this seemed like a good excuse to make one, haha!

That being said, I hope you enjoy our adventures, both new and old. If you'd like to see Stitch's FaceBook page, you can find it here.

Aloha!