Myvatn & environs

The second major stop on my trip was Mývatn. I spent five whole nights camping there, mostly just cause there was so much to see, but also cause it was just a really nice place to be. There is such a drastic difference in the landscape everywhere in Iceland, but Mývatn is a stunning example. You can have volcanic fissures barely 30 years old in one direction (see above photo, with steam rising from a hot-pool I visited, which is not unlike the famous Blue Lagoon in the south-west), and you can have green lush farmland and even forests in another direction, and then if you walk just five minutes in another direction you can run into the Dimmuborgir lava field, where the release of steam from under a lava floe created the most ridiculous and amazing formations, such as ´Kirkjan´, The Church, a cave with two ´doorways´ that seem like human architecture, and a very spacious and acoustically pleasant interior. I got to listen to an annual Sunday afternoon church service there, with Ragnheiður Gröndal and her brother performing on the clarinet. They are quite a popular pair in Iceland right now, and Ragnheiður´s voice is very beautiful and (what´s better for me!) she ennunciates very clearly so it´s not too tough to understand her lyrics.

North of Mývatn is a volcano named Krafla, and several very large black lava floes that cover acres of land. There is a powerplant there, using hot water and steam to provide about half of Iceland with energy. The ´silencers´ were going at full ´steam´ while I visited the powerplant, and it sounded like the biggest and most pissed-off tea-kettle in the world. VERY LOUD! I wonder why they call them ´silencers´?

Mývatn also boasts one of the most diverse breading grounds for birdlife in the world. Over 15 species of ducks (including Harlequin and Golden-eye), swans, kría (aka arctic tern), song birds, and of course the elusive but ever-present birds of prey too. The ravens here are HUGE (you can see one at a distance in the photo of the lava-rock fence above) and always seem to travel in pairs or larger groups sometimes too. They have deep funny articulate voices that you can never mistake for anything else, and you can always hear them from a long ways away. Óðinn (the Norse god) was known to have two ravens (Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory) as companions who did searches of the world for him. He was always scared that Huginn would not return, but much more terrified that Muninn might not come back to him . . .

In Mývatn I hiked through Dimmuborgir, up and around the crater Hverfjall (the biggest of it´s type in the world, at about 150M deep and 1km across, from an erruption 2500 years ago), went up to Krafla, biked around the whole lake (it may be the third-largest lake in Iceland, but it still only takes a lazy day of biking to get around it) and hiked over the lava floe west of town. Mývatn has only about 300-400 inhabitants I think. MANY more tourists this time of year!

I´ve updates some of my earlier posts and added photos of the Harry Potter release.