Esja

I finally made it to the top of Esja during the week. It was such a gorgeous day I decided to that I would have a go at getting to the top in the evening after I finished work.
Esja is for those who don't know is the mountain to the north of Reykjavik which pretty much dominates the skyline of the city.

Esja is over 900 meters high, about 3000 ft, I checked on Google and found out that Ben Nevis in Scotland is 1300 meters, so it give's you an idea of scale. Picture above of Reykjavik.
Proof that I made it right to the very top. The last part is very steep indeed and does involve a bit of actual climbing. It took about 2 hours to get to the top and another hour to get to the bottom again.
A view from the top, looking south east. If you enlarge the picture you can see the steam plumbs from the geothermal electricity plant in the distance. They also produce hot water out there which is pipelined to the city for famous cheap central heating. Probably the only thing around here that is cheap.

Gruesome stories

We have had some quite gruesome stories in the news recently.

We had a naked man running around on the mountain just outside Reykjavik on Thursday. He was spotted by some other climbers who also found his clothes. They called the emergency services who went up there to find him but the weather took a turn for the worse. Sadly his body was found this morning by a search helicopter. Nothing yet has been said about the dead man yet other than he was from Poland and came to work here about a year ago.

There was also an incident on a whale watching boat on Tuesday, when the Tourist's on the boat got to see a bit more than they bargained for. They had a ringside seat of a Minke whale being hunted by 20 - 30 killer whales. They watched as the terrified Minke ran into their boat twice as it tried to get away before the Killer whale's finished it off right in front of them.

My favorite story was from last week when a known criminal happened to knock on the front door of the house of the policeman in charge of finding him. The copper couldn't believe his luck and promptly arrested the criminal there and then. It seems the gormless crook had picked this house at random for a burglary and knocked on the door to see if anyone was home. What a plonker!

Helgafell

I went out for one of my walks last weekend. On Saturday, I walked from my house to a hill/mountain/lump of rock called Helgafell. When I got there I found a path leading to the top, so up I went.

It was a beautiful day for it and I was very mindful about avoiding sun burn, particularly on the top of my noodle.

The road out of town towards Helgafell. Its surprising that just a few miles from Town how very quiet everything becomes.


Crossing Lava fields. 'Blue sky on Mars'


At the top and knackered.

The view from the top looking back towards Hafnarfjordur, Reykjavik can be seen on the right of the picture.

Viking Festival

I had been meaning to blog about this for a couple of weeks now, but never got around to it. Every summer we have a Viking festival in Hafnarfjordur. The activities they put on are A Viking Market, authentic food, Lots of beer drinking, storytelling and of course sword fights.


The entertainment goes on well into the night with live music and all sorts of other stuff to keep you busy. I went down there with some friend's and we had a good time, especially when the Swedish viking storyteller (Pictured with his mate, above) told us a story about the old Nordic Gods in his very unique 'Swenglish'.



I'm not sure where this bloke bought his Barbeque from, If I was him I would ask for my money back.

Landscapes

A few landscape pictures I took last weekend when we went with friends to a summer house in the countryside.


Lupin's in bloom at Akrafjall.

Akrafjall from the south.

Heidarhorn is the peak at the far right of this picture, with Skardsheidi in the center.


Skardsheidi mountain.

Farm house at Akrafjall.

Another Bear spotted

Just had news of another Polar bear has been spotted on a farm in the north of Iceland.

The farmers wife was alerted to the presence of the Bear when her dog started barking madly at what she first thought was a big hay bale (wrapped in white plastic) in a field. She took fright when the Hay bale started moving around in a very Bear like fashion.

She said she watched the Bear raid the nests of Eider Ducks as it went on a egg eating rampage. Afterwards it returned to the middle of the field, and with a full belly it stretched out and went to sleep.

It remains to be seen how long this Bear will last, but I have heard people say that this Bear might well be tranquilised and flown back to Greenland as there was a bit of an outcry with the demise of the last Bear.

Quite how you go about tranqing and moving an animal this big and dangerous I'm not quite sure but let's wait and see what happens.

Midnight Sun

As we are nearing the longest day of the year, I thought I would show you the difference Between Midday and Midnight at the moment.

These two photographs were taken at the weekend.

This one at Midday......

and this one at Midnight.

As you can see there is enough light at midnight to be able to see what you are doing and to be fair the camera is not really picking out in a true way how much light there really is, but it does give you some idea. It starts to really brighten up again only an hour or so after midnight.

I have been asked many times if the light evenings have affected my sleeping. It seems that a lot of non-Icelanders (and even some of the locals) struggle with insomnia at this time of year.

The people who have asked me this question are, by and large, people who don't really know me that well. Those who do know me are well aware that I can sleep through pretty much anything and that I need dynamite to get me out of bed in the mornings.