On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
MissWimsey
I wanted to see glaciers. I wanted to see icebergs. I really wanted to see an ice cave. There was no way to see all of that on a day trip so I juggled my itinerary, added a couple of days and dropped other activities to make the time to get to the glaciers.
It. Was. Worth. It.
On Day 3 I drove straight through to Hofn, a small fishing village about 450 kilometers south of Reikjavik. I made a few stops along the way: Seljalandfoss and the black sand beach. The drive took about 10 hours. I spent the night at Hotel Hofn, which offers wake-up calls in case the northern lights make an appearance. Sadly, that didn’t happen on any night of my stay there. But that does give me another reason to visit Iceland again.
My ice adventures began Day 4 with a drive to Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon about an hour north on the Ring Road.
This photo was taken at about 9 a.m. There was a dreamlike quality to my time on the Diamond Beach. The weak sunlight was a huge part of that. The icebergs break off from the glacier, float in the lagoon and down to the ocean via a river. Pieces of various sizes wash up on this black sand beach. The reason the ice is clear is because the weight of the glacier squeezes out the oxygen in the ice.
The ice cave was on the edges of Vatnajökull glacier, Europe’s largest glacier. If you redistribute Vatnajökull throughout all of Iceland, it would be 30 meters deep, according to the guide. So we just saw a tiny part at the very edges of that glacier. But wow was it beautiful. The guide said every year caves melt in the summer and form in the winters. Guides don’t even know where the caves will form until early on in the winter season. He mentioned that the cave last year had no color: it was black. The cave I visited had black ice, green ice, blue ice and crystal clear ice.
This is a moulin, a nearly vertical shaft within a glacier.
As the glacier retreats, it reveals a rocky landscape. Land closest to the glacier is devoid of plant life. Our guide, who grew up on a farm in the area, said the base camp where we left the truck had been covered by the glacier 23 years. It has receded 1.5 miles since then. The farther you get away from the glacier, the more vegetation you see. This is the sort of plant life that calls that rocky landscape home. The rocks look like they are painted. Maybe someone on here can help identify these plants.
At the lagoon, I hopped on a Zodiak boat ride. I was outfitted with a full-body insulated suit that also served as a flotation device. We saw this little guy chilling on an ice floe.
This is Fjallsárlón, a smaller glacial lagoon just north of Jökulsárlón. You could see the rolling glacier from the Ring Road so of course I had to stop.
Good thing I stopped because I got to visit with this duck!
LongHairedWeirdo
OT: I had a somewhat clever… okay ,I had a not-entirely-UNclever, and *topical* response to the post that was just deleted, and I had a tiny chance of that being the first response.
I demand justice from all those people who provide me with this blog, for free, without even advertisements now, and I will scream and froth at the mouth until you all fix this horrific pro… um… sorry folks. I was trying to go so over the top, it was clearly humorous, and just clean forgot in today’s US, there ain’t no “so over the top we know it’s a joke”.
(The antepenultimate paragraph is from a web comic I saw, explaining the plight of the blogger/artist/etc., with an example of a soi disant fan proclaiming “Hey! You didn’t come to my house, to fix my plumbing for free! (Read as, e.g., your promised 3/week updates are behind schedule) If you keep doing *that*, I won’t ask my friends to ask you to fix their plumbing – also for free!”)
ETA: sorry, I honestly wanted to post my faux-whiny complaint to an actual active thread – it’s almost embarrassing to have a deliberate-seeming “first” on a post celebrating beauty.
YY_Sima Qian
The ice caves are incredible!
donatellonerd
thanks for this beautiful series
frosty
Talked to my brother last night about Iceland. He visited years ago and we started firming up plans. We could do it in late 2022.
These pictures and the landscape are beautiful. I had no idea!
Betty
Ice caves are magical. Your comments remind me the ice is melting too fast and those critters will face the hardship before we all do. Sorry for the downer comment.
debbie
That first photo! How appropriate that the iceberg shard is the shape of a fish!
stinger
That first photo is almost shocking. The second left me speechless (no small feat). All are spectacular. Thanks so much for sharing this astounding area.
WaterGirl
The iceberg in the first photo is really cool and the picture is wonderful. But the ice caves, oh my. I hardly have words for how beautiful this is.
The colors in the photo with the sea lion (?) are like a work of art.
Just stunning.
I cried when I had to say goodbye to the ocean when I left Maine. I think someone might have to drag me out of the ice caves and out of Iceland.
Thank you so much for this fabulous series.
m.j.
The ice on the beach is clear because it has frozen slowly and has fewer impurities.
susanna
Again my compliments on your photo abilities to take and sometimes enhance. They are a delight to see early in the cold mornings and have enjoyed all of them enormously!
MelissaM
These are truly stunning. Thanks for sharing.
wombat probability cloud
Thanks for the wonderful photos. The plant in the Vatnajökull Glacier photo is a species in the Rose Family, perhaps Alchemilla alpina (ljónslappi, or alpine lady’s mantle), e.g., https://www1.mms.is/flora/blom.php?val=1&id=66
Yutsano
I’m really enjoying your entire series but the ice caves? WOW! Iceland is going even higher on the visit list!
StringOnAStick
The stuff on the rocks is various forms of lichen, a symbiotic union between algae and fungi with an amazing amount of varieties. The more “mossy” looking stuff is a kind where it looks more plant-like, the crusts on the rocks look like, well, crusts on rocks. Rocks with lichen crusts can be used as a way to date how long the rock has been in that position, exposed to the sky (based on the size and variety of lichen; it’s an old alpine geomorphologist’s trick).
We’ve got a mossy lichen here that looks as dark as the basalt it is on until it gets wet, then is turns bright green within minutes. People refer to the stuff draping the alpine trees in Oregon as “moss”, but it’s actually another form of lichen too. Lichens are really fascinating life forms and incredibly widely distributed over the planet.
Miss Bianca
these are some of the greatest photos I’ve ever seen. *Really* want to visit Iceland now!
eclare
Beautiful.
Dan B
The plant in the rocks looks more like an alpine Potentilla, a Cinquefoil.
Wag
Again great photos!
Chris T.
@Dan B: I just realized that “cinquefoil” means “5 leaf” and that this is the same “leaf” we have in “gold leaf” which is “gold foil” and therefore this is where we get the word “foil” as in “aluminium foil” (which I just spelled the British way unintentionally: in the US it’s “aluminum” foil).
Connexions!