Unfortunately, the weather is \u201cback to normal\u201d today: Rain.\u00a0 And more unfortunate, P.J came down with a cold and cough and does not feel so good.\u00a0 She felt bad enough to cancel out of her non-refundable shore excursion this morning, so I went by myself.<\/p>\n
The excursion went to an abandoned village, across the fjord from Isafj\u00f6r\u00f0ur.\u00a0 The trip involved a one hour crossing in a fast boat.\u00a0 Even though the weather was dreary and wet, the ocean was rather placid so the crossing was comfortable.\u00a0 I invited myself up front \u201con the bridge\u201d.\u00a0 There I had a great view while listening to the crew chattering in Icelandic but, interestingly, ship-to-shore communication was in English.<\/p>\n
Our trip leader was a young Icelandic girl whose grandparents hailed from these abandoned regions.\u00a0 They lived off the land, no need for money.\u00a0 She explained that almost all the hardy vegetation is edible.\u00a0 I smelled a plant that had a distinct and very pleasant licorice odor.\u00a0 The villagers had sheep and some cattle, but fish, seals and whales were also on the diet.\u00a0 A seal\u2019s flippers were a delicacy because they are very meaty, whereas the rest of animal is very fatty.\u00a0 They ate birds and bird eggs.\u00a0 Her grandmother relished a specific fertilized bird egg at the point where the chick\u2019s beak had just started to form \u2026 an acquired taste, I guess.\u00a0 Only the doctor had a horse, which allowed him to travel quickly across his 200 square mile practice area \u2026 no roads.\u00a0 The last inhabitants abandoned the village in the early fifties.\u00a0 There never was any electricity, but in the end they did have telephone, courtesy of the US navy during World War II because it also served as a watch outpost.\u00a0 Because of that experience, when the last inhabitants finally left the village some moved to the US navy base at Keflavik, now Reykjavik\u2019s international airport.\u00a0 Currently it is a nature preserve and you can camp there in the summer.\u00a0 A few hardy young campers were there, on a cold (46F, 8C) rainy July day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Unfortunately, the weather is \u201cback to normal\u201d today: Rain.\u00a0 And more unfortunate, P.J came down with a cold and cough and does not feel so good.\u00a0 She felt bad enough to cancel out of her non-refundable shore excursion this morning, so I went by myself. The excursion went to an abandoned village, across the fjord … Continue reading “July 8: Isafj\u00f6r\u00f0ur, Northwest Iceland”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}