Ice

Thursday Sept 29
This morning Tom and I left early for Jökulsárlón to catch the sunrise. Here ice calving from the glacier forms icebergs which fill the lagoon, then float out to sea. An iceberg may stay in the lagoon five years before floating out. The beach on the ocean side is strewn with ice, glinting in the sunlight; hence the nickname, Dimond Beach. My imagination saw birds and bears, maybe even a troll in the ice forms, the color and clarity depending on the age of the ice. I spotted a couple of seals frolicking in the short river connecting lagoon and sea. It's hard to believe the lagoon is only about 80 years old - that in the 1930's this glacier reached the Ring Road.

Hanna is our guide on the Svinafellsjökull glacier. Fitted with crampons, ice axes, harnesses and helmets, we follow her across the ice, jumping crevasses and digging in our crampons. This was an amazing adventure, spending four hours on the glacier and having the good fortune to enter two ice caves. Hanna was a wealth of information about how global warming has affected the glacier and created the ice caves. It was incredible seeing the layers in the compressed ice - clear winter snow, cloudy summer snow, and layers of gravel like volcanic ash. Hanna also shared with us all the movies that had been filmed here. We have made a date to watch "Interstellar" with the Loves.