Sunday, Sept 2, 2012 — Skálafell and Hvalfjörður

After the con­stant rain of the last few days, it was won­der­ful to be out in the bright sun­light, so I thought some hik­ing would be in order. I walked through the qui­et val­ley of Skálafell, a place of no par­tic­u­lar impor­tance from a touris­tic point of view. The val­ley, tend­ing north­west by south­east, is defined by high plateaux on either side. Even this ear­ly in the year, there are some patch­es of fresh snow on top. The slopes curve down in almost per­fect arcs. The bot­tom of the val­ley has some rich graz­ing land, and is dot­ted with sheep, cat­tle, hors­es and ducks, all ami­ably graz­ing togeth­er. Ice­landic sheep, which are very fluffy and look like car­toon sheep, don’t seem to flock as tight­ly as the breeds I’m famil­iar with. You see them alone, or in twos or threes, but sel­dom larg­er groups. The Ice­landic hors­es are very strong look­ing, with mus­cu­lar-look­ing shoul­ders. The ones I saw had a broad mix of coats. At this time of year, they don’t have their shag­gy win­ter coats, so they don’t look strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent, oth­er than being a bit small. I saw some of them graz­ing far up the slopes, where it was extreme­ly steep.

The fer­tile val­ley at Skálafell

I passed numer­ous gul­leys, side val­leys, and nar­row water­falls tum­bling down the slopes. Off the road, the ground was some­times hard going. Where there is soil, there is usu­al­ly a tan­gle of berry bush­es, sax­ifrages and sedges, with inter­mit­tent patch­es of grassy pas­ture. Where rock pre­dom­i­nates, the going can be very tough, as the ground is lit­tered with jagged boul­ders and cut up by con­fus­ing creeks and patch­es of bog. The boul­ders are every­where — frag­ments that have been pushed around ran­dom­ly by glac­i­ers over mil­lions of years.

Build­ings are few and far between, despite the fact that this is good agri­cul­tur­al land by Ice­landic stan­dards. The val­ley ter­mi­nates dra­mat­i­cal­ly at Hvalfjörður (Whale Fjord). 

Approach­ing Hvalfjörður

I got a ride going west along the fjord, around Mount Esja, and back into Reyk­javik. The dri­ver was a retired sheet-met­al work­er, who had owned a small fac­to­ry that processed raw met­al from Bel­gium into sid­ing and roof­ing. He had sold it for his retire­ment short­ly before the Crash, so he and his wife, a retired ele­men­tary school teacher from a fish­ing vil­lage in the north, were doing fine. But the fac­to­ry has since gone into receiver­ship and shut down, toss­ing its employ­ees out of work. How many hon­est enter­pris­es like that must have per­ished in the melt-down, engi­neered by Con­ser­v­a­tive crooks and ide­o­logues? These were not the con-artists lolling about in the chic restau­rants of Reyk­javik, and rent­ing mil­lion-dol­lar apart­ments in Man­hat­tan or Paris. They were hard-work­ing, prac­ti­cal peo­ple doing use­ful work before Every­thing Fell Apart. 

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