{"id":4651,"date":"2012-09-08T11:32:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-08T15:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=4651"},"modified":"2018-08-03T21:52:22","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T01:52:22","slug":"saturday-september-8-2012-oddi-thorsmork-eyjafjallajokull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=4651","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, September 8, 2012 \u2014 Oddi, \u00de\u00f3rsm\u00f6rk, Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull"},"content":{"rendered":"

My feet are bad\u00adly blis\u00adtered from ear\u00adli\u00ader activ\u00adi\u00adties, so focused the remain\u00ading time on a small cor\u00adner of Ice\u00adland, and did my best to keep off my feet. To this end, the Ice\u00adlandic hors\u00ades were a god\u00adsend. These won\u00adder\u00adful ani\u00admals have five dis\u00adtinct gaits \u2014 of which the unique t\u00f6lt<\/em> allows them to flow over obsta\u00adcles like caterpillars. <\/span><\/p>\n

The area I chose, along the south\u00adern coast, encom\u00adpass\u00ades the land\u00adscape of Nj\u00e1l\u2019s Saga<\/em>, and has some of Ice\u00adland\u2019s most spec\u00adtac\u00adu\u00adlar scenery. I vis\u00adit\u00aded the vil\u00adlage of Oddi, because it was there that Snor\u00adri Sturlus\u00adson wrote the Heim\u00adskringla<\/em>, but the ancient monastery that was a great seat of learn\u00ading in the mid\u00addle ages is long gone. The present church in mod\u00adern. But east of there, a dead-end side road leads into the val\u00adley of the Kross\u00e1, a place of extra\u00ador\u00addi\u00adnary beau\u00adty. It is hemmed in on three sides by glac\u00adi\u00aders, and by the moun\u00adtain ridge known as \u00de\u00f3rsm\u00f6rk, which from its name (\u201cThor\u2019s For\u00adest\u201d) must have once had some\u00adthing more sub\u00adstan\u00adtial grow\u00ading than its cur\u00adrent shrubs and birch\u00ades. The south\u00adern flank is Eyjaf\u00adjal\u00adla\u00adj\u00f6kull, whose erup\u00adtion ground\u00aded Europe\u00b4s air trav\u00adel for a week in 2010. The trail which I want\u00aded to take no longer exists. The fis\u00adsure of Fim\u00admv\u00f6r\u00f0uh\u00e1ls, which opened up in the ear\u00adli\u00adest stages of the erup\u00adtion cuts across it.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Falls at \u00de\u00f3rsm\u00f6rk<\/p><\/div>\n

Things are qui\u00adet, now. I had no oppor\u00adtu\u00adni\u00adty to see molten lava. But the tor\u00adtured land\u00adscape was elo\u00adquent enough. Words would fail me, I\u2019m sure, if I were to wit\u00adness an erup\u00adtion. But the Ice\u00adlandic com\u00adpos\u00ader J\u00f3n Leifs, was able to com\u00admu\u00adni\u00adcate some\u00adthing of it from direct expe\u00adri\u00adence in his orches\u00adtral piece Hekla<\/em> (1961). <\/span><\/p>\n

This last cou\u00adple of days, I\u2019ve seen much that was beau\u00adti\u00adful, but I am very tired, my descrip\u00adtive pow\u00aders are fail\u00ading, and I must fuss with things to catch my flight home. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My feet are bad\u00adly blis\u00adtered from ear\u00adli\u00ader activ\u00adi\u00adties, so focused the remain\u00ading time on a small cor\u00adner of Ice\u00adland, and did my best to keep off my feet. To this end, the Ice\u00adlandic hors\u00ades were a god\u00adsend. These won\u00adder\u00adful ani\u00admals have five \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,932],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-blog","category-ao-blog-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4651"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4785,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4651\/revisions\/4785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}