Iceland: BJARNARHÖFN

Slowly turning our backs on Snaefellnes and its fishing towns we are planning to continue on, to the fjords of the North. But before we manage to leave Snaefellnes for good we are captured by the vast and colourful lava fields of Berserkjahraun. 

Never mind that we are supposed to show in Blonduos for the night!

Like an artist's painting; molded into a bizzare collection of cones and dimples covered by lichens, mosses and ground-hugging plants, the colourful field stretches for miles alongside both sides of our road (# 54). The field is about 3500 years old and it is a site of a famous, hair-rising tale.

The light is beautiful and I wish that we could stay for hours.

The lichens and mosses remind me of the flat bottle of Icelandic Moss Schnapps that we bought last night.

It has been made from a lichen called Iceland Moss, Cetraria islandica....uhhhh..... yes, but it is a lichen OK? And if you collect some of this lichen called Iceland Moss and steep it in alcohol for several weeks you will get a golden liquid that tastes a bit like a really good medicine. 



To find it, one has to visit Vinbudin - the liquor store - and ask for an Icelandic product (most of the stuff has been imported from all over the world.

The clerk will direct you to the back shelving and there it sits, Icelandic Moss Schnapps along with its (much tougher) cousin Brennivin, all modest and waiting to be tried.

.....

We stumbled upon something else in those vast lava fields. It was a shape of a fish known to every person on the planet.
Yes, I am talking about the shark = hákarl in Icelandic.
And those who bravely read my previous posts know that "hákarl" is also the name for that Icelandic national dish of fermented and cured shark meat.
Oh yes! 
The memory of the taste of one tiny cube of hákarl can last a lifetime. But .....

Why would anyone post a statue of a shark in the middle of a deserted lava field? 

The answer is quite simple - we are not far from he sea and someone with a business oriented mind built a small museum in the same location where they process the meat of the captured Greenland sharks, Somniosus microcephalus.

It is just a short side trip from the main road and though we do not plan on eating more hákarl EVER, we want to have a look at the fishing display on site.

In any case - two low buildings just appeared in our view, along with a beautiful waterfall, some horses and an incredible vista of the northern fjords.

Old Farmers' Church, Bjarnarhöfn

Whale vertebrae ...the whale hunting is presently a burning issue between Iceland and EU whose member Iceland is not. 

As a matter of fact, the EUs request that Iceland abndons the whale hunt was a key factor for withdrawing the Iceland's application to EU. 

Family business. 
We have no idea what it takes to make a living at the sea but it looks pretty tough. 

Iceland and the cute Atlantic Puffin, Fratercula arctica (even its Latin name is cute) - the two seem to go hand in hand. In any case - both are native to the arctic sea where puffins spend a lot of their time fishing. They come to the land to nest on the sea adjacent cliffs and when the baby rearing's done they take off to the open waters.

Unfortunately when we arrived to Iceland all the puffins had already gone - flying happily towards Canada, the country we've just left behind.

The only one WE found was in the Bjarnarhöfn museum, serving as a reminder of its tough fate: for ages, puffins and their eggs, had been, and still are, on the peoples' menu . 

So much so that in certain NA regions they all but disappeared.


The other of the two buildings hosts the shark processing plant .... but for that better visit their site.

We need to continue on - leaving the fairy-tale Snaefellnes and head for the north.