Greetings from Iceland!! I am studying abroad here for the semester and thought I would share some updates about my time here, as well as some random observations and things I’ve learned. These "blog posts" actually are a newsletter I send to family and friends, but I thought I'd post them here as well so I can have a record of them.
I flew to Iceland on Monday overnight and landed on Tuesday morning. So today marks my 5th day here! A lot of the time so far has been spent getting to know the other 20 students in my program, getting oriented and set up in our hostel, and exploring the town.
The Icelandic Landscape
After landing in Keflavik, we had a 1.5 hour drive to Selfoss, which is the town I’m staying in now. Looking out the window and taking in the fact that I’m in Iceland!, I noticed that most of the land we drove past was very… beige. And lacking of trees.
A lot of Iceland looks like this.
I assumed that this was the natural landscape of Iceland; that perhaps the arctic climate made it so that trees are less common. Then we met with a division head at the Icelandic Forest Service (which was recently renamed to Land og Skógur). He explained that in the year 900, Iceland was 25-40% covered in birch woodland. But when Viking settlers came, they chopped down the forests for firewood and charcoal and converted the land to grazing land for sheep. Forest cover went down to 0.5%, which has been brought up to 1.5% today.
Part of the 1.5%
I thought this was really interesting because Iceland receives great praise for its use of 100% renewable energy, and it is regarded as a place full of natural beauty. And both of these facts are true and Iceland does deserve praise for this! But it doesn’t mean that Iceland is an exception to the human interference that harms our environments. Seeing the flat beige fields is a reminder of the forests that have been lost, but also a reminder that every country has a past and they can still move forward.
(P.S.: He also said that the trees are so short in Iceland because the short ones originally survived settler interference, and after centuries the trees just evolved that way. I couldn’t find evidence online to back this up (after a very brief search), but I don’t doubt it -- the trees here are seriously short; the birches look like shrubs.)
A short and shrubby tree!
Selfoss
My time in Selfoss has been great! There’s a path along the river that I ran along one day. There’s a yarn store where I got some wool yarn. There’s a geothermally heated swimming pool.
It’s also close to 2 of the biggest tourist landmarks: Strokkur Geyser and Gullfoss waterfall. We visited those yesterday.
One of the smaller geysers, and me next to Gullfoss
Tomorrow we will depart Selfoss and head for Reykjavik, the capital city. 2/3rds of Icelanders live there. I can’t wait!
One last thing: Icelandic Bread
My new favorite bread is this:
The best bread!!!
This is the ideal sandwich bread. It doesn’t get mushed by fingerprints the way our bread does. It doesn’t get soggy from sauce, but has little holes where sauce can go. It’s circular which means that turkey slices fit perfectly. We need to bring this bread to the US. I can’t go back now.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading!