ICELAND IN WINTER: Ice, Snow, and Spectacular Aurora Borealis, Guest Post by Owen Floody

Iceland

With many thanks to our friend Owen Floody for another exceptional contribution to The Intrepid Tourist.

Iceland has become a popular tourist destination, reflecting its accessibility, manageable size, and dramatic landscapes. Even in winter, Iceland has much to offer. Landscapes that are dramatic in other seasons can become even more so when mountains are dusted by snow, waterfalls are embellished by icicles, and low clouds add mystery and mood. Throw glacial ice caves and possible sightings of the aurora borealis into the mix and Iceland may be irresistible.

Aurora

However, Iceland doesn’t give up its treasures easily. Sightings of the aurora require a coincidence of elevated solar activity and clear skies. But Iceland’s frequent high winds and famously changeable weather can make the second, and thus the coincidence, hard to achieve.

At the same time, nothing ventured, nothing gained. With this in mind, I recently completed an 11-day Winter in Iceland photo tour led by Haukur Snorasson of Look North Travel (https://www.phototours.is). Given the weather-related and other challenges that Iceland can pose, one can benefit greatly from an expert’s efforts to match the best available scenes with route, time of day, and current conditions.

Rock striations.

Including Haukur, we were a group of six, packed comfortably in a carry-everything, go-anywhere van.  Most in the group were avid photographers.  How do you recognize an avid photographer?   In the past, a tripod and high-end camera would suffice.  Now, however, most in this sample of avid photographers were packing iPhones as well as cameras, and more discussion revolved around the images taken with the former.

Frozen waterfall.

Our tour covered a lot of ground.  Iceland’s “ring road” covers about 821 miles and we went a bit beyond it, especially to the north.   I was very happy to have Haukur driving.  The wind howled almost constantly, buffeting the vehicle and threatening to blow us off the road.  The fact that this threat was not just imagined was provided by the need to get over several passes before the winds closed them.  Lunch generally was fast food, but the hotels were great as were the dinners.  Not surprisingly, we had some of the best Arctic char ever, especially at the Mödrudalur Country Hotel (find that if you can!).

Waterfall and river.

The scenery more than met my expectations.  Almost everything that I saw on this trip I had previously seen under more benign conditions.  The winter conditions unquestionably made everything more dramatic.  Mountains emerged from or receded into the mist (first of images that accompany this column), rock striations and other formations jumped out at you, and ice arrested some waterfalls while embellishing others.

The rugged Iceland coast.

These were wonderful additions to Iceland’s usual fare of rugged coasts and glacier lagoons dotted with icebergs.  But what about our primary goals of seeing the aurora and getting into one or more ice cave? 

Stranded icebergs.

Here, I am happy to report that we were extremely fortunate.  We enjoyed good aurora sightings on three of our ten nights.  Our visit to a relatively isolated ice cave, one that we had all to ourselves, fell on the first day in a week on which the helicopter ferry was able to fly.  And our proximity to a second cave made it possible for us to plug ourselves into a gap created by weather-related cancellations of visits from farther afield (last image).  Some of this success reflected preparation and effort.  For example, we scoured multiple sources for tips on the nights and times at which the aurora might be visible and then we mounted expeditions or watches at all of the best times.  Nevertheless, it is clear that we were very lucky.   

Ice cave.

However, do not be fooled into thinking that this luck made the tour an entirely easy one.  The winds howled almost constantly, sometimes making it difficult to stand, let alone explore.  The temperature was only moderately low (about freezing) most of the time.  But there were some genuinely cold mornings and nights, and even the prevailing moderately low temperatures became frigid when combined with the typically high winds.  We dressed well and met most of these challenges.  Fingers, however, remained vulnerable: On more than one occasion, I had to cut short an aurora viewing because I could no longer operate my fingers or camera.  Footing was the other area of personal concern.  Wherever we were, the substrate typically was snow and ice.  Crampons that could be pulled on over our boots were a necessity.  On roads or sidewalks, the type featuring coiled wires were sufficient.  But many of our explorations (e.g., into ice caves, around waterfalls, or in search of sites from which to view the aurora) required more serious crampons, with real teeth. In Iceland and elsewhere, winter landscapes can be magical.  But they do require some season-specific preparations.

Click HERE for an earlier post (October 4, 2021) by Owen Floody about Iceland.

GETTING TO KNOW GREENLAND – PART 3: ILULISSAT, Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

Midnight sunlight on icebergs, windows, and water

My friend and fellow children’s book author Caroline Hatton and her husband Bill visited Greenland in July 2019. She took all but one of the photos in this post.

Three whales as seen from the trail

While staying in the town of Ilulissat, almost half-way up the west coast of Greenland, we saw whales every single day: from the midnight-sun tour boat, from the hiking trails along the shore, and even from our breakfast table inside the hotel dining room. They were feeding, their backs and tails sporadically breaking the surface of the icy water among the icebergs.

On one hike, at one point a rocky hill blocked our view of the water, yet we heard a whale blow, loud as a locomotive releasing steam. When the water came into view, we discovered that the whale was some thousand yards (a kilometer) out in the water. Perhaps the far wall of icebergs the size of continents reflected the sound toward us.

Ilulissat as seen from a tour boat. When Greenland was a Danish colony, buildings were color-coded: hospitals were yellow, factories blue, radio communication sites green, and churches and shops red. The colors applied to the workers’ homes. Newer buildings can be any color.

It was on our midnight-sun boat tour that I took my favorite photos, compared to those I snapped while hiking, walking around town, visiting the museum, and eating.

This Zodiac got closer to these two humpback whales than our larger boat, but its passengers don’t appear to have cameras.

A dozen whales were at the rendezvous, the closest of all the whales we saw.

A mountain-size iceberg as seen from a tour boat

Admiring and photographing the mountain-size icebergs up close (but not too close, lest they flip and wash us off the face of the earth), pastel blue and yellow and peach in the soft golden light, made me feel like I had gone through a secret passage into an enchanted art gallery.

Left to right: Disko Island, Disko Bay, long white Ilulissat Icefjord, Greenland Ice Sheet. Courtesy of NASA.

The town of Ilulissat is well inside Disko Bay, a bay so big you can see it on a globe the size of a grapefruit. The icebergs in the bay come out of a nearby fjord 40 km (25 mi) long, the Ilulissat Icefjord (Ilulissat Kangerlua in Greenlandic). They are calved by the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier (or Jakobshavn Glacier, its Danish name, on some maps), on the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet from which it flows.

As seen from a hiking trail: the icefjord, full of ice, all the way to the other shore, almost 5 miles (8 km) away.

This glacier is one of the most active in the world, fast-moving (40 m or over 130 ft/day) and producing the largest volume of icebergs outside of Antarctica. But the biggest ones don’t float out to sea. Instead, they get stuck on the shallow bottom at the mouth of the fjord, causing a giant pile-up and keeping the whole fjord choked with ice. It’s a natural wonder and a UNESCO World Heritage Area.

As seen from a hiking trail: apartment buildings and sled dogs on long chains at the inland edge of Ilulissat. There are more dogs than people and more mosquitoes than dogs.

Hiking without a guide was easy because we had a trail map provided by our tour operator.

Can you see the yellow trail marker?

The map’s yellow, red, or blue trails were clearly marked with rocks or wooden posts painted with the corresponding color.

For dinner at the Arctic Hotel, lavish buffets offered Greenlandic specialties, especially seafood. The Inuit, especially in the far north, have long survived on marine mammals because there was little else to eat. But of all the seafoods, I tried only baked Arctic char, which looked and tasted delicious like a supersized trout with pink or beige flesh, “depending on how much shrimp it ate,” said one chef.

Whale skin (and a mussel)

Like elsewhere in Greenland, the menu didn’t specify which species of whale was being served. Dark red whale meat was sliced paper-thin. Whale skin appeared by itself or in a stew.

I never saw seal meat. As for the whole silvery dried fish the size of my smallest finger, I tried but failed to saw it in half with a knife. So I chewed on its tail end a while without inflicting much damage to it. That’s why I don’t count it as a seafood I tried. Gnawing at it would be a good way to pass the time in winter, and not gain weight.

The chef also served Greenlandic musk ox, lamb, and farmed reindeer roasts. And I thanked him for the variety of vegetarian salads.

Breakfast, like elsewhere in Greenland, was a buffet of fresh fruits, cereals and milk, yogurts, cheeses, gorgeous yummy dark seeded breads, cold meats such as herbed ham, salami, and liverwurst, eggs, bacon, sausages, different cold fishes such as Greenlandic pickled halibut or smoked salmon, and more.  However, my breakfast favorite was… looking for whales from my table.

For lunch everywhere in Greenland, biting bug clouds chased me indoor where I enjoyed cheese (Danish) and Wasa (Swedish) or Tuc (French) crackers (from the local supermarket) in my hotel room, or freshly cooked, hot sandwiches at family-owned cafés.

When the time came to go home, we flew from Ilulissat to Reykjavik, Iceland, then to California. Flying over the Greenland Ice Sheet allowed me to see pale turquoise blue surface meltwater, as dashes on wrinkly ice like elephant skin, and squiggles like attempts to draw a river, but mostly in scattered rings like on a Nordic designer textile, each pattern another natural work of art but also an ominous reminder of global warming.

FOR MORE INFO

Read about climate change in Greenland.

Read about a new, current map of Greenland and its back side about “Understanding the Arctic.”

Read“Greenland’s Dog”, another guest post by Caroline Hatton.