Seydisfjordur and the Eastern Coast

We 're getting quite good at pronouncing these Icelandic place names: Say-dis-fyour-door, for example. It was a lovely early morning sail-in down the fjord to the, as we've come to notice, small town.

                                        

There's always a gorgeous waterfall 
cascading down to the fjord. And sometimes
there's even a nice little house at the bottom

                                        

We didn't spend much time in town, as we were headed out to see the City of Elves and eastern coastline. But we did get a couple of photos on the way by:

The church in the middle of Seydisfjordur

                                        

 

and for those interested, the town even has a golf course
with some spectacular views

We first headed over the mountain pass to the north of the town. At the highest point, the Vatnsskard Pass, it is 1,250 feet above sea level, and is still covered in snow and ice. This large lake is the reservoir for the town.                                        

                                        

Once across the pass, we started to head down towards the coastal region. We crossed the Fljotsdalsherad Plain, which is a major agricultural area. No vegetables are grown here as they take too long, but hay and other short season crops are found here along with lots of sheep.

The lambs are only a couple of months old,
and there are lots of them!

Because of the elevation as well as the latitude, the natural forest in this part of Iceland is quite sparse. The indigenous tree is actually a form of birch, and they have planted pine and spruce trees near towns to create some wooded areas. There is a joke among Icelanders that we heard in the tour bus - What do you do if you get lost in the forest? ----  Stand up!

The natural vegetation is low and bushy, and is, in fact,
a lot of blueberry and blackberry bushes. The sheep and birds 
start early, but in August and September many
Icelanders come out to pick berries, too.

After an hour's drive through the stunning scenery, we arrived at our lunch stop - the City of Elves, also known as Bakkagerdi. This is another tiny fishing village with about 100 'real' people, and many 'hidden people', which is what they call the elves. In Icelandic folklore you do your best not to disturb the homes of the elves, who live in and among the mountains. Even when roads are being built, rather than blow up large boulders or hillsides, the road will curve around them. I guess they must have made some kind of a deal with them to build all these tunnels!

The town of Bakkagerdi

The town must be quite popular; it even has a hotel - very small, though - with a good restaurant. This is where we had our lunch: cream of mushroom soup, homemade and delicious, and a plate of fresh caught local fish.

After lunch we visited the local sites and heard more about the elves. Bakkagerdi is known as the City of Elves because the Elf Queen's castle, or Alfaborg, is in the middle of town. The Elf King lives in the mountains outside of town. When the townspeople wanted to build their church in 1911, one of the suggested sites was on top of Alfaborg, but, apparently the Elf Queen came to each of them and suggested that, if they build the church near the castle, but not on her land, she would protect it. So they built the church nearby, and since it opened, the door has never been locked. And nothing has ever happened to the church, even though it has an altarpiece painted by a well-known Icelandic artist named Kjarval.

Alfaborg does look sort of like a castle
ruin from some angles

The church stands maybe 100 yards
from the base of the castle

The interior with the painted altarpiece.

One of the other attractions in Bakkagerdi is Lindarbakki, an old style turf house dating back to 1899. This was how homes were originally built to provide natural insulation. It is very small inside, with only two rooms we could see from looking in the windows.

After our visit to Bakkagerdi, we headed another few kilometres down the road to Hafnarholmi, a small harbour among cliffs that are one of the prime nesting sites in eastern Iceland for the puffins. Here we had a chance to see them really up close and personal, unlike during our whale watching tour.

There are thousands of burrows in the cliffs which are so covered with grasses that you can't really even see the entrances. The cliffs probably would look like Swiss cheese if someone took a radar device to them. It was very interesting to see the puffins around their nests. They didn't seem to be afraid of us standing as close as 3 feet away on the walkway and stairs.

On our return trip to Seydisfjordur we stopped at a waterfall that ran right next to the road for a quick photo opp. 

This was another interesting day in Iceland. Again, we were treated to the diversity in the landscape and the isolation between communities. You have to be a particular kind of person to want to live in some of these tiny villages on the edge of a fjord in the middle of winter when you get less than 3 hours of sunshine a day, depending on how high the mountains around you might be.

We're leaving Iceland behind and have a sea day tomorrow on our way to Lerwick in Scotland's Shetland Islands.