Tuesday, 1 October (Part II)
Skaftafell, Iceland
If you’ve seen the Bond movies A View to a Kill or Die Another Day … or Tomb Raider … or Batman Begins … then you’ve already had a glimpse of Jökulsárlón — though you probably didn’t know it at the time.
If there was one must-see place on our itinerary, it was Jökulsárlón, which translates into English as “glacier lagoon”. We saw many spectacular photos of this iceberg-filled body of water before our trip, and prayed that the day of our visit would be a brilliant one. Maybe we jinxed ourselves, but as I noted in the previous post — which covers everything else we did today — we had rain and fog instead … and plenty of it. Disappointed, we put on our raingear, left the tripods in the car, and headed off to make the best of the hand Mother Nature dealt us.
We have no plans to do the boat trip on the lagoon today!
Signage at the visitor center said that the landscape is dominated by Breiðamerkurjökull, the glacier from which the icebergs that litter the lagoon calve off. The glacier continues the retreat it began in 1890, and is about 2½ miles (4 km) away. So, we did not see it — the thick fog, which reduced visibility, did not help.
I titled this post as a photo blog, so I’ll keep the words to a minimum. But first a collage of photos from the signage and the words that describe the formation of the lagoon …
 | Formation of the Lagoon At the time when the first settlers arrived in Iceland, the edge of Breiðamerkurjökull, an outlet glacier of the great glacier Vatnajökull, is thought to have been about 20 km [12½ miles] further north than it is now. The climate began to cool in about the year 12oo, the cold spell reaching a peak in the period 1600-1900, which is sometimes known as the “little Ice Age.” As a result, the glacier advanced until about 1890, reaching a point only about 1 km [.6 mile] from the coast at Jökulsá River. The eastern part of the glacier eroded the sediments of Breiðamerkursandur to a depth of up to 300 m [985 feet] below sea level, the sediment being carried away by the river Jökulsá. Without the river, the glacier could not have eroded such a deep basin, because it is the river that carries the sediment to the sea. The warm Period from 1920 to 1965 caused great changes in Breiðamerkurjökull glacier. It retreated very quickly, leaving a lagoon up to 190 m [625 feet] deep where the glacier snout had been, and several kilometres of glacial moraines were exposed on both sides of the lagoon. The lagoon grew from 8 square kilometres [86 square feet] in 1975 to 15 square kilometres [162 square feet] in 1998. Large blocks of ice break off the edge of the glacier, which is about 30 m [98 feet] high, keeping the lagoon stocked with icebergs. |
Since the light was dull and there was so much fog, I focused on the details rather than the wide view.
Our time at the lagoon wasn’t just about ice …
Harbor seals gather at the mouth of the river leading into the lagoon
to feast on the fish that drift in from the Atlantic Ocean.
Seagulls, like this rafting pair, feed on the shoals of herring that
come into the lagoon on the tides.
The Common Redshank is a Eurasian wader that is native to Iceland.
The lagoon is part of the 4,900-foot (1,500 m) long Jökulsá River, which is one of the shortest in Iceland. The river is the conveyor belt on which the smaller bergs that are not grounded in the lagoon make their way out to the Atlantic when the tide goes out. We didn’t get to see them going out, but just as we were leaving, the tide was coming in … pushing the bergs further up into the lagoon.
Here's a 39-second clip Mui cobbled together to show the bergs on the incoming tide.
I’d read that on a sunny day ice chips glittered like diamonds on the black sand beach on the coast. There was no chance that was going to happen today, but since the rain had finally let up, we drove across the road and down to the beach for a look-see anyway.
The beach is popular with photographers, even on a day like this.
As I did at the lagoon, I focused my attention on the details … in this case, the remnants of bergs that had been whittled down in size by the ocean waves crashing ashore. Since the rain was giving me a break, I even set up my tripod to play around with some slow-shutter shots.
When the waves send the ice tumbling, you sometimes get some
interesting results with a slow shutter speed.
Common Redshank
We would have stayed on the beach far longer had it not started to rain again. That it did was perhaps a blessing, as we still had a-ways to go to get to our destination and more sights to see along the way … but you already know that if you read the previous post ;-)
After our visit with the Adélies was up (post here), we boarded a chopper for the flightseeing portion of our day.
