My core course at DIS is Glaciers and Human Impact: Icelandic Climate Change Case Study. We will have a week long study tour in Iceland learning about glaciers, geothermal energy, and much more. I have been fascinated by Iceland since my first geology class if not before. Geologically, it is an amazing phenomenon being the intersection of a tectonic plate divergent boundary and a hotspot. Poetically, it is the land of fire and ice.
Realistically, plans changed, drastically. Due to the coronavirus DIS sent us all home the week before my class was scheduled to visit Iceland after shattering the dreams of everyone in the class by canceling the week long study tours and beginning to arrange alternatives in Copenhagen. In a flurry of replanning I arranged to stop in Iceland for the weekend on my way home, since it is a natural stopover between Denmark and the Pacific Northwest anyways. Indeed, I transferred planes in Iceland in the middle of the night when I flew to Denmark in the first place. So, despite my study abroad semester being halved by a world pandemic I did visit Iceland. Instead of the amazing week long science and culture tour with a class of my peers I squeezed in a whirlwind weekend of touristing. A decision I will never regret and the adventure of a lifetime.
My Visit to Iceland
The stark volcanic beauty was clear from my first bus ride. Vast expanses of sharp volcanic fields in the foreground, stone peeking like chocolate shards up through the pure white snow. In the distance—yet close enough I could almost reach them—steep table mountains and glacier clad volcanoes rose. A dramatic landscape of stone and snow. Soul touching beauty and elemental purity.
Reykjavik is a paved metropolis of mixed modern buildings with towering utilitarian looks and occasional rows of brightly colored buildings as I came to find typical of Scandinavia. A block of human construction perched on the edge of a volcanic island. Roads ran long through the desolate and aweing wilderness between human habitations. Smaller towns were tucked into the volcanic landscape, there and gone once the bus was over the next hill, around the next mountain. It is truly a place with space aplenty for my heart to spread its wings.
Sunset 
Sunrise 
Sunrise
Day 1: Friday the 13th of March 2020
My study abroad homestay host drove me from Frederikssund to the Copenhagen Airport as the sun rose and I caught a morning flight to Keflavik Airport in Iceland. After hauling all my study abroad luggage, 50lb duffle and carry-on hiking pack and computer bag, around icy parking lots and streets and figuring out the bus to Reykjavik I settled into my hostel, finished planning my weekend, and hopped on another bus (for a much shorter ride) to my first true destination in Iceland.
Laugardalslaug. A swimming pool complex where I delighted in the geothermally heated outdoor swimming pools and hot tub. Steam rose off the water, even in the wading pool, and rose up, a shifting veil over the night sky. I watched the stars through the steam and even there in the middle of Reykjavik I saw them twinkle down on me.
Day 2: Saturday the 14th of March 2020
I was there only for a weekend, a solo traveler, and determined to make the most of it. So, I went tourist. It was the most effective way to get out away from the city and see the geologic wonders I have been longing for and so very, very, worth it. I booked an all day tour for Saturday. The tour bus came with a knowledgeable and entertaining tour guide and tablets with an optional audio guide in the language of your choice and best of all, big tour bus windows. I love my trees and comfortable temperate zone island and I honestly have no desire to live in Iceland currently, but as a place to visit? Iceland is absolutely as amazing as I had hoped for.
The Golden Circle
The Rift Zone in Thingvellir National Park
The rift zone spread out before me as a low volcanic valley with steep basalt walls and a long shimmering lake. The knowledge lay in me that here was the site of plate tectonics in action, where two vast pieces of Earth’s crust were pulling apart. I have stood there now overlooking the divide, I have seen that vast valley, and the little lichens that grow on the basalt walls. I walked down through a crack in the edge of the cliff, towering walls of basalt rose on either side dwarfing me, and this, this was just the edge of an astounding story wrought from the blood of the Earth. The tour guide told us that it was here that the old Icelandic parliament met, and how they may have used the cliffs to amplify their voices. I saw the Icelandic flag wave against the blue, blue, sky above the sharp volcanic stone: a human claim in a mighty wilderness. Thingvellir was a place of deep meaning to the Icelandic people long before the true wonder of the rift zone’s existence was inferred by mankind.
The Geysir Geothermal Area
I wandered through the beginning of the path, admiring the steaming water that bubbled up through the ground and flowed across it, the snow that blanketed the ground and came within inches of the pools so that only a thin border of bare mud separated snow from boiling water. It seems a miracle of the land of fire and ice that the snow is so white, so pure, frozen into crystalline beauty, just inches from where like molecules are boiling into vapor.
Spying a crowd of people I wandered further, hoping they were gathered around the geyser so that I could actually see it. I wandered over and looked at the lovely billowing steam, and the geysir erupted.
A plume of water shot into the bright blue sky with breathtaking speed and fell as quickly, leaving a billowing cloud of steam to drift downwind until only the normal background steam rose and drifted quietly along, constant in its presence, constant in its change, a wonder in its own right even in the face of the geyser, especially in the face of the geyser, which I came to learn blew every few minutes but not the same way.
No, every time I saw the geyser Strokkur blow it was different. Huge towering plumes blasted towards the sky. Smaller plumes, no less amazing, but with different proportions for the width stayed the same. Even double plumes where, no sooner had I begun to wonder if I should stop my video recording, when a second plume rocketed up aweing and surprising. Each eruption came and went so quickly it caught me up in awe demanding my full concentration and then it left me stunned and waiting for the next one, and the next. I think the tourist shop was lovely but I only saw it in passing, I had no time for more than a glimpse, because once I started watching the geyser I stayed watching until I had to leave to catch my bus.
I moved around and watched it from different angles. I found a good spot just up hill and up wind of it where I had a clear view of the boiling water with neither land, nor as much steam, in my way. If I thought watching from a distance was impressive it was nothing to being up close. I saw the water bubble up into a dome of blue water and white bubbles, glowing in the sun, as the waters rose and then burst up releasing the waters into a white foaming column vibrant with the energy of the Earth’s fires. I have read geology textbooks, how the underground magma heats the water and it rises to the surface, but it is hollow and empty by comparison to the miracle of Strokkur. A geyser that dwarfs me and leaves me amazed only to come right back and do it again, a stunning feat of water and stone, this boiling geyser in a field of snow.
Gulfoss Waterfall
Later that same day I saw the famous golden waterfall, Gulfoss. With the snow thick upon the ground we could only watch it from a distance. White snow lay thick over the landscape and puffy white clouds adorned a blue, blue sky. Blue reflected in the river where it pooled and ran smooth in broad flat levels before descending to the next, and the next, and finally roaring down with a mighty sheet of water into a narrow ravine!
Water thundered over the fall in a broad sheet of powerful water raising bursts of spray into the air. White it foamed as it roared down and through a narrow canyon lined with columnar basalt. Elemental power with such force that I longed to draw near and stand beside the water where it thundered down. Alas, winter snow, time limitations, and safety regulations kept me well back.
In a world of blue and white above and below it was the gray stone that delineated the land and the cold, cold, air that bound it all together.
Secret Lagoon
That day’s tour finished with full immersion in Iceland’s famous geothermally heated water in an outdoor hot spring pool called Secret Lagoon. It began with showers that felt like standing in warm rain and then we moved outside. The air was freezing and snow blanketed the land. The pool was bone meltingly hot: delicious waist deep water. The floor was sand and pebbles and the walls huge boulders of columnar basalt. I stood in a perfect balance of temperature, waist deep in glorious hot water with steam rising into the freezing Icelandic air that braced me.
When I grew too warm I stepped out and meandered the board walk. The board walk took me through the snow blanketed landscape up around the moss covered rocks where boiling hot water sprang from the earth. Lush green moss surrounded the steaming, bubbling pools, while snow lay inches away and the freezing air chilled my skin. By the time I finished the circuit I was more than ready to return to the pool where I sank once more into the hottest water I have ever soaked in, reclining on a length of columnar basalt at the edge of the pool.
Day 3: Sunday the 15th of March 2020
Lava Tunnel
My last hurrah abroad, was in a lava tunnel in Iceland. The morning before I flew back out of Iceland and home to the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, I delved into local geology. Below the vast tracks of snow and stone my tour group descended into a lava tunnel through a small wooden doorway at the end of a deep trench of snow.
I entered a tunnel of basalt. The circular path left by lava long past as it flowed towards the sea. The ceiling was lined with the stumps of basalt columns and the walls were striated with their lengths: dark black and red and gray. Here and there a skylight formed by the roof caving in let in piles of snow and light. Little mosses clung to the rocks where the light fell. Deeper in there was no light at all and all was pitch black.
Stalagmites graced the floors in single columns and lovely clusters, of clear, rounded, ice. The most spectacular feature of the tunnel, they gleamed in the light of our head lamps: beautiful formations of water crystals. Ice within the stone.
Poet-Scientist in Scandinavia 