Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
debris, either from falls of volcanic ash, or simply from the way they grind down the
rocks underneath them into fine gravel or sand. As this dark grit and gravel nears the
surface of the glacier it warms up in the sunlight, causing surrounding ice to melt,
exposing the gravel and thereby making the front of most Icelandic glaciers appear very
“dirty”. The debris ultimately is carried away from the glacier by streams or rivers
which are also the product of glacial friction, and deposited as desert-like
sandurs
, such
as those that occupy much of Iceland's southeastern coastline.
It's also possible to see the effects that the glaciers themselves leave on the landscape,
as both ice caps and glaciers were formerly far more extensive than they appear today.
During previous ice ages - the last of which ended around 12,000 years ago - much of
the country was beneath the ice, but there has been considerable fluctuation in glacier
limits even in recorded times, and at present most are
shrinking
. The intricate inlets of
the East Fjords and West Fjords were carved by vanished glaciers, as were the
characteristically flat-topped mountains known as
móbergs
, southeast of Mývatn.
Former glacial valleys - typically broad and rounded - can be seen along the Ringroad
southwest of Akureyri; and Iceland's most mobile glacier, Skeiðarárjökull in Skaftafell
National Park, has been retreating over the last eighty years, leaving raised
moraine
gravel ridges in its wake.
The majority of Iceland's
rivers
are fairly short, glacial-fed affairs, though two of the
largest - the
Hvíta
in the southwest, and northeastern
Jökulsá á Fjöllum
- each exceed a
respectable 200km in length. Both have quite spectacular stretches where they have
carved
canyons
and
waterfalls
out of the landscape: at Gullfoss on the Hvíta; and
Dettifoss and Ásbergi along the Jökulsá. Icelandic
lakes
are not especially large and
tend to be caused - as with Mývatn or Þingvallavatn - when lava walls dam a
spring-fed outflow, causing it to back-flood.
Atmospheric phenomena
One of the strangest features of being in Iceland during the summer is the extremely
long days
. The northernmost part of the mainland is actually just outside the Arctic
Circle, and so the sun does set (briefly) even on the longest day of the year, though you
can cross over to the little island of Grímsey, whose northern tip is inside the Arctic
and so enjoys midnight sun for a few days of the year. Conversely, winter days are
correspondingly short, with the sun barely getting above the horizon for three months
of the year.
One consequence of Iceland's often cold, dry atmosphere is that - on sunny days at
least - it can play serious tricks on your sense of scale. Massive objects such as
mountains and glaciers seem to stay the same size, or even shrink, the closer you come
to them, and sometimes phantom hills or peaks appear on the horizon. Another effect
- best viewed on cold, clear nights - is the
northern lights
, or
Aurora Borealis
, which
form huge, shifting sheets of green or red in the winter skies. They're caused by the
solar wind bringing electrically charged particles into contact with the Earth's
atmosphere, and you'll have to be in luck to catch a really good show - they improve
the further north you travel.
