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Glorious glaciers and irresistible icebergs!!
As we make our way across Iceland's south, we move into the glorious and gorgeous glacial fields. Vatnajökull is not only the largest glacier in Iceland, it's the largest glacial field in Europe and covers about one tenth of this country's land mass. Though we didn't travel to the mother ship herself, we did manage to get a fantastic look at a few of her "tongues".
A tongue glacier is a unique beast in that it is an arm (or tongue, rather) of the main glacier which extends toward the sea. In this case, frozen rivers of slowly moving ice have carved their way through volcanic rock towards the North Atlantic Ocean, sometimes leaving huge icebergs within their own lakes. Truly awesome, truly moving, truly magnificent! Samara called it glagnificant (glacial magnificence)!!
I won't ever pretend to pronounce their names (though pronounced "glossal" in medical speak 😉) but we visited Skaftafellsjökull and Svínafellsjökull first (Skafa-fafa-kull and Svina-fina-kull to us - jökull being the Icelandic term for glacier) and were blown away! We drove past the first unpronounceable one, taking more than 15 minutes at 90km/h to pass the face. Imagine just how big the mother ship is!! We were close enough to hear the snap, crackle and pop of the ice and the drip, drip, dripping of the melting floe. It was peaceful, uncrowded and eerily beautiful.
I thought it was impossible to be more impressed, but then we moved on to the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon. Oh my Godness!!! I couldn't tear my eyes from it and didn't want to leave! I'll let you judge the pictures for yourself!! Not only did we see masses of icebergs across about a kilometre of lake, we also saw seals swimming and diving for fish and a few "diamonds" on Diamond Beach (chunks of ice washed down from the glacier and coming to rest in the black sandy beach. When the sun shines on these little bergs (Samara calls them ice cubes), they sparkle like diamonds, giving the beach its name.)
Glaciers, glaciers, glaciers … icebergs, icebergs, icebergs!!! A very satisfying day yet again!!Read more