Reykjavik - Day 3

On our third day, we did the Golden Circle tour, which included Friðheimar Farm, where we learnt about how they grow tomatoes in Iceland. If people think that Australia has a harsh climate and landscape, Iceland probably matches it. Fire and ice. Light and darkness. It has extremes. I don’t think I ever saw complete darkness while we were there.

The island is so remote that until humans invaded, there was only one mammal native to the island: the attic fox. The first settlers of Iceland, the Norse and Gaelic peoples, must have been really desperate to flee the Norwegian kingdom to settle in such a harsh climate. Fortunately modern conveniences can ameliorate that; the geothermal gas produced in Iceland can be converted into electricity through a complicated process, but provides a lot of green energy to power all of these inventions to make life a little more comfortable. For locals, this means cheap electricity. It’s this energy that the Friðheimar Farm uses to power the greenhouses to fool the tomatoes into thinking that they aren’t in one of the coldest climates.

The island is so cold that even most insects don’t want to live there, so pest control is not a major issue. Compared to Australia where there are more than 200,000 species of insects, Iceland has over 1000. One of those is the Icelandic fly. The Friðheimar Farm has introduced flies from the Netherlands to fight off the Icelandic flies, which were bad for the tomatoes.

Moving on from the farm, we headed to Geysir to witness the exploding geothermal springs, including Strokkur, a fountain-type geyser that shoots hot water and steam, every 6-10 minutes 15-25 metres into the air.

From there, we headed to the waterfall of Gullfoss. The Hvítá river flows into the waterfall, which plunges into a 32m crevice. And then at the end of the tour, we visited Thingvellir, where the first Icelandic parliament, the Althing, was formed in 930CE. Our tour guide, Stefan, proudly claimed that Iceland has the oldest recorded legislative body. He was also proud of how the Icelanders are so liberal-minded. He gave some examples, such as the first elected female President in the 1980s and that in the up-and-coming election there was a “gay running for office who was married to another gay”.Okumaya devam et