Walking In Iceland 4: Stormy Weather

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Saturday 27th August 1977

Yesterday, the first proper day of our guided walk in Iceland, we arrived at the Sveinstindur hut near the western edge of Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest ice cap. We are to stay here for two nights. 

Just after arrival at the Sveinstindur Hut

Today’s itinerary directs that we ascend the remaining 1150 feet (350m) to the top of Sveinstindur mountain (3585 feet, 1093m), one of the most magnificent viewpoints in Iceland. It boasts panoramic views of Vatnajökull and five other ice caps, the twelve-mile-long lake Langisjór, winding rivers, hundreds of mountains, volcanoes, and distant horizons in all directions.  

Unfortunately, yesterday’s bitter wind has brought terrible weather. Paul, the walk leader, reluctantly declares the day to be a ‘holiday’. The weather really is awful. We stay inside the hut where it sounds even worse because of rain drumming on the corrugated iron roof. Fortunately, nowadays, I can turn to the internet to pinch pictures of what we missed. 

This is a total surprise to me. I had absolutely no idea what it could be like up there until I saw these. Even if we had made it, visibility would have been nothing like this.  The first picture looks east towards Vatnajökull, the second in the opposite direction.

Views from Sveinstindur

The hut is small for the incarceration of thirteen people, but we have to accept that Paul knows best. At one end, a bridge school has started. Others read books. Some, complaining of a restless night, go back to sleep. One by one, even those who are awake get back in their sleeping bags to keep warm.

I join in card games for a while, and then, for something to do and to escape the state of lethargy into which most have fallen, I go for water, twice. This involves a ten minute walk each way, up a hill, down again and then across a kind of beach beside some flooded mud flats, and then over another promontory to a trickling stream.

Ascending the hill takes no effort, you simply sail up in the wind, but returning is a step by step struggle against flying hailstones. Frequent back-to-the-wind rests are needed. On the final descent down to the hut you have to keep sitting down so as not to be blown away. It is the strongest wind I have ever experienced. At least it makes your hands so cold you cannot feel string of the bucket cutting into your fingers. What a pity we can’t use the gritty water from the nearer mud flats.   

Although Sveinstindur mountain is hidden in cloud, the weather seems slightly better at lunch time, but by tea time it is desperate again. Apart from the business of cooking and washing up we continue to vegetate inside the hut. 

The huts are maintained by parishes for use by shepherds during the October sheep round-up. The remoteness and distances involved make it necessary to do this on horseback, so the huts are both stables and human quarters. 

At Sveinstindur, the single hut doubles up for both purposes, the human area at the rear being raised by three or four feet to form a sleeping platform. I get a spot on the lower floor. It would be a lot warmer if we had a horse, as the Irving Berlin song makes clear:

The snow is snowing and the wind is blowing
But I can weather the storm
What do I care how much it may storm
I’ve got my horse to keep me warm…

The other well-known Irving Berlin song composed during his secret, anonymous and undocumented holiday with Icelandic sheep herders was:

I’m,
putting on my jumper,
putting on my jumper,
putting on my jumper...

Fred Astaire was scripted to sing this in the film Top Hat but refused on the grounds that traditional Icelandic jumpers are inelegant and wearing three made him too hot for dancing. 

There are warming mugs of cocoa at bedtime. Why do those with the weakest bladders bag the spots furthest from the door so they have to pick their way in pitch blackness over the lumps of snoring sleeping bags strewn across the floor? They risk falls, injuries and very abusive language.  

                                                     *                    *                    *

For the orienteers amongst us, here is a 1:250,000 map of the area in 1977 (four miles to the inch or 2.5 km to the centimeter). The blue arrows indicate the positions of the first four huts, with Sveinstindur centrally towards the top. The first picture above looks east towards where ‘Siujökull’ is written on the map, and the second in the opposite direction along the ridge of ‘Graenifjallgardur’. Our trek will later continue to the south of this ridge (click here for a greatly enlarged version of the map).

(next part)
I would be delighted to hear from anyone who was there.

A Walk to the Post Office

Walking in the countryside, when it has purpose and destination, feels like walking in the past. It reminds me Belgium, the country road between Hugo’s, my foreign language exchange partner, and Jean-Pierre’s, a friend’s language exchange. Or the walk along the river from my grandma’s house to my aunt’s smallholding in the village where they lived; and later too, when my aunt moved to a remote farm at the end of a long lane. My grandpa used the same paths to work in the paper mill, two miles there in the morning, two miles back at night. It can’t have been much fun in bad weather. And, when there was no work, it was three miles each way by fields and river bank to the next village to claim the dole, which was every day in the nineteen-thirties. People walked everywhere. No rush. No worry. Sun, wind, rain and birdsong, you got there in the end.

About a month ago, Sue My Quiet Life in Suffolk took her camera on A Walk to the Post Office. The walk to what is currently our nearest Post Office, provided it’s not too muddy, is two-miles of true joy. Last week, we had a parcel to send, so taking a lead from Sue, I took my camera...

across a playing field

up through the woods at the far side

across two fields to the secluded hamlet in the distance, this is the first field

and this is the second – all beginning to look very dry at this time of the year (this was before last week’s rain) – it was much more green and pleasant a few weeks ago before they cut the waist-high grass. Should have brought my camera then.

through the hamlet and along the drive

leaving by steps over the wall to cut diagonally across another field where the grass was also higher until recently

to walk a short way along a country road

which we leave by another stile to cross another field – uh uh! looks like trouble – Jersey calves. They run towards us – I think they want to play human football.

Phew! Not sure whether they are heifers or bullocks. Looking back, they think they have seen us off but with a bit of panicky shouting, clapping and arm waving we got through to where we wanted. That one in the front group on the right came running round from the back like Raheem Sterling

just one more field to cross

then up a steep hill 

as we gain height we can take in the views

just a short way to go now along a busy road
 

and we’re there

Oops. Forgot to take a picture of the ice creams. 
Went back by a different path to avoid the bullocks.