Nick Miners Photography

The ever excel­lent Ja Ja Ja Nor­dic held their latest event at the Lex­ing­ton last night, fea­tur­ing Manna from Fin­land, Denmark’s Freja Loeb, and one of my favour­ite Icelandic bands, Útidúr. I was intrigued by how they’d fit the 12 strong Icelandic col­lect­ive on the tiny stage, but as it turned out there were only 8 of them and they just about managed.

Here are a few pics from the evening.

Con­tinu­ing the diary of my attempts to cap­ture the aurora. Part one is here, and part two here.

Over the next few days I set out on vari­ous routes achiev­able from the cap­ital in a single day. The weather fore­cast for pretty much the whole week was show­ing as con­stant rain, but as they say in Ice­land, if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes. Indeed, I was blessed by mostly fine weather for much of my time on the road, and occa­sion­ally by air so clear that I could see moun­tains sev­eral kilo­metres away without a hint of haze.

The afore­men­tioned Reyk­janes pen­in­sula (or Reyk­janessk­agi to give it its full name in Icelandic) has recently seen the com­ple­tion of a fully sur­faced road stretch­ing along its south­ern extent, from Grin­davík in the west to the ferry port at Þórklashöfn in the east. I headed towards the lat­ter town from Reyk­javík on a route that passes through the high alti­tude Hellisheiði pass. It’s not uncom­mon for the weather in the pass to be very dif­fer­ent from that in the city, and so it proved as the light drizzle in Reyk­javík gave way to a snow-​​covered land­scape with ice on the road and cloud every­where. The des­cent towards Hver­agerði is a steep, wind­ing road where you have to be excep­tion­ally care­ful not to lose grip, espe­cially when it is slip­pery. Driv­ing down this route gives one a clear indic­a­tion of just how dan­ger­ous driv­ing in Ice­land can be if you are not care­ful, and this is on one of the best roads there is.

Þórlak­shöfn is one of two ter­min­als for the ferry ser­vice to the West­man Islands. The other, Landey­jahöfn, is fur­ther east, and recently took over as the primary ter­minal as it allows for a much shorter cross­ing. Þórlak­shöfn how­ever remains act­ive as a backup for when fer­ries are unable to take the shorter route. The com­munity of vil­lages and farms nearby gather at Strandarkirkja, a small wooden church, typ­ical of rural Ice­land, built right on the coast. It is sep­ar­ated from the beach, where the bit­terly cold sea meets harsh vol­canic rocks and black sand, by a wall of rocks which was still covered in a dust­ing of rain-​​washed snow.

Strandarkirkja, a small church near Þórklák­shöfn in south­w­est Iceland

I walked over some slip­pery steps, sup­port­ing myself with the aid of the freezing-​​cold metal chain hand­rail, to explore the tex­tures on the beach, as the tide was quite low. Sea­weed, basalt, black sand and shal­low water chan­nels provided vari­ety and interest. Back by the church, a statue by Gun­nfriður Jóns­dót­tir called Land­sýn (Land in Sight) looks out over the ocean, and there was a line of snow up the figure’s back indic­at­ing just how strong the wind had been recently.

The slip­pery path over the sea defences at Strandarkirkja

Lava tex­tures on the beach at Strandarkirkja

Black sand on the beach at Strandarkirkja

A crack in the lava on the beach at Strandarkirkja

Land­sýn (“Land in Sight”), a statue by Strandarkirkja

Fur­ther west lies the sleepy fish­ing town of Grin­davík, where the Grin­davík Ice Com­pany provides crates of ice for the local fish­er­men. I’m used to see­ing ice out in the wild in Ice­land, but the stacks of ice-​​filled con­tain­ers out­side the company’s bright red ware­house was a less famil­iar sight! On the way to Grin­davík the road passes some extremely odd shaped vol­canic struc­tures, one of which looks like an octopus emer­ging from an roil­ing ocean that has been frozen into solid lava.

Rock­topus!

If you con­tinue fur­ther still, the road heads to a hot spring area called Gun­nuhver, where a ghost called Gunna is said to have caused much per­turb­a­tion until being tricked into fall­ing into a hot spring. The cold weather meant that the steam from the hot springs, with its now famil­iar (to me) eggy/​Marmitey smell, over­whelmed the whole area, leav­ing the bub­bling mud and boil­ing water invis­ible. How­ever the wooden walk­ways through the area dis­ap­peared into the steam in a won­der­fully gothic way.

The wooden path at Gun­nuhver dis­ap­pear­ing into the steam

Turn­ing north, back towards the inter­na­tional air­port at Keflavik, one crosses the fault line that lies between the North Amer­ican and Euras­ian tec­tonic plates. Those ever resource­ful Icelanders have built a ‘bridge between the con­tin­ents’ at one point, where you can stand above the ever-​​widening crack as the two plates move apart by a few cen­ti­metres every year. The gap is filled with black sand and not, as some might expect, boil­ing lava, which means you can walk beneath the bridge as well as over it.

The bridge between con­tin­ents — North Amer­ica on the left, Eurasia on the right

As I headed back towards Reyk­javík, I took a detour past Klei­far­vatn, a lake which in 2000 began to drain away slowly, after a fis­sure was opened up by an earth­quake in the area. Even now it’s pos­sible to see how far it has receded as there are vast black sandy areas between the edge of the lake and the rocks by the road. Inter­est­ingly shaped chunks of ice had formed at the edge of the lake, and tyre marks left by some no-​​doubt bonkers 4×4 con­trap­tion had part-​​filled with snow, mak­ing shapes that in places resembled writ­ing in some for­eign script.

Ice shapes on the edge of Kleifarvatn

Snow and tyre tracks at Kleifarvatn

Back in Reyk­javík, I vis­ited Per­lan (The Pearl) to grab a shot of one of my favour­ite views of the city. Heavy bands of cloud over­head ensured there would be no aurora view­ing tonight, but they did help to provide some impress­ive light over the bay.

View of Reyjkavík from Per­lan. The large church is Hallgrím­skirkja, Hallgrímur’s church, whose design was influ­enced by the basalt columns com­mon through­out Iceland.

Late sun over the bay at Reyk­javík, seen from Perlan

After some food, and once it was com­pletely dark out­side, I headed down to Harpa, the con­cert hall by the har­bour, to pho­to­graph the light show cre­ated by indi­vidual strips of light con­tained within each cell of its pseudo­geo­lo­gical façade. You can watch a video of the dis­play here.

Reykjavík’s amaz­ing dynam­ic­ally lit con­cert hall and opera house, Harpa.

The green and red lights dan­cing across the façade were remin­is­cent of the aurora

The dis­play went on all night, as far as I could tell.

Read part I here.

Mod­ern Ice­land has a pop­u­la­tion barely exceed­ing 300,000 people. The vast major­ity of Icelanders (over 200,000) live in Reyka­jvík and the sur­round­ing con­urba­tion, which con­sists of Mos­fells­bær to the north, and Kópa­vogur, Garð­abær and Hafn­ar­fjörður to the south. The next largest town is Akur­eyri, in the north of the coun­try, which has a pop­u­la­tion of around 18,000, with the rest of Iceland’s pop­u­la­tion dis­trib­uted through­out towns, vil­lages, ham­lets and farms scattered around the coast­line. The interior, also known as Hálendið (the high­land), is utterly unin­hab­it­able, and impass­able by all but the most rugged 4×4. In winter, the four routes through the middle of Ice­land are closed to traffic completely.

The extremely low pop­u­la­tion dens­ity means that road main­ten­ance, which is fun­ded by tax­pay­ers, is pri­or­it­ised towards the more pop­u­lous regions, and it is not uncom­mon to be driv­ing towards a remote lake, water­fall or set­tle­ment and find the road sur­face sud­denly deteri­or­ate into a pit­ted gravel sur­face (her­al­ded by the warn­ing ‘Mal­bik Endar’). Recent years have seen a huge rise in tour­ist vis­it­ors to Ice­land, how­ever, and many of the more pop­u­lar des­tin­a­tions are now ser­viced by fully sur­faced roads.

Des­pite its low pop­u­la­tion, Ice­land has a boom­ing music scene, which reaches far bey­ond the much feted Björk and Sigur Rós. Some­thing in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, pos­sibly com­bined with the island’s isol­a­tion, means many people use music as a form of self-​​expression, and the paro­chial nature of even the cap­ital means musi­cians don’t need to look far to find like-​​minded indi­vidu­als with whom they can form bands. Another con­sequence of the lack of people means that many bands share mem­bers, and it’s not uncom­mon to see the same musi­cian appear with two or even three sep­ar­ate bands at vari­ous times.

The annual Ice­land Air­waves fest­ival, held in ven­ues across Reyk­javík in the late autumn, has in recent years grown expo­nen­tially into one of the world’s fore­most musical events. Act­ing as a showpiece for primar­ily new and up-​​and-​​coming artists (from home and abroad), it is a great way to acquaint one­self with the local musical tal­ent, as well as dis­cover some newer bands on the verge of great­ness (Florence and the Machine and Elbow are two bands who rose to inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion on the back of Air­waves appear­ances). Some idio­syn­cratic choices at the 2011 event (namely Sinéad O’Connor and Yoko Ono) made many people ques­tion the festival’s com­mit­ment to new music, but the gen­eral feel­ing from people who atten­ded was that it was pos­sibly the best thing they’d been to, ever.

Ice­land Air­waves — the high­light of the Icelandic musical calendar

Arrival

Winter in Ice­land is an unusual time of year for people used to less polar lat­it­udes. It’s com­mon know­ledge that through the winter sol­stice you get very little day­light at all. Even in late Feb­ru­ary the sun rises above the hori­zon for just 9 hours, and given that Ice­land is fur­ther to the west than the UK, yet still uses GMT, the ‘day’ is shif­ted so that you get more day­light after mid­day than before. This also gives rise to a more reg­u­lar ‘mid­night sun’ dur­ing the sum­mer months that would oth­er­wise not occur, a sly mar­ket­ing trick, I think!

Iceland’s main inter­na­tional air­port sits at the west­ern tip of the Reyk­janes pen­in­sula, near the town of Keflavík, and is named after Lei­fur Eiríks­son, the man cred­ited by many with dis­cov­er­ing the Amer­icas (though he named them Vin­land). First time vis­it­ors, who have been informed by their depar­ture air­port that their flight is to Reyk­javík, are usu­ally in for a sur­prise as there is a half-​​hour jour­ney by road through the bar­ren lava fields of Reyk­janes before they finally reach the capital.

I had met a young couple on the plane who, des­pite being well-​​travelled, had not vis­ited Ice­land before. I envied them their first visit to Ice­land, an exper­i­ence that can never be repeated. Instead, I picked up my rental car and drove myself to the cap­ital, where I was meet­ing Inga, who had very kindly arranged my accom­mod­a­tion for the week in the 4-​​star Radis­son 1919 hotel right in the middle of town.

Once settled in, I helped myself to one of the town’s, and pos­sibly the world’s, best hot­dogs. ‘Bæjar­ins Beztu Pylsur’ lit­er­ally means ‘Town’s best hot­dogs’ and is aptly named. If you ask for ‘eina með öllu’ (‘one with everything’) you get a bun with onions, ketchup, mus­tard and remoulade sauce smothered over a per­fect hot­dog saus­age. As tra­di­tional Icelandic food goes, it’s not quite up there with dried fish or fer­men­ted shark, but if it’s good enough for Pres­id­ent Bill Clin­ton, it’s good enough for me. (In fact, Slick Wil­lie only wanted mus­tard on his, so if you ask for ‘the Clin­ton’, that’s what you get!)

Hot dog from Bæjar­ins Beztu Pylsur — con­sidered one of the best in the world!

As the sky darkened I decided to head for Setl­jarn­arnes, the north­west­erly point on the small pen­in­sula on which Reyk­javík sits, to see what the aurora was up to. When I arrived, there was a pale green arc in the north­ern sky, but little move­ment. I sat in the car for a few minutes to wait, and sud­denly, I saw a por­tion of the arc start to brighten and move. It wasn’t long before the aurora star­ted to put on a real show.

A Brazilian man who was there too seemed very agit­ated by the whole thing. He asked me if that was the aurora, and when I con­firmed that it was, seemed to be over­come with emo­tion, thank­ing me pas­sion­ately, as though I had per­son­ally laid on the aurora for him. He saw that I was tak­ing pho­to­graphs and ask if I’d help him do the same, but when he fetched his cam­era from the car, I had to inform him that his com­pact point-​​and-​​shoot wouldn’t be cap­able of the long expos­ures neces­sary. He seemed decidedly crest­fal­len by the news, but brightened up quickly enough when his atten­tion returned to the celes­tial light show.

With aurora pic­tures sor­ted, what was I to do for the rest of the week? I had been hop­ing to cap­ture some more pho­tos with per­haps one of Iceland’s fam­ous water­falls in the fore­ground, but I knew I’d be at the mercy of the ele­ments, and had prob­ably been extremely for­tu­nate just to cap­ture what I had tonight.

The Aurora Borealis

Sadly, on closer inspec­tion, the pic­ture above is still slightly out of focus, some­thing I only dis­covered once I uploaded the images onto my laptop back at the hotel. So I was going to have to try again at some point if I was to get the headline-​​grabbing images that I wanted.

Con­tinue to Part III.

Part one in a series of posts about Iceland.

I always find it hard to artic­u­late why it is that I keep return­ing to Ice­land. I’ve been to some amaz­ing places in my time; the Lake Dis­trict, New York City, Bar­celona, the Cay­man Islands, but none of them has quite the same effect on me that Ice­land does. I’ve seen the same in other people, so I know it’s not just me — as a rational, sci­entific thinker I hes­it­ate to use spir­itual meta­phors, but this vol­canic north Atlantic island does seem to have some­thing about it that bewitches people, mean­ing that every time you go, you just want to return even more.

The Mýrdals­jökull gla­cier, seen from the cliffs at Dyrhólaey

What doesn’t help is that the loc­als are some of the love­li­est people I’ve ever encountered, and hav­ing made friends with sev­eral of them on Twit­ter, and met them in real life in my last few vis­its, I now have what feel like fam­ily ties pulling me back each time.

In Feb­ru­ary 2012 I trav­elled to Ice­land for the eighth time, third time within the space of two years. The aim was two-​​fold; to go on my own and hence be free to get up at ungodly hours and stay up until ungodly hours, and to try to cap­ture the aurora on cam­era, some­thing I had sin­gu­larly failed to do in all my pre­vi­ous visits.

My pre­vi­ous visit, in which I was pho­to­graph­ing the Ice­land Air­waves fest­ival in 2011, was actu­ally only the first time I ever got to wit­ness the aurora first hand. I was walk­ing on the har­bour front in Reyk­javík with Tim and James, my two col­leagues from The 405 who were cov­er­ing the fest­ival with me, when we saw what looked like a cloud move in an unex­pec­ted way. We knew straight away what it was, and the three of us spent the next ten minutes star­ing into the north­ern sky with our mouths wide open as solar particles bom­barded the upper atmo­sphere, ion­ising oxy­gen atoms, which glowed like green and pink cos­mic cur­tains gently blow­ing in the solar wind.

So from that moment I determ­ined that the next time I went to Ice­land I’d do my best to cap­ture this spec­tac­u­lar phe­nomenon on camera.

A brief introduction

Ice­land is one of the most recent addi­tions to the Earth’s geo­logy. It was formed around 20 mil­lion years ago by vol­canic erup­tions at the bound­ary between the North Amer­ican and Euras­ian tec­tonic plates, known as the mid-​​atlantic ridge. As a res­ult of its rel­at­ively young age, it con­sists almost entirely of vol­canic rock, and signs of the huge gash in the earth’s crust are every­where, in par­tic­u­lar at Þingv­el­lir National Park, (‘Thingv­el­lir’), site of the world’s old­est demo­crat­ic­ally elec­ted parliament.

Þingv­el­lir national park, where the Icelandic par­lia­ment (Alþingi) was foun­ded. Now based in Reyk­javík, the Alþingi is over 1,000 years old.

For many mil­len­nia Ice­land was covered by gla­ciers, leav­ing behind mag­ni­fi­cent fjords as the ice retreated. Nowhere are these more in evid­ence than in the far north west, where the West­ern Fjords sit like antlers on some strange myth­ical beast swim­ming in the north atlantic ocean. Rem­nants of the ice age remain in the shape of Europe’s largest gla­cier, Vat­na­jökull (the water gla­cier), and sev­eral smal­ler cous­ins, includ­ing the infam­ous Eyjaf­jalla­jökull, named after the moun­tain range that over­looks the West­man Islands to the south (eyja = islands, fjalla = mountains).

Eyjaf­jalla­jökull gla­cier, as seen on the scale model of Ice­land in Reyk­javík City Hall.

Ice­land was first named by the vik­ing explorer Flóki Vil­ger­ðason, who took the nick­name Hrafna-​​Flóki (Raven-​​Flóki). He suffered a very cold winter at Barðaströnd in the West­ern Fjords, and as the drift ice floated up the fjords he named the land Ísland (lit­er­ally, land of ice). The name stuck, and even to this day gives the impres­sion of a much harsher envir­on­ment than actu­ally exists on a land bene­fit­ting from the warm­ing effect of the Gulf Stream.

The Nor­we­gian Ingól­fur Arn­ar­son is widely con­sidered to be the first per­son to have settled on Ice­land for good. The story goes that he threw two pil­lars into the sea as he approached the island, and fol­lowed the coast until he found them on the north­ern edge of the south-​​western pen­in­sula now known as Reyk­janes. He named the area Reyk­javík, which means bay of smoke, after the steam rising from the land due to geo­thermal activ­ity which can still be spot­ted in places through­out Ice­land today.

Read Part II here.

Here’s what you get if you take the essence of Ice­land Air­waves 2011 and dis­til it into a 3 and a half minute video. Thanks to Icelandic Gla­cial Water for bring­ing this to my attention.