GO Blog

My first day in Iceland was a wash due to jet leg but I was able to walk around the city a bit. Reykjavik is very hilly and many of the houses look the same, hence I got lost right away. After a few key landmarks I found my way back to the guesthouse although I am sure it wasn’t the fastest way. I saw the famous church that I always see in Reykjavik photos and found an internet café but they were closed. The Sun didn’t set until 830ish and I hear they have a lot of sun, an average of 15 hours of daylight year round. Temps are about the same as back home although they don’t get extreme cold or as hot as Minnesota does. Everyone here seems to dress up (in a modern chic kind of way). There is a sulfur smell in all of their hot water which is hard to get used to. I also did notice there were trees around the city and the rumor I heard before coming here was that there were no trees! But then I learned in the land degradation class that they are not native trees but planted trees and that due to erosion the once woodlands in Iceland are now gone.

My second day I joined some of my fellow Public Health students at a Room with a View apartments. Man was it a view! We overlooked the main stopping street: Laugavegur as wells as snow covered mountains and lake/ocean. I think this really just might be the most expensive country in the world: $17 a drink at a bar and about $2 a liter for gas! Our second night a few of us went on the Northern Lights tour. It started off to be slightly disappointing but by the end it was one of the coolest things I have seen. Finally bands of flares just started to appear and at one time it was as if the sun was rising again and then ribbons formed and rainbows of lights were flashing around. Faint colors of green and slight red were apparent although it most appeared as white light.

On our third day we met some of the Iceland students and the rest of the Uof M students. We went on a trip to the president’s house. It was a short drive away and a great view of the city and mountains and surrounded by water (nice place)! A little different from visiting the U.S. president- there was no security and we just walked in and then he gave an hour long lecture about global health and global warming type issues. He is a really nice and convincing speaker. Then he answered questioned and gave us some wine and fancy appetizers and let us walk around the house. I even got my picture with him. Few key points from his lecture that I found interesting:

-we all must claim responsibility, everyone! For global warming issues.
-we have a very short time to react.
-he claims that Iceland is not unique and what they did can be applied all over the world (geothermal energy and such).
-when Iceland made geothermal energy they were a poor developing country and they still did it.
-he seems to have more faith in the U.S. then we do about our contributions to global health and he seems to have high expectations for whoever our new president is.
-discussed a lot of the security and health issues of global warming.
-seemed surprisingly optimistic about what we can still do given the short time we have to react.

Our fourth day was our “field trip” day and wow, what an exhausting day it was. We met at the university and then took a bus to several locations.

Geothermal Plant
This is the most modern power plant in the world (I think). I know its really new and almost 100% efficient. They harness all the electricity and hot water for Iceland and make more to sell to business. Aluminum companies are starting to come to Iceland because it is cheaper for them to bring it here with the cheap electricity-even from Australia. Our tour guide described how it worked from digging the deep borehole (3000-7000meters) deep and extracting the extremely hot water (300-500 degrees Celsius). To separating the water from steam and then the minerals and leftover water are put back into the earth. There is little known about long term effects of geothermal harnessing power however or whether or not there will be any consequences to the environment. Right now it seems like a pretty renewable source though! I have some pictures on the large turbines and pipes. The leftover water from one of the geothermal plants (at blue lagoon) is actually the blue water we bathed in. It is full of minerals and the water gets replenished every 40 hours. One thing I couldn’t get over was that they added the sulfur smell back to the water before people it gets to the people-it is their “Trademark”.

Þingvellir National Park
This was the beginning of the windy cold day! Our tour guide was actually a graduate from the University of Minnesota and very nice. They get over ½ million visitors year every year with only 3 full time staff members. This was the most important historic site for Iceland. I believe it is where their parliament started around 900 AD. They would gather here for two weeks every summer. It is also the rift between the Eurasia and North American plate and it is splitting (1/2-2.5 cm a year). We walked along this icy rift and got some cool pictures.

Gulfoss Waterfall
Holy cow I have never ever ever been in wind like this!!! Seriously it was practically blowing people over-I was running and not going anywhere, my headband from my pointy-tail came out! This was definitely the biggest waterfall I have ever seen and is the biggest in Iceland. I think it was my favorite sight in Iceland so far-but it was such harsh conditions that I could not even hold my camera still or open my eyes long enough to get any good pictures. The water from the waterfall was freezing and turning into hail and blowing in our face as we were trying to look at it. They also only had a rope for a rail and I heard up until 2 years ago they had nothing-so that was a little scary.

Geysers
Wasn’t too far away from the waterfall (10min) so it was still really windy. Again there were no safety features making people stand away-this is not how it would be done in the US. The old Geyser now only erupts after earthquakes but was the biggest active in the world at the time, but there is another one that was erupting ever 2 min while we were there. About every 10 min. there is a large eruption comparable to the size of Old Faithful. Of course it kept teasing us with little ones and then when we weren’t looking and out of synch it would erupt! Two students were on a bridge about 5 feet away with their backs turned and didn’t expect it and they got blasted! After we made sure they didn’t have burns all over their body we laughed pretty hard.

Blue Lagoon
We didn’t get too much time here but it was still relaxing. During our LONG bus ride here it was interesting to see the Iceland landscape. I felt like it would be what I imagine Hawaii to be like, only with snow. There really are no trees, lots of evidence of soil and land degradation and lots of lava rocks (I read something like 80% of Icelanders believe that there are trolls that live in the rocks). A few times I didn’t think we were going to make it and end up over the lava cliff into the ocean-thankfully I wasn’t driving. The lagoon felt like it was in the middle of no-where. The water was warm and steaming, natural steam rooms and saunas and waterfalls and they had silica mud masks that you put on for five minutes and washed off. It was refreshing but freezing when you got out.

The next 4 days were crammed with many lectures from experts in the field of Global Health and informatics.

A couple great quotes from some of the lecture we heard about Global Health:

“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care” -Linda Olson Keller

“What is the cause of death of a starving person, who is in civil conflict, placed in a refugee camp and dies of measles?” Alyson

I hope you enjoyed reading some of my experiences in Iceland but to really get a feel of this very unique country I recommend checking it out yourself!

-Robyn Kellum