I’ve been going to Iceland for quite a few years now and I think one of the major characteristics of Icelandic people is storytelling. This is a country where 10% of the population will have something published in their lifetime (many statistics will tell you this is a book. It’s not. “Something” covers “letters written to the paper”) and where all those stories of Norse myths that you know so well were saved from being lost in the mists of history. Icelanders, stuck in turf huts during long winters tending sheep, told stories and then wrote them down.
My point is that this storytelling means Iceland has a rich culture of myth and mystery. I’ve talked about that before (The A-Z of Iceland: M for Myths, Monsters & Magic) but what it means for the traveller or tourist making their way around Iceland is that they’ll see lots of trolls. I can’t find the name of this mountain below but this one in Þórsmörk was both the first troll rock I found and also the first mountain I ever climbed in Iceland.
Then we have the occasion of my lava-caving trip – actually with the same tour guide as the Þórsmörk trip, although eight months earlier – when Matthias sat us down in the dark and told us stories of trolls. “What happens when the sunlight touches them?” There was a silence and I realised that if the group wasn’t going to leave Matthias thinking we weren’t interested in the stories, I was going to have to be the one who spoke. “They burn!” Of course they don’t. “That’s vampires. Trolls… turn to rock”. Not that there were any rock trolls inside the cave, it’s just when I heard a story.
But the most famous troll rocks, and the ones I want to talk about today, are the pinnacles off Vik. Most people see them from the west side of the headland, from Reynisfjara but they’re better from Vik beach.
Since we’re on Reynisfjara, let me go off on a short tangent. Reynisfjara, aka the famous black beach, sits on a shelf. The ocean drops away very suddenly and the beach is prone to “sneaker waves” which will suddenly erupt and drag you off that shelf and into deep water. However good you think conditions are, no matter how still or sunny or warm it is, please please keep away from the water. It’s incredibly dangerous. Iceland has put up so many warning signs and people still ignore them and have, at best, lucky escapes.
Obviously, you can see why people come to Reynisfjara. It’s got that exotic black sand (and so has almost every beach in Iceland!) but it also has a huge clump of perfect basalt columns on the cliff, a massive basalt cave and views over Eyjafjallajökull.
But to go back to the troll rocks. You may have spotted them in the first picture of Reynisfjara – these are the troll rocks.
You can’t get out to them. That is, you can neither walk or swim. I can’t speak for boats but I think you’d really want to know what you’re doing if you’re thinking of sailing or rowing and I think if you truly know what you’re doing, you wouldn’t do it. These rocks are best viewed from one of the beaches.
Are they trolls? Are they the masts of a troll ship? Nobody knows. What they do know is that it was turned to stone when the sun touched it, left forever poking out of the water. It’s basalt, isn’t it? I don’t know a lot about basalt formations but I know how those would have formed if they were the chalk/limestone of my own local cliffs where we have magic pinnacles as well – Old Harry Rocks on the corner of Studland used to the devil himself and his wife, although his wife collapsed into the sea in a storm some years back.
I know that fresh basalt is fairly fragile – the baby island Surtsey was formed by an underwater volcanic eruption in the late 60s and within a decade, the effect of the seawater on the new lava had reduced its area by half or two-thirds or something considerable. So maybe the troll rocks were once cliffs or something bigger and got worn down to the current spikes by water erosion.
Anyway, let’s have a little look at those troll rocks from the Vik beach side.
There, aren’t they good? See how much better they look from here? See how much better you can see the view from a beach that’s not overrun with tourists putting themselves at risk by ignoring warning signs?
See how Jake is enjoying the solitude, oblivious to me standing behind him with a camera?
Ok, so this entire post has mostly been an excuse to show off Vik’s black sand beaches a bit and I want to finish it by showing off a lovely photo across the south coast taken from the headland at Dyrholaey.
Isn’t this great? Black sand for miles, boulder probably dumped there by a volcanic flood and the troll rocks in the distance, all under a lovely bit of sky. In fact, that boulder in the middle is probably a troll as well.