This is my favourite video of the series and I’m so excited that it’s finally out! Day four of my Iceland vlog series sees me on a tour bus at 7.40am to head out into the Desert of Misdeeds to Askja. It’s a shorter day than I expected, only eleven and a half hours, driving across a lava field, exploring an oasis, hiking across a caldera and not swimming in a volcano.
Behind the scenes:
- There was a French lady behind me who was desperate for the front seat of the coach and most upset that the “teacher” (our driver’s English was extremely limited) had the two front seats to himself and that she couldn’t sit there. Her husband appeared to speak no English so I heard her interpreting all the guide’s information for him all day. Tours are almost invariably in English – tourists come from all over the world and it’s not practical to do it in multiple languages unless you’ve got an audioguide but most people know some English.
- I mentioned Eyvindur when we were at Herðubreiðarlindir without ever mentioning who he was. Eyvindur, Fjalla-Eyvindur, or Mountain Eyvindur, was an eighteenth-century criminal who was sentenced to twenty years in exile, which meant “get out of town and if we see you in the next twenty years, we’ll execute you”. He allegedly escaped custody in church – he got up and ran and the local officials couldn’t bring themselves to interrupt the sermon to chase him – and he fled to the Desert of Misdeeds on a stolen horse.
He spent a winter out at Herðubreiðarlindir. Now there’s a campsite and a hut and a toilet block there but in Eyvindur’s day, there was nothing but some plant life around a stream. Eyvindur and his wife sheltered in the little hole you’ll see in the video, building it up a little to make room for a ceiling made of horse skin. They lived on horse meat that winter and the plants that grew around the hole. It can get down to minus quite a lot in that part of the country, with incredible snow and high winds. Thanks to that stream in the corner of the hole, the temperature would have remained around 2°C which is very cold but quite a bit warmer than it would have been outside.
And for what it’s worth, even Eyvindur said that was the worst winter of his exile. Yes, he made it to the full twenty years and was allowed back into society. - There’s pretty much nothing to say about Askja that I didn’t say in the video, except that it’s possible – unlikely but possible – that the missing scientists on the lake actually died at the hand of their surviving colleague at the request of the widow of one of them. It’s very unlikely, given how dangerous a volcano can be and how completely both bodies and the boat vanished, but it’s not outside the realms of possibility that this was a well-covered-up assassination.
- We made a quick stop at Dreki on the way back for coffee and waffles. I didn’t film any of that but that’s what’s going on. Then we went straight back to Myvatn, which took about three hours, even though it’s less than 140km (85 miles). I mostly daydreamed and it was only when I came to edit that I discovered I hadn’t filmed even a second of it. Neither did I film me getting back to the car to explain that we’d finished the expedition and I was off to the Nature Baths – too much of a hurry and at least I did it at the Nature Baths, even if my GoPro is terrible for sound when it gets wet.
And on with the video!