Day 56. 23rd August, near Bildudalir to Ísafjörður, Iceland (Vestfirðir or West Fjords).

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This is eight or ten kilometres on from from the waterfall near Bildudalir that we saw in the previous post.  It’s another branch of the fjord and you can see where it is in the following map because it’s the only place you can get a view straight out to the mouth of the fjord.  The next two images after the map are from a similar location.

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The map shows the drive for the afternoon from the waterfall and machinery dump in the previous post through to Ísafjörður.  However, the weather closed in after Dynjandi so there is only one image after that point, from the approach to Þingeyri  (= Thingeyri).

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This is likely the same view that Flóki Vilgerðarson saw of Arnarfjörður in 871 except that then he was at the top of a mountain and the fjord was filled with ice.

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The following images show the austere beauty of the sparse Vestfirðir landscape.  They are in chronological order as is the case with most posts.  I won’t attempt to locate them more specifically than the vague position you can infer from the map (before Dynjandi).

The road I am travelling on is impassable in winter.  You can click on any of the images if you want to see a larger version.

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This is now our first sighting of the Dynjandi series of waterfalls.

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Dynjandi.

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The falls are overall about one hundred metres high.

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After Dynjandi, the weather closed in.  This is a view somewhat later looking through the rain and fog towards Þingeyri.  The fjord you are looking at is Dýrafjörður, setting for Gisla’s Saga, a complex tale of murder and revenge featuring Gisli Sturrson and set in the tenth century.  There is a useful summary here but there’s nothing like reading the full saga which you can find here.

Further on again, approaching Ísafjörður, I encountered probably the freakiest driving condition I have experienced.  Driving into a tunnel, I found myself in a one-lane tunnel with traffic in both directions.  The headlights of oncoming vehicles were directly ahead in the darkness.  Every so often, there is a passing bay so that vehicles travelling in a particular direction (I think, North) can pull over and let oncoming traffic through.

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