Reykjavik

Sculpture Garden in Reykjavik, apparently only tourists go here.

Icelandic delicacy! Fermented Shark aka Hakarl

Candy stand at the flea market. Icelanders love their candy. I've been in grocery stores small enough that they only have something like four racks of food, and never fail, one of those racks is always devoted to candy.

Mask stand, Flea Market, downtown Reykjavik

Aleece and I took our second day off of the trip and went down to Reykjavik just to wander around. We've been staying at a university outside of Borgarnes, called Bifrost, couchsurfing with a Korean exchange student here, Sol. She came down with us for the day and introduced us to some of her awesome Icelandic friends, one of whom, Finn, ended up showing us around for most of the day and night.

Dikes

What I spend all day looking at and taking measurements on. And then hacking at madly with a rock hammer.

Snaefellsjokull and Stykkisholmur

Yesterday we took our day off and headed up to the Snaefellsnes peninsula. It was pretty kickass. We fit in a lot, visiting a few museums and touring around the peninsula. Saw some seals and tried the fermented shark, which was probably my one goal for Iceland. We tried to go up to see the Snaefellsjokull glacier, but alas, our little red Corolla wasn't up to the steep dirt roads and we didn't want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
In Stykkisholmur, where we spent Wednesday night, there was this awesome church up on the hill. We stopped by when we first got there and since it was closed, we decided to come back during the morning to check it out.
I visited dozens of European churches when I studied abroad and Icelandic ones are so different. The inside was very graphic and modern. Behind the altar was a very beautiful but definitely untraditional painting of Mary holding the baby Jesus and the place was lit by these two windows on either side of the altar and all of these hanging lightbulbs that were all on different lengths of pieces of wire. So simple and beautiful.

Iceland: Sunsets

There have started to be sunsets here, although this is still as dark as it gets. I guess here this means that Summer is ending and that Winter is right around the corner, they kind of skip Fall here, maybe it's the lack of trees.

Our field area

The stream cut Aleece and I have been working the past week and a half



How we get up and down on the Eastern side, it's not really steep enough that you'd have to use the rope, but it helps.

Blue and white

There are always so many different types of clouds in the sky at once here, it makes the sky look like something out of a fairytale.

Skagastrond

The shoreline by Skagastrond. A gabbro outcrop that Sadi, the other undergraduate was mapping and studying the faults of.

Before coming to Iceland, I emailled an Icelandic photographer whose work I enjoyed to see if he had any advice on gear to bring for working in Iceland. He recommended a wide angle lens, which is way out of my budget right now, and graduated neutral density filters, which isn't. I bought two, although I'm pretty sure I was accidentally sold the same one twice and as I bought them the day I left, didn't notice until I got here.

I really like how they help bring out more accurate colors in the sky, I feel like the blues always get blown out, and I definitely used them for the picture above.