Dagur fimm

Day Five:

Day five consisted of a lot of traveling. There isn’t much on the far southeast coast of Iceland, and there’s no “straight cut” road to get to the northeastern side of the island. The road follows the fjords, so it’s a lot of the same thing over and over again. Don’t count day five out though! We had some pretty cool outcrops where we got to see a silicic intrusion that cuts through basalt. This outcrop led to an interesting conversation on silica enrichment and the working model of why Iceland is the way that it is. Iceland is already a weird place due to the fact it’s at a mid-ocean ridge (MOR) and a hot spot. The weirdest part is that 25% of Iceland’s eruptions are intermediate to felsic which is pretty much unheard of at both hot spots and MOR!

The next outcrop we stopped at gave us the rare opportunity to see the “roots” of magma. Here we saw chemical reactions of different materials and the possible mingling of magmas. Not far from that outcrop, we stopped at another where we got to see the odd silicic material in rhyolites. However, there is a strong possibility that these were hydrothermally altered, which was very cool to see but made the scientific process more difficult!

As we were driving, we got to drive through a dike swarm, which is just where there are many dikes across many many miles. This led to a more in-depth conversation on dikes where we learned that while basalt columns cool from the top-down and bottom-up, the columns contract inwards. While dikes are the opposite and contract vertically and cool inwards.

Through thick cloud coverage, we were able to vaguely make out a rhyolitic plus a little further on our drive. This occurs when a shallow rhyolitic intrusion rises into the throat of a volcano. This can lead to trapped gasses in a magma chamber if there is nowhere else for the gasses to vent, causing more violent intrusions. Our last stop was at a lookout point looking at the Northern Volcanic Zone where we could see the top of the volcano that erupted in 2010!

This longer ride allowed us to see more wildlife and another set of old sod houses. We saw a couple herds of caribou, some sheep, and of course more ponies. We also passed through some of the cutest fishing towns. We stopped to eat lunch in Stövarfjördr at the Saxa Cafe. I got a vegan grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and yes it was exactly how you would expect. One of the gas stations we stopped at was attached to a 50’s retro American diner. It was adorable! They had jukeboxes, posters of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis, a giant Betty Boop, and the neon lights associated with the ’50s.

The guesthouse we booked had actually filled up, so the owners put us in the hotel they have on the property. This is the first true hotel we’ve stayed at in Iceland, and boy could I get used to this! It’s nicer than most hotels in the States I’m fairly certain. We have an amazing view of some active volcanos, maybe if we’re lucky we’ll see some erupt (From a safe distance of course!).