This is a fishing village with 2,600 people living in it. This seems a popular number for the size of a town in the Arctic. The name translates as “Ice Fiord”. They are expanding their port to accommodate more cruise ships. Apparently, the snow you can see was from overnight.
There is a memorial
for 14 people who died in a devasting avalanche. Eight of the deaths were children. A horrific experience for such a small town. The memories for some were so bad
that about 70% of the survivors moved away.
A lot of the houses are summer houses (March to October). Because of the threat of avalanches, people are not allowed to live in these houses during winter.
A seal hanging out.
We stopped at a church for a young lass of 14 who sang us Icelandic songs, including the most popular lullaby for children in Iceland (more about that later). Her favourite artist is Billie Eilish (globalisation).
We
visited the Arctic Fox Centre in the village of Súðavík. They had two foxes that can’t
be returned to the wild as they would not survive. Foxes are the only predators
on the island and the food is nesting birds and their chicks and their eggs. It
was very interesting, and the foxes are very cute.
They also
gave us coffee and homemade rhubarb cake. The coffee was far superior to
anything we have had on the ship.
Our next visit was to Ósvör which was a replica of an old
fishing outpost We had a reenactor - Johan - to explain about Icelandic fisherman and what they had to do in the past - Icelandic beefcake. They would row hundreds of kilometres to hunt the Greenland Shark. They would cut out the liver and throw the rest away as they could get 400 litres of oil from the liver. Such oil was used in the streetlamps of London.
They
built a 5.4 km long tunnel to connect to the next community of Bolungarvik.
Our last stop was Bunafoss. Foss translates as waterfall.
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