Ísland (Iceland) Photography by Michael Gordon

Big Collection of Photographs
With no particular theme. Slide show and gallery. Photos from 1986 mostly; Added October 2009.

Forty Black and White Photographs
Slide show and gallery. Added 15 March 2002.

Color Photos
Slide show and gallery.

Myvatn Tour
: Akureyri, Goðafoss, Krafla Geothermal.  Photos made 1986, added here June 2002.

Movies

Some movie filming locations for "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" with Ben Stiller. The Latitude/Longitude are here shown in decimal format. Just paste the numbers into the Google Earth search to take you there.

• (LL 65.077367 -22.724654) Walter Mitty arrives in what is named Nuuq, Greenland, but is filmed at Stykkisholmur in northwest Iceland. The airport is close by. The town hall was painted black and was where Walter Mitty finds a somewhat besotted helicopter pilot. I didn't need a geographic clue for this one; I've been there and recognized it. For purposes of economy you can suspect that other scenes were filmed nearby and that is indeed the case.
• 54:45: (LL 64.928305 -23.251167) Walter Mitty arriving at Iceland on a ship at the port Grundarfjorthur. That's the actual name of the place and it is a few miles west from Stykkisholmur where the helicopter scene starts.
• 54:55: (LL 65.875591 -23.477337) Inspecting a map of Iceland, the finger is pointing to Thingeyri -- a town that does actually exist at the indicated spot in northwest Iceland (West Fjords). Nearby to the right, where the highway takes a shortcut across the fjord, in reality is the hamlet of Hvammur but in the movie map this is called Stykkisholmur. The real Stykkisholmur is considerably to the south on the Snaefells Peninsula. Also adjacent to the movie-town Stykkisholmur is the glacier Eyjafjallajokull but in reality it is far away in south-central Iceland. Because of these alterations, I wonder if there's any surprises or "easter eggs" on the map.
• 56:08: (LL 64.289522 -15.081403) Walter Mitty riding a bicycle. The first curvy road part is indeed the road east from Grudarfjorthur but suddenly you are transported all the way across Iceland diagonally to the town of Hofn.
Geographic clues: Direction is revealed by shadow if you can tell the time. Time of day is discernible by the length of the shadow. At 64 degrees north, the shortest shadow -- at local solar noon -- is going to be about a 45 degree angle which is what we see. Therefore the scene was shot around noon and that means the road is aligned to the southeast, so is the cliff, and the sea to the south -- placing us on the southern coast of Iceland although other candidates exist in some fjords. There's actually two scenes here, one riding northwest as seen from a distance up on the cliff and another scene where he's riding under the powerlines going southeast (that's the LL). The mountain is unusual. Most Icelandic mountains taper off toward the sea but this one has an abrupt rise just before being cut off by the sea. Vegetation is sparse suggesting recent volcanic activity. The road is paved and just about the only road paved in Iceland, outside Reykjavik, is the "Ring Road". No discernible highway traffic so that suggests a far distance from Reyjkjavik.
• 56:12: (LL 64.832073 -22.246839) Walter Mitty riding a bicycle across cultivated pasture in the background and rocky lava field in the foreground with some impressive but highly eroded cliffs behind a solitary farmi, a small mountain called Ljosufjoll (Ljos is "light" and fjoll is hill or small mountain). It does indeed catch the evening sunlight beautifully. This scene was not very easy to find. The clues are: low sun angle hence morning or evening -- but which? There's no obvious way to tell except most Icelanders prefer to stay up late and not get up early (except of course farmers and fishermen). The angle of the strata and the layering provide some clue since it is a bit unique to northwest Iceland but not all the way out in the fjords.
• 57:48: (LL 64.117502 -21.471984) Walter Mitty falls off a bicycle next to a geothermal hot water pipe and powerlines. The road is highway 435 east-northeast from Reykjavik. The clues are fairly obvious in this case -- Geothermal water and power. That is found pretty much in only three places: Krafla, but they don't export hot water, Blue Lagoon which exports hot water but not along a highway, and Nesjavallavirkyun at Thingvallavatn. There's another geothermal station nearby the latter also feeding Reykjavik. So it is a simple matter to find a road traveling along a pipeline and powerlines.
• 58:11: (LL 63.931082 -20.649595) Walter Mitty running across a bridge. This is the old bridge over Thjorsa (Theor-sau). I found this one by simply Googling "Iceland bridge" and looking at photos.
• 59:54: (LL 64.020649 -21.398920) Walter Mitty trades Stretch Armstrong for a longboard (long skateboard). In the movie this place is called a hotel but is more of a restaurant, more or less Skithaska'linn (that's what it is but this terminal client won't do the Icelandic characters needed for proper spelling). It took a long time to find this one. As with the above, sun angle provides a clue and there's a glimpse of a clock in the kitchen, fuzzy but either 10 minutes after 12 or 2 p.m. Either way, gives a good clue about direction. Combine that with free-standing geothermal hot water and it narrows the choices somewhat.
• 1:01:28 (LL 65.232251 -14.122349) Moments later he finds himself at the head of a valley and wishes to go down, which he does on the longboard (skateboard). The first view of it is at the head of the valley looking east. At the bottom of the road is the town Seythisfjorthur and the Aldan hotel where he fetches a ride to escape the "Eldgos" (eruption, "eld" is fire). Once again the primary clue is shadows, this time the valley on the right is shadowed suggesting you are looking east. Not many paved roads descend eastward into a fjord.
• 1:01:43 Altered scenery: You can see a discoloration in the valley at the "s" curves halfway down. That's because the road has been altered in the movie. The first two bends are really there but the road then becomes relatively straight down to the town. In the movie three "s" curves have been added that plainly are not needed right there. Anyway, when he rides down the road it is "real" and the spurious s-curves aren't there.
• Heading out of Seythisfjorthur they take a dead-end road out to the end of the fjord. In the movie, however, this is a reasonable escape route.
• 1:04:58 (LL 64.540172 -21.908063) Diamond-shaped Mount Skessuhorn prominently in the background across a placid fjord. The dust-covered SUV arrives in Borgarnes traveling more or less north having cross a bridge over the fjord. Looking out the window one sees a Papa John's restaurant, in the movie that is, but in reality it is...
• 1:05:22 Geirabakarí Café Konditori adjacent to Hagkaup. I recognized Hagkaup as a department store chain fairly widespread in Iceland so I went to their website, located the locations of Hagkaup, chose a few that had suitable pointy mountains in the vicinity, and went looking. The hard part was Google Earth doesn't know the street address of the Borgarnes location. However, entering the same street address into Google turned up a cafe (and Hagkaup department store and Bonus grocery store) which included a photograph from inside the cafe revealing its location at the edge of the fjord, the very first thing you encounter on arriving at Borgarnes from the south.
• He stays in Borgarnes until 1:09:47 having a cellphone conversation with his ladyfriend and ends with the text message from Hernando. Then he returns to New York City (I suppose that's where it is).
• 1:18:35 He's back in Iceland, but this time it is a proxy for eastern Afghanistan, the Himalayan mountains. About half of Iceland looks like this so there's not much point trying to figure out exactly where. But probably along the Sprengisandur road north from Gulfoss.
• 1:18:53 (LL 63.530804 -19.513220) Easily recognized and very unique Skogafoss, one of the most beautiful sights in Iceland.
• 1:22:56 Sean Penn operating a Nikon camera (FT3?) with 400mm f2.8 Nikkor lens.

Iceland has a long history, much longer and more tangible than is found in the United States or most of North America.  North America has plenty of ruins; but how many places have been continually occupied for more than a thousand years?   I have visited the farm Drangur near Stykkisholmur, where in the year AD 950 Erid the Red (Eirik Rauthi) killed someone and, fleeing vengeance or justice, took ship westward and discovered Greenland. At the time, it was green enough to colonize, so he accomplished the colonization of Greenland. His son, Leifur Eiriksson (Leif Ericson in English) continued westward, landing on what is now northeastern Canada.

Then there's Snorralaug -- the pool of hot water adjacent to Snorri Sturleson's house (130 degrees Fahrenheit, 54 degrees Celsius). He wrote the Sagas in the 1100's, 1132 comes to mind for one of them. That's incredible.  It is still there, still hot.

Warning:  At least in 1985, Icelanders did not worry much about idiot tourists.  Since then, some effort has been made to protect the survival-challenged visitor.   The whole island is dangerous and the sea even more dangerous.  Face it, that's why you want to go there.  It's dangerous, but it is beautiful and exciting.

Some of the dangers (keep in mind some of these dangers have by now been fenced off):

• You might  burn your face off when a geyser erupts while you are looking down into the hole.
• Other holes emit steam so hot that it is perfectly clear and invisible.  One such had a small warning sign in Icelandic not to put your hand over the pipe.  Steam formed about three feet above the pipe.  I put a thermometer into the invisible steam and it was so hot it blew the top right off the thermometer.  
  
• You can fall into a fissure or crevasse in a glacier. 
  
• You can break through thin crust into boiling mud at Krafla. 
  
• One lake has deadly vapors down in its crater. 
  
• Ice forms on the ledges around Gullfoss; in the winter (not peak tourist season of course) you have great danger of falling in.
  
• Some back roads are not passable in winter.  Your mileage may vary. 
  
• Some back roads are not passable in summer.
• Some back roads are worst of all in spring -- the surface melts into a muddy quagmire but underneath a thin, wind-dried crust is a foot or more of runny mud then the ground is still frozen under that.  The road looks dry but you'll get stuck instantly; plus make someone very unhappy when the road does finally dry with foot-deep ruts permanently engraved in it.  I got into it and discovered I had not locked the front hubs; so I crawled out into freezing cold mud halfway to my knees and reached my hands down into the mud to lock the hubs.
  

Language and definitions:

The language is in English: Icelandic, in the native language Íslensku (Icelandic) or Íslenskumal (Icelandic language).  It is not much changed from Old Norse but had 500 years of Danish influence.  In written form it seems somewhat Skandinavian but when spoken it does not much resemble any of the Skandinavian languages; voiced fricatives (voiced and unvoiced forms of "th" and that sort of thing) are more common than in Norwegian or Danish.

It is highly structured and regular with not very many surprises once you learn the rules.  This fact is very interesting to me; it suggests that language in general has not evolved toward greater sophistication.  Icelandic is amazingly sophisticated and conveys quite a lot of meta information.  Meta information is implied by the structure -- "he picked up the box" reveals that the person doing the lifting is male.  Icelandic conveys quite a lot of meta-information, and the presence of it changes the structure of the sentence as well as the words themselves.

For instance, the saying and spelling of Keflavik is as I have written, but only if you are naming it on a map.  If you are telling someone that you are going to it, then it becomes possessive -- it "owns" your destination: Eg fara till Keflavikur.  Why?  I'm not sure, but you cannot go to Keflavik -- to an Icelander, the concept is absurd -- Keflavik is not a place, it is a collection of many places (houses, businesses, streets).  Therefore, the full sentence ought to be "I go to Keflavik's bakery" but they leave off "bakery" for privacy or something.  You say, "I go to Keflavik's..." and just stop.  It is incomplete and that's okay but the word must still be written and spoken possessive case. 

Notes: Icelandic has strong "case" and "gender". The gender and case of an object modifies any adjectives, comparitives or enumerations -- the word for "one" depends on what you are numbering! With three genders and four cases, it is possible for some words to have twelve different forms (spellings and pronounciations).

Consequently it is more or less impossible for Americans to learn Icelandic fluently. To add to confusion, not all Icelanders agree on how Icelandic should be spoken and spelled; Snorri Sturleson, the famous writer of the Sagas in the 1100's, is considered an authority but he did not have much to write about modern technology devices.

Icelanders are wonderfully patient and appreciate that you try to speak the words even though you use the nominative masculine form when you should have used the imperative feminine case and gender. They may laugh but it is in good spirits and you can try really hard (I did) to remember the forms but don't feel bad if you cannot. After two years and some serious study I almost had a grasp of when to apply the different forms as well as a small vocabulary.

Alphabet and phonetics.  Icelandic has 36 letters; each letter has usually only one sounding.  Adjacent letters can modify the sounding in unexpected ways but I have not found very many such deviations.  You can learn to read Icelandic without too much difficulty and you might even be able to make yourself understood.  Words tend to be very literal -- I worked and lived (dwelt) at Keflavikurflugvollur which is literally translated to something like "Keflavik's flying flat place" (Keflavik airport).    It means you can learn a few hundred root words and be reasonably confident that nearly every new word is a composite of those root words and has the implied meaning. 

Syntax.  Not a lot different as compared to English but the important difference is adjectives.  The first adjective is usually suffixed and without a separating space.   You would not have a "fast boat", you would have a "boatfast".  If the "boatfast" is painted red, then you might call it a "red boatfast".  In English, you have "fast red boat" and you are wondering whether it is a slow boat painted "fast red", or a fast boat merely painted red.  

nes

Peninsula. Pronounced "Ness". Example: Reykjanes, Akranes .

Reyk

Smoke or steam. Pronounced like "rake".  Example: Reykjavík

vík

harbor or inlet. Pronounced "veek" when acute, "vik" when not acute (' over the i).

Þing

Pronounced "Thing". The collection of representatives meeting to govern (Parliament, Congress)

vel

When not acute, a flat place (Thingvelir) . When e is acute, a motor, engine or device.

examples:

Links

• Iceland resources - iceland related news, books and regional resources.
• http://www.centrum.is DAILY NEWS FROM ICELAND
• http://www.diafade.co.uk/john/torfa.html Iceland: Torfajökull