15 More Reasons to Like Iceland (Photos)

Here is another great entry in the Why I like Iceland series. This is by Harold Rhenisch:

I recently spent 2 weeks in the North and 4 weeks in Skriduklaustur, on my third trip to Iceland. Here are some things I love.

1. You can drive to the far north and stop in a clear moment in a sky of light and ice fog and horses will appear out of the light and come to you from the beginning of time. Where else can you do that?

Horses are people in the Fljótsdalur. Photo: HR

2. The colour blue was invented in Iceland. Today.

Strútsfoss (the colour blue is new). Click on photo to enlarge. Photo: HR

3. The birch forests are straight out of a dream, and you get to walk through them, too.

4. Icelandic is English that didn’t get distracted.

5. Skyr on a park bench in Stykkishólmur, with wild blueberries picked from the slopes of a volcano outside of town.

6. Elves, trolls, ogres and the eagle cliff of Thingvellir, still watching after all these years.

7. Looking through the windows of the ice at Jokulsarlon into another world.

8. Cod tongues, smoked lamb, lava beer and the sandwiches from the bakery in Hveragerdi.

9. Sculpture Einar Jónson. Especially when the rain drops like dew from the eyes and lips of his statues and the hunting cats take the time to show you their trails.

10. The ravens of the Hengifossá, that follow you for days.

11. The horses are people. In the East, the entire economy is organized so that humans cut hay for horses. This is considered a fair trade for walking the earth together. I agree.

12. The way the tide turns the snow into tiny icebergs of light and black sand and floats them out to sea.

13. Waterfalls in the ice and ice in the waterfalls, and the sound of rock breaking from mountains at their hearts.