Clear sky at midnight

Fabulous hiking weather in Iceland these days. Clear sky, sun and +15°C. This is nice! We were hiking on Mt Helgafell the other night, the sky was perfectly clear at midnight, the sun was shining and the view was beautiful! It is nice to live in the north.

Chewing ash

They say the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull is over. For now.
I had a small group of tourists in the area on Friday and it was interesting. The eruption was much smaller than it has been for the last six weeks so the ash falling down on us was not so much. You couldn't see the ash but it kept trying to get into your eyes and when you opened your mouth and closed it again you were chewing ash. :)
My clients were happy. We took a short hiking on the mountain opposite the glacier. There was a fog in the area so we couldn't see much but it was enjoyable. And of course you experience the ash by chewing it and then we were walking in the black ash and it is like walking in wet asphalt. It sticks to your shoes.

Cows in ash

We saw some cows in the ash close to Eyjafjallajökull, we saw some sheep alwso but the farmers in the area have started to move their sheep closer to Reykjavik. It is not easy. Nobody knows for how long the volcano will be erupting. The decision to take your sheep away means that you cannot take them back according to the Icelandic law. You will have to send to the butcher this autumn.

Ash in Þorvaldseyri

This beautiful farm is closest to the erupting volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, in Iceland, only 1 km from the glacier and only 7 km from the crater. As you can see tha family has been getting a lot of ash on their farm. It is not easy.

A visit to ash land

I went on a road trip together with a friend today. She wanted to drive to the volcanic area to collect some as for a friend in Australia so we did that. It is much less ash in the area now than a few weeks ago but still the ash fills your eyes and mouth when you get out of the car. As you can see on the picture it isn't very nice to stay for a long time out of the car. But it is interesting to visit the area.

Our song in the Eurovision

Our singer and the song in the Eurovision Song Contest:

http://herabjork.com/

Joke about the Danish language

I am still alive and writing, even though I haven't been blogging for a while. Because of that I am going to paste a joke here. It's a Norwegian joke about the Danish language. We Icelanders have to learn Danish in school because of our common history with Denmark (we didn't get independence until 1944) and we love this joke. My experience in Scandinavia tells me that all the Scandinavian people understand what this joke is all about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk&feature=related

Dikta with a popular song

One of the most popular groups in Iceland these days is the group Dikta. Here you can listen to one of their songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx4KoRbh0cE

Buy ash from Iceland

You can now buy ash from the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland. It is the website http://www.nammi.is that is marketing this ash and it has become huge in popularity. See here:

http://nammi.is/icelandic-volcano-ash-160-gr-p-2306.html?zenid=d7cc0ce16d4a6def1e0dab0bef9bdb33

Interesting? Reminds me of the bits of the Berliner wall people brought home from Germany after the crash of the communist bloc around 1990.

Boiling water from the glacier

The lava is heating up the melted water from the glacier. See the picture, it is boiling hot:

http://www.ruv.is/frett/sjodandi-vatn-rennur-ur-gigjujokli

Here you can see the fire in the glacier, LIVE:

http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos

And you can see how the lava has melted down the glacier. Soon we may be seeing the lava.

The landscape has changed greatly since the eruption started. There used to be a lagoon closest to the glacier. Now it is full of mud and even a 30-40m high mud mountain. The glacier is partly black with ash.

50 tons of ash per second

The eruption is still going on in Iceland but gives us much less ass than in the first week. The volume of the ash is 50 tons per second now, it was around 700 tons per second during the first week. And it was (and still is) a small eruption!
The lava has started flowing from the crater underneath the glacier and has melted down the glacier on its way.
You can follow the eruption LIVE on http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos