Page 26 - 2000 ICELAND

Puffin Roost

Anyway, Oskar had another stop planned before we headed for our summer

hotel for the night. We got out of the bus and walked along some high cliffs
over the ocean for about 2 miles out and 2 miles back while we peered over

the sides up and back along the walls to see the puffins nesting in their
burrows in the walls and on the grassy ledges.

Again, the noise was tremendous and the view just overwhelming and the
ocean was amazingly clear below us. Besides the puffins, we saw fulmars

(which look like a gull variety) and storm petrels again as well as skuas, the last
two being predators of puffin and fulmar chicks. Oskar told us that we were

only 20 kilometers from the Arctic Circle at this spot.

It is difficult to describe the scenery we drove through today. Again we saw
the low, very green hills, with far-spaced farms dotted over the land. All the

fields have large white “stones” in them which are really round bales of hay

covered in white plastic to prevent the dampness from ruining them. With a
winter such as these folks must contend with, both in length and degree of

coldness, the farmers need all the hay they can gather to feed their animals
all those months.

We saw lots of cows, horses, sheep and pig barns along the way. Sheep are

not as important to the Icelandic economy as in previous centuries because
synthetic fabrics have in large part replaced the demand for wool the world

over (we heard the same complaints in Australia last year). The byways,

fields, and swales in this part of the country are filled with lush grasses and
wildflowers at this time of year. Along the coasts of this high arctic island,

the land is softer than in the harsh interior.

The mountains all around get rockier and barer the higher you look until
finally you are looking at snowfields and glaciers. The skies are large, like

North American big sky country in Montana and Saskatchewan. Clouds are
usually present in the bright blue bowl, but they are often very different in