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An Exciting Winter Fairy Tale in Iceland (2024)

You know.. I thought, why not come back to Iceland in the winter? Originally, this flight was booked with flex option with the intention to update the dates as soon as a volcano eruption happens.. Well, last year in the summer when it DID happen, i figured since i’m going alone, i can’t really use that flight (which was for two) and decided to book a new flight. Also because literally 2 days before the eruption started last year (July of 2023, Litli-Hrutur), I had moved this flight for the dates around my birthday in Feb 2024.
Sooo yeah, this time we did go and I didn’t really have big expectations. Since we’ve already done a full tour of the island back in 2021, we thought why not explore the Westfjords this time, take it slow and easy. My only hope was to catch some Aurora. But oh Gosh, was that trip so much more!
We departed by airplane from Amsterdam and somewhere in the middle between Amsterdam and the UK, some 25min into the flight, the plane did a 360 and suddenly as the sun was on the other side, it came to mine.. everyone started looking around.. “what the duck is going on?”. All we got was “We are returning to Amsterdam. We will provide more information later when we have it”. Of course, no one provided any more info, except for “The new flight will depart from gate C7 at 18:35”. But on the way out, I did ask the cabin crew, and the guy excitedly explained to me that it’s the Air Conditioning system and they felt like it’s safer to come back despite the delay this would cause. I later read that it is indeed quite a crucial system, so not only for keeping ppl cool but for the engines as well.. but airplanes do have a backup one. However, indeed, better safe than.. you know.. grave. So we arrived later than expected but ARRIVED..

The first day was just a sleepover at the airport, bc the next day a 5-6-7h road trip was waiting for us. 5.5h is the driving only, but with breaks etc, around 7ish. First night in – no aurora, well.. I was only looking through the window so it might as well be that I totally missed it. So as we started roadtrippin’ :D, we saw horses and this time i warned early enough that I want to stop to take photos of the horses, i LOVE Icelandic horses, such gorgeous animals! Such a shame that they abuse them in the “blood farms” (no going into details, you can look it up). So i got out and went close to the fence and started taking photos. The horses were pretty far, but as soon as they saw me, they started taking tentative steps towards me. Soon, they were all next to me, coming to greet me and try to.. eat my pants or camera strap or anything, for that matter. I pet them, oh my Gosh, this was sooo amazing, i will cherish and remember forever the precious moments with these gorgeous creatures. It might sound over-exaggerating, but being around animals has always been my passion, so I will, indeed, remember and repeat it every time I can 🙂 . I think this was my happiest moment of the whole trip. We continued on our way and at some point I saw a stone and some.. huge “bird” on top of it.


I was like “What the duck is this huge bird there?”. But.. oh Gosh! It wasn’t a bird, it was a SEAL 😀 Sooo cute! I, of course, started screaming “Stop the car! Stop it, NOW!” 😀 And yes, the little chonky ball was resting on a seaweed-covered rock, so it was soft, perfect for sunbathing.. for seals only though.. Not for humans, it was minus three hundred degrees outside 😀 Surely felt so at least. Such a great encounter! People go to Ytri Tunga beach to see the seals but we just saw one casually resting on its stone.

But.. we had to continue driving.. and suddenly I saw on the tons of seaweed thrown by the sea something.. right next to the road. Something HUGE! It was a ginormous White-tailed eagle! I’ve never seen an eagle before with my eyes and from this close. By now you know my reaction – I started shouting excitedly to stop the car.. 😀 We stopped, right next to the bird, which was eating something. Of course, that scared her, she got her prey in her claws and moved away, luckily for me, just about 10m away. So I got a good chance to snap a few photos. You can see all the photos from this post and many more in the gallery at the end, by the way. I think these were our encounters on the first day. Oh, I almost forgot – we saw on the map that they have a Witchcraft and Sorcery museum in one of the towns on our way to Isafjordur where we’d spend the week, and just HAD to visit. Why not learn a bit about how they used to write runes on pig’s skin with blood from a nipple to attract the woman of their life? 😀 I mean, I’m laughing but there were some pretty scary stuff and outright gross stuff in there. But super interesting nonetheless. I think this was a great place to visit to learn about the superstitions the ancestors of today’s Icelanders used to believe in.

The next few days we were roaming around the magnificent all-white fairy tale Iceland is.
Unfortunately, at this time of the year, almost all the places we wanted to see, were closed, BUT one evening, we went to a sushi restaurant and the girl there told us that we may be able to see the foxes at the Arctic Fox center, despite it not being open. We had already given up because we saw it’s closed, but after this news, I couldn’t be happier. I was beyond excited to see the only native mammal in Iceland. The center takes care of some foxes as a rehab center (I presume, don’t quote me on it), at least I hope that’s the case. There were two foxes – a Blue fox (brown in colour), the most common fox in Westfjords and a White fox (mostly seen inland of Iceland). The white fox couldn’t stop roaming around, probably thought that we were bringing some lunch, poor thing. So we spent a bit of time there. We also hiked onto a hill next to Flateyri. Stunning views of the fjords from the top! Amazing views, but most of the days were very slow and lazy. We’d wake up, no alarm, breakfast, and do some activity, check out a nearby city, go for coffee, for a little hike etc. Sometimes I need this, just to unwind from work.

We attempted to go see the Northern Lights one night during the only ONE hour when the forecast was that the clouds will go down.. for only 1h. We went to a location the airbnb host suggested to us. Sat down on my picnic blanket and stared at the 5m by 20m cloudless sky (obviously not true, but look at it as a ratio 😀 ). There wasn’t anything but then.. it was there! Barely visible, but it was there, moving slightly behind the clouds. I started learning a bit about the settings of my Nikon Zfc and how to use it to shoot the Aurora and it was a good exercise. We did see it, that’s what mattered! But I wan’t too happy about it. So I kept looking at the forecast. Sadly, it was 100% clouds ALL days.. EXCEPT the last.

Look at that falling star at the top left side!

Just when we had to leave the next day, the clouds cleared.. of course. But still, Fill was willing to give it another try and we went to another location in the middle of the fjords, complete darkness and clear sky. As we were driving, i looked out the right side window and.. IT WAS THERE! This time full on! Even when we were still in the car, I could see the whole sky covered by a ray/line of light.

We quickly got off and went out – whoaaaah! It was spreading all over the horizon from left to right (no idea what were the real directions). Started capturing with my camera and it looked AMAZING! I even got a photo with a falling star on it along with the Aurora! We FROZE. But it was sooo worth it! We spent 3h there without even realizing. We went in the car to melt our toes back to their shape and then right back out! I was soooo glad bc I had a REMOTE CONTROL 😀 for the camera, I mean. Ended up being the least expected item I’d rate as “the best buy” 😀 But it sure was the best purchase, because it allowed me to stay in the car and still take photos 😀 😀
The dance of the Aurora was IMMENSE this time. Not as colourful as we saw it back in 2017 in Norway, BUT it was more than clearly visible with the naked eye, dancing, getting stronger and weaker, forming all sorts of shapes and it was, at its strongest, indeed, green. It was literally covering the sky EVERYWHERE you looked, above us, in front of us, behind us, where do you look first? Gosh! Otherworldly! The sky was so clear, you could see all the stars and constellations. I saw the longest trail of a falling star I’ve ever seen (not on any photo, unfortunately), and with the beautiful Aurora in the background, priceless <3 Many, many falling stars, dancing Northern Lights, we witnessed how the activity grew between 10PM and 1AM like they say it does. it literally started over the horizon and move up to come all over us, right above. Literally every direction you looked was full of Aurora, some parts less intense, others super intense. You see how the lights move as if wind blows dust, they swirl and move, really such a priceless experience, even though it wasn’t the green colour we saw before, it was VERY active. But not as intense. The camera, however, captured it just as we saw it in Norway a few years back. <3 I really enjoyed the lights and the chance to learn more about the camera settings, it was a great practical experience to understand how it works. Before that it was just dry theory. For most of the photos i loved the ISO at 4000, shoot for 8 seconds and the max aperture I had, which was 4.5 or so i think. (will correct this later).

Finally, on the way back, we drove through some quite frozen landscapes, but magnificent and guess what! We saw horsiiiies agaiiin <3 Stopped by and they came to me and started licking my pants 😀 and trying to eat my camera strap again 😀 Just #cutenessOverload 😀 I can’t stand this cuteness 😀
We stopped at Reykjavik, because I wanted to check out the book store and Gosh, my sin is that I cannot stop buying books. I returned with.. 6 new books. 1 about the Arctic Fox, now that I’ve seen them, I wanted to actually learn more. 1 about ancient people of Iceland, 1 about superstitions and elves and whatnot (folk tales) and 3 Icelandic historical novels, one of them is actually a horror, not historical. Can’t wait to read them.

There was also an eruption that was waiting to happen at the week we were there and it finally looked like it was going to erupt right at the moment when we were very close to the airport and we could see the area clearly. Fill didn’t want to stop, but people were stopping on the road to watch. Police came and started asking them to leave. The previous few eruptions (there have been 3, I believe, between Dec 2023 and Feb 2024) and they all lasted for 1 to 2 days. And before all there was a sudden swarm of earthquakes. Something like 50-100 of them right before erupting. And that was happening as we were driving to the airport. We had to stop, bc they expected it to erupt within the next hour. However, it seems the earthquakes relieved the pressure for a bit and the magma went down. As I’m writing this on 5th of March 2024, it’s rising again, so might be that this week it will erupt finally. Who knows?! Sadly, none of these last few eruptions were tourist ones. The one in December went right into the city of Grinfavik and burnt down 3 houses. The coming ones would be nearby too, so they close the whole area. Maybe from a location up high, you might be able to see something, but you can’t be “there”, near the lava.

Well, that’s what our winter trip to Iceland looked like. Hope you enjoyed reading about it. Write a comment below if you want any suggestions about Iceland for your own trip there 🙂

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