The Lonely Wanderer.

I think I have a love hate relationship with buses. We were on the bus for 8 this morning and it was tooo early it seemed. And there was lots of driving. I think I fell asleep for most of it. I can't help it sometimes. Car rides make me sleepy. But eventually we got somewhere, and it was well worth it. We ened in Stong where a farm stead was uncovered. It was buried by and eruption by Hekla, and is where Njal's saga is set. Coming up to it, it is fairly unassuming. And then you park the bus, and you stare up a hill. I don't know why people thought it was a good idea to settle on a hill but, alas they did.

You enter this fairly modern looking (from the outside) building, only to be greeted by dirt. And then your eyes adjust. And personally I couldn't but let my jaw drop. We actually got to walk amoung the ruins of this farm. Now the wooden walls were a little misleading, and the actualy olden day walls would have been turf and rock, so it would have looked a lot smaller, but besides that, this place was fairly amazing. There was still the remains of a hearth in the middle, as wel as the indication of where the benches for sleeping and such along the sides would have been. There were also additions, such as a larder. Just outside of this main building were even more ruins. Now this didn't have any fancy building to cover them, but one is persumed to be a barn (you can still see the stalls) and the other I think was mentioned to be a chapel or church.




Seeing this sites really amazed me. We were out in the middle of no where (which can be said many places in Iceland) and there are just these ruins. You can almost throw yourself back into time, staring out into the timeless view of mountains and grass. It really puts into perspective what these settler's had to deal with.

This stop was then followed up by a recreated long house, which we unfortunately did not get to see the inside of, but we were able to wander around and get a real feel for how big these buildings may have been. There was actually grass growing on the roof, and I thought that was interesting to say the least. They seemed to have a dandelion problem, but I guess one could say it added colour. There was a lovely little chapel that you could walk into, but it was tiny! I postulated it was for the conversion of elves, but maybe there just weren't many people...






After a stop at lunch, where Marlo saved us all and fended off a snake....




We headed to the Saga Center, which broke down the Njal saga (once again expanding my limited ability to understand these ancient texts). It was a pretty exhibit, and had a wonderful recreated hall. I was not expecting that, but it have benches with fur and everything. There was also a sword in the stone outside, which of course everyone had a turn trying to pull out.





We stopped by the falls that we had visited earlier with our rented car, but today was a slightly miserable day (our only rainy day here so far) so I am glad we got some shots of the waterfall when the sun had been shining.

After we got back, which was kinda late, I headed off on a adventure with Cody and Matt in order to find some infamous Icelandic Fish and Chips. And they were amazing. I had wolffish, with a basil and garlic dip and rosemary potatoes. It was awesome. Man I love the food here.




But Alas that is all for now, until next time, Hvar er klósettið?