When I was a kid I was scared of three things: tornadoes, volcanoes, and bigfoot. Over the last couple decades I’ve chased and caught a bunch of big tornadoes, and now—after an amazing trip to the “Land of Fire and Ice”—I have also stood on an active volcano and seen lava bubbling out of its cone. It was incredible.

Back in the spring, Iceland was one of the first to open its borders to vaccinated Americans, and my sister and her husband planned a trip and asked if I wanted to join them. I wasn’t planning any big trips but as a lover of arctic and marine environments (I’ve run a river above the arctic circle and hiked on glaciers in Alaska, paddled with icebergs in Newfoundland, been to Nova Scotia several times and Ireland) I jumped at the chance, especially with the ongoing Fagradalsfjall volcano eruption.

A friend asked me how long it would really take to really “do” Iceland, and I said a year. Or at least a month. It’s just a place of unending natural beauty, with a new, breathtaking vista around every corner, and a wider variety of environments in one place than I’ve ever seen. Given that I was travelling with others I was actually thinking of not even taking my big cameras with me, but in the end I’m glad I did, just to have my wide angle lens to use in a futile attempt to capture the grandeur of this place. But even with several thousand dollars of camera I feel like all I got was tourist snapshots. While the “golden hour” can be several hours long, we only saw the sky consistently on two out of the nine days I was there. And to really get a “gallery” shot would take a lot of luck and/a lot of time,. Still, I’m glad I got these shots as a reminder of what a truly awesome place Iceland is.

Fagradalsfjall Volcano

The volcano at Fagradalsfjall has been going since March, and is now much less a dramatic eruption than it was at the start, but it’s still absolutely incredible to see, smell and feel. Our first visit on July 23 was via a bus tour (we didn’t have our very expensive rental car yet). It was rainy and foggy and the mountains were in the clouds, and at times we couldn’t see more than a few feet. We couldn’t see the valley with the lava flows from a distance, but we could see the solidified lava flows at the base of the valley, which is was very cool. We hiked up a very steep trail in the rain to the cell tower that holds the main webcam run by Icelandic state TV RÚV. We couldn’t see anything but I hung around after everyone left and I could hear the eruption. Once we got our car we did the rocky hike for a second time on July 27. The eruption ended just before my sister and I got to the point on the trail where the cone is visible. But we continued on and hiked about eight miles out and back and got within (I think) about a mile of the cone. You could feel the heat from the fresh lava field that had just been flowing from the eruption, which was pretty amazing. On the third try on July 30 the (unpredictable) eruption held out long enough for us to see it for about half an hour before it ended. Like seeing a tornado, it just doesn't seem real when you first see it. It’s like your brain can’t really process what you’re seeing. It reminded me of seeing the eclipse totality a few years ago and all I could do was repeatedly say “Look at that! Look at that!” (seeing a tornado is a bit more intense because you have to maintain your escape route at all times). Seeing molten rock spouting out of the ground was breathtaking.

In the pictures it looks like I tweaked that orange color, but the camera doesn’t even capture the intensity of the real thing (of course I did the usual exposure processing and sensor dust cleanup). It was a truly incredible experience. (And of course after I left, my sister and her husband went back a fourth time and got to see a river of lava running through the valley we had hiked to).

We did the standard Golden Circle tour, which--even in the rain--was stunning. We also did a bus trip to the Blue Lagoon, which--while of course touristy--was well worth it. After that we picked up our rental car and drove out to take the ferry to Vestmannaeyjar, aka the “Westman Islands”. This was yet another absolutely stunning place, where we saw puffins and stood in a volcano cone that had erupted in 1973 and marveled at the visage of the sea. We also saw rescued puffins and also Beluga whales that had been rescued from an aquarium in China and relocated here, with the eventual hope of releasing them. After that we headed out to do the ring road counter clockwise, and along the way we saw endless incredible waterfalls, glaciers and Icebergs, and geothermal activity. I’m grouping the photos here just for convenience. Click on any for a larger image. If you want to see more shots from along the way along with placenames, I was posting on Instagram starting here.

Waterfalls

Geothermal

Puffins

Glaciers and Icebergs

Other Beauty

A Truly Incredible Place

I’ve been to a bunch of places but Iceland is truly incredible and awesome. Every 100 miles or so around the ring road it’s like you’re entering a different planet, and we saw so many incredible sights that they started to blur together. While we were there the COVID restrictions tightened up, so I didn’t take in much of the nightlife (although of course I live in NYC and we have a pretty good scene here as well), but we did catch a well known Icelandic metal band DIMMA at Dillon whiskey bar.

Iceland is a very easy place to travel to--almost everyone speaks English, and you can use your phone to pay just about everywhere. I never even converted any money. Food is expensive, but it’s manageable. I didn’t really get to spend a lot of time with locals (one of my favorite things to do) but I don’t think this will be my last trip there. From a photography perspective I would probably suggest travelling a bit later or earlier in the summer to take advantage of those long golden hours, and I wish I had spent a bit of time (that I didn’t have) to learn some Icelandic pronunciation. Even the placenames are intractable without that--my sister wisely started referring to places as “A-Town” (Akureyri) and “E-Town” (Egilsstaðir). We decided to focus our limited time on the active volcano, so we decided to save the northwestern peninsulas for another trip. Iceland also has amazing cell phone coverage throughout the country, although my Pixel phone on Verizon roaming could be maddening when it would load some sites quickly and others not at all. Next time I’ll try a local SIM card. Wearing a mask for a long time through the airport and the flight was a new experiment, something I suggest trying before the first time you fly. Also the ever changing COVID situation is a challenge but manageable; after we departed they required incoming visitors to get tested before flying, and we had to get tested in Iceland before entering the US. While we were there they also reinstated the mask regulations but since we were able to do so much outside it wasn’t much of an issue. However at the outdoor bars the amount of smoking is pretty jarring to a NYer where we just don’t experience that much anymore.

In the end it was a truly phenomenal trip, and I hope to return and also hope to see another volcano. Finally seeing my first tornado about ten years ago just made me want to see more, and I think volcanoes will be like that for me. Now, if I can just find a bigfoot.

Chasing Fire and Ice In Iceland