Looking back part 2: more favorite places -- Iceland

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

We have enjoyed many images of contemporary Iceland on LuLa, especially from Rajan.
Some of you might be interested to see what parts of Iceland looked like some 46 years ago.
My wife and I spent three weeks there in 1975, the first two weeks with a hiking club tour in the south, and then one week on our own camping in the north.

These images are all scanned from Kodachromes (Kodak messed up the processing on many of my slides, which is one reason I don't use Kodachrome any more.)

The first shows the new bridge crossing the outwash from Vatnajökull as part of the Ring Road around Iceland which was completed that year. I believe the bridge was washed away the next time there was a volcanic eruption underneath the Vatnajökull.

The next is the famous black sand beach at Vik.

The next two are from the excellent hiking area of Thorsmörk, just north of the Myrdalsjökull.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

A shelter for sheep in bad weather?

A small hydroelectric plant.

An abandoned farm in the north.

Typical pedestrian group on any smallish road in Iceland.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

A glacial lake in the interior, on the way to volcano Mount Hekla, which erupts roughly every ten years.

Halfway up Mount Hekla (we were well between eruptions.)

At the summit of Hekla (in late June.)

Wild horses in the north.

[Rajan Parrikar]

Eric,

Wow! Loved seeing these images. And #2, #3, and #4 are works of Art.


By the way, this Danish archive has marvelous archival footage of what Iceland was like before the era of "bucket list" tourism. All done with fixed focal length lenses; no zooms those days.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Thank you, Rajan.

Of course I have strong memories of scenes from 1975 that either didn't survive Kodak's sloppy processing or were misplaced when I scenes the best ones. I remember one night our big Mercedes tour bus parked near a quite spot on a river, and within a couple of hours there were three more buses all jammed together on the other side of the river. They may have been Icelanders doing the new Ring Road.

-Eric

P.S. So far I have enjoyed watching hikers arriving, camping, and leaving Thorsmörk on horseback. For us it was much easier in a Mercedes bus with a Food and Gear truck following behind.

[RSL]

Fascinating stuff, Eric.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Thanks, Russ.