I'm glad I've passed all of the high country.... It's possible I could have got snowed in up there!
My luck has held throughout this circular trip around Iceland!
My first stop is only a few miles away I could have squeezed it in yesterday?
this place is historically massively important!
The flattened patch is the site of their long house, in the central distance is a reconstruction of a long house, The lady running and co-owning this site named Rain is British, with a doctorate on Norse mythology and the Vikings!!
Whatever I paid for entry wasn't enough!!! She puts on a tour for the visitors at this time of year it's pretty quiet, so we could monopolize her time! I was there for a good five hours!!!
The tour in the rebuilt long house covers everything from the roles people played, from weaving, dyeing wool in local colours and the blue of English/Irish wode!
they made fake sheepskins for sale which were preferred over the real ones due to being less itchy and lighter...
probably less smelly to!
Also the tools used in the past and copied for this present build
you can see the the fine tool marks in the wooden planks.... Incredibly smooth!!
how the supporting poles for the structure weren't buried into the ground but set upon rocks to prevent collapse during earthquakes,
the general layout of the long house with one closed off area at the far end that was pretty much just for the women....
a fire in the middle with no chimney but a wind door in the roof! A transparent skin to stop wind coming in.....
it's where we get window from!
By the fire is a lock box for the valuables for which only the lady of the house had the key! Looks like a matriarchal society?
On more modern conversation Rain was saying how pretty much every farm you can see now is in the same hands of the same families that have lived here since settlement!
Just new buildings built on the old foundations!
This actually answered an earlier question of mine about everything looking so modern .... The Icelanders were still living in traditional wood and turf houses until the 1950's!!
Another question I had about the horses, yes they are reared for food! Horses, sheep and goats are the land meat stock! Cows can't survive here, except in the south where the flatter land suits them!
With Rains interest/obsession being a shared thing we discussed my Pommel at length,
Eventually new customers came and I had to let her go!
A quick look at the souvenirs and I saw bronze rings as I've been following the golden circle around Iceland one of these would make a perfect choice!
Rain very kindly gave me a thors hammer pendant, with beads she had made herself, glass and bone with traditional local dyes!!
Extremely kind!
with time now short I cut out a loop around one Peninsular, with no absolutely no regret!
Today has been incredible!
Up over one last mountain
and I'm back in the flat lands continuing along route 1 then 47 along Hvalfyordur to my camp site at Bjarteyjarsandur farm, finding myself parked next to huge whale rib for the night!
