Western Iceland

Our last two days in Iceland were spent exploring the Trollaskagi (Troll) Peninsula and some of Western Iceland. After leaving Akureyri, we headed north to Siglufjordur to check out the Herring Era Museum. Once you buy a ticket, you have access to the three different buildings that make up the museum. The first building The first building is the old salting station from a Norwegian herring station. The bottom floor is full of information about the start of foreigners going to Iceland to fish for herring in the early 1900s to the rise of Iceland joining in on the herring cash flow to the ultimate demise of the entire industry due to overfishing. The second story of this building shows the sleeping quarters of some of the workers. When they were restoring the house, they found all kinds of items left behind, from shoes to clothing, magazines, and kitchenware. These items were used to create the displays. There wasn't much room in the sleeping quarters. There were usually 6 to 8 bunks per room with a small storage area where the herring clothing was kept. 

The second building explains how the herring was transformed into meal and oil. It is full of huge machinery. All the heavy machinery found in the exhibition was gathered from old, abandoned herring factories around the country. 

The last building is called The Boathouse. It is a new building that we guessed was built around a large herring boat that is inside. There are a couple of other boats inside the building to give you a feel for what people use to use to go out and catch the herring. 

From Siglufjordur, we headed to Hofsos with the intention of going to their hot pool/ swimming spot. It sits right at the edge of a cliff and overlooks the ocean. It is absolutely magnificent! 

Our last full day in Iceland was spent on a five hour drive to Stykkisholmur. When reading about it, I expected it to be fairly large with a lot of different things to do. Unfortunately, this wasn't really the case and it didn't take us long to hit all the main attractions in the town. We hit up Sugandisey, a basalt island with a tiny lighthouse. There is a walkway that leads you across the harbor to the island. There's a short walking trail that leads around the island and up to the lighthouse. Like I said, it was a tiny lighthouse. I honestly don't think it was much taller than 10ft. After visiting the island and lighthouse, we moseyed around the town for a bit before heading back to our guesthouse to write our postcards. 







Our last day was spent on a wild goose chase looking for any type of artwork that we actually liked and getting to the airport. One of our attempts to find a gallery lead us down some very off the beaten roads to a beautiful little bridge. We gave up any attempt at finding the art gallery, but got a beautiful shot of the bridge on our way back to the main road.