Day Seventeen

Today started with a beautiful drive through a forest (the first we've seen, and one of the few in the country) to listen to a talk by an Icelandic forester/ranger (he works for the Iceland Forest Conservation service) we walked past the tallest tree (a Lodgepole pine from BC) and the largest tree (a conifer species from Colorado) in the country! There is only one forest forming species here, birch, which is believed to be a hybrid of a shrub-like (here during/before the ice age) and a tree from which came as pollen on the winds from Norway. The rest of the species here are from various countries and have been selected for their ability to grow in sub/Arctic climates. Our guide also told us stories of some of the people behind the importation of the trees. One recount included a German Count who sent seeds from all over following the second world war.  His daughter came to see the forest a few years ago and was disappointed to see that they hadn't formed the lush green forest she was expecting.  We were also informed of the meaning of Bull (wrt BS) - it apparently (unless he was pulling our collective leg) comes from a Norse word meaning gibberish.

We ate lunch in the vans surrounded by forest before setting off to see the Hydropower plant at Fljotssdalstod (I don't have the correct characters.... but that's the gist).  *** I read a publication by the forest service, but unfortunately I forgot my notes on the kitchen table, and I'm not currently allowed (or able) to get back to my house. ***

The dam is very interesting - the whole of the power station is built inside a mountain! After an informative video, we drove nearly a kilometre into the mountain to see the power station, which contains 6x 3-Phase generators fed by 2 4m diameter vertical pipes of water. (I intend to look into these a little more to try to apply EECE, be well see if that happens...) The most recent images I'd seen of a power plant similar to this was of a catastrophic failure in Russia that my teacher had shown us in class. This looked nothing like that; every thing was pristine! I was very obviously groomed for visitors.  There are 3 dams containing 2 reservoirs which are diverted to feed the power plant. On of these rivers is now cleaner that it had been (glacial sediments have somewhat filtered out) while another has been completely destroyed by the water coming from the tailrace. It was really depressing to see the colour of that lake as we drove away.

Next we visited a friend of Caitlin and Harold's (instructors) at the Vatnjokull info centre for the eastern region. He took more ecologically biased stance on the dam matter that was very interesting to listen to. The man at the hydro station mentioned that fish were spawning in the clearer river at the expense of the fish in the lake, and that the latter hadn't supported anyone's livelyhood. Whereas the info centre guy (I need to get better with Icelandic names...) talked about stakeholders being more than just the anthropocentric stakeholders we think of immediately. Who wins? Sustainability entails 3 dimensions Environmental, Social and Economic. (no single one should be exploited for the sake of the others. - This brings us back to the Ecological Economics topic again....)

Lastly, those of us that didn't need to get food for the next few days (of people like me, who decided I'd ether starve or live off the random things I had) would head for a hike up to Hengifoss (a waterfall characterised by basalt columns and changing colours) The total hike was about 5km up a hill and through a valley. The weather and landscape was much how I picture Scotland - damp, foggy, yellow green and peppered with slightly mossy lava rocks. It was gorgeous. Too bad we couldn't see the waterfall through the fog! We did, however, find some sort of geocache -  a hidden treasure in the rocks...ok it was a bright orange tube, but it contained a pad of paper where we signed our names, a Russian calendar of sorts and a stamp. I didn't have anything to leave behind, or I would have left something for the next traveler!

I leave you with this. Enjoy!
Bisous