Iceland Day 4, September 13

This day was called "a day in the life", and we spent time at a horse farm and a sheep farm.At the horse farm, called Thor Hester, we met Einar and Nicole--he is Icelandic and she is American born. Einar demonstrated the 5 gaits of the Icelandic horse (most horses only have 3 gaits).  We groomed the horses and then had a cup of coffee indoors,

We drove along Lake Thingvellir; such a beautiful place! There was a whale boat at the whaling station near where the British base was in World War II. Iceland is one of the few nations still hunting whales in the North Atlantic.

We arrived at the sheep farm Bjarteyjarsandur and met Arnheidur and Gudmunder, known as Adda and Gummi. While Adda cooked us a wonderful lunch (shepherds pie, of course), Gummi showed us around the farm. They maintain a herd of 600 sheep on this 900 acre farm, and these sheep produced 1000 lambs this year. This has been a family owned farm since the 1800s, and we met both Adda and Gummi's mothers. They were spinning and knitting when we arrived.

We went to the grocery store in Borgarnes--we were assigned teams and each team had a shopping list. We were all successful; this will be our lunch tomorrow. We stopped to investigate a Viking burial mound. The person in the mound is Skallagrimur, father to the famous Viking Egill. Linda told us his story.

Our last stop of the day was Grábrok crater.  This and 2 other craters were created 3400 years ago in a volcanic eruption. Many of us walked the hundreds of steps to the top of the crater--it was worth it!