The Museum of Icelandic Witchcraft and Sorcery was interesting and something I will address in further detail later. Afterwards, Josh and I rode up to Hotel Laugarhóll, a farm hotel, with as it would happen also featured the Sorceror’s Cottage. The cottage is a replica medieval cottage, made from driftwood, mud brick and a turf roof. It was cosy inside, considering how windy it was outside. The hotel is surrounded by wetlands, due to the natural warm water springs that run below it. So some of the ground is very soft.

Later that night, Josh and I marched across from rock to rock in the cold wind, up the hill to get a glimpse of the Northern Lights. Despite the mild cloud cover and the rising moon, Josh did manage to capture some of the aurora with his camera.

The next day the wind had died. We drove up to Siglufjörður, a place that was seeing some growth, since this town had the only building cranes we had seen outside of Reykjavik. After some dinner at a cafe that looked like a hunting lodge, we walk alongside one of the earthen walls (to protect the town from avalanche) to see if there were more the of the Northern Lights. But sadly this could not be seen.

From Siglufjörður, Josh and I drove down to Akureyrí. Akureyrí is the second-largest town after the capital, and from a glimpse has a thriving art scene. I’m a little surprised that the tour company didn’t have us stay a night there. Either way, we looked through the Listasafnið, Akureyrí´s Art Museum. It´s current show was a video installation called “Staðreynd – Local Fact” by Arna Valsdóttir. There is also a nice street art scene (and I’ll cover this in more detail later).

Then came Gödafoss. It got its name from when Þorgeir, lawspeaker for the Alþingi, chose that the Icelandic people be baptised into the Christian faith. And it is this waterfall where Þorgeir cast his pagan idols into the waters below. The waterfall thunders over the side down into a crevasse that looks it has been hewn and cut, with striations that look like violent art deco.

We ended up in Lake Mývatn, a place that looks like it has a few things to offer in daily hikes.

And now photos (Northern Light photos by Josh Dykgraaf (facebook)):