Voyage North - a photo essay: (19) Reykjavik

After leaving Qaqortoq, our last port of call in Greenland, we sailed for two days and moored in Reykjavik at breakfast time the following morning. I had visited the city once before and had spent most of the time on an excursion out into the surrounding countryside. This time I booked a guided tour of the city itself for the morning, and left the afternoon free to pursue further whatever had caught my interest.

We saw plenty of the scenic sea-/mountain-/cloud-scapes that present themselves everywhere in the city:

Above, lower right: some ominous cloud is rolling in! 

Above, lower left: this mountain covered in snow and ice is Snæfellsjökull - a 700,000-year-old glacier-capped stratovolcano situated on the most western part of the Snæfellsnes peninsula. It's 120km across Faxa Bay from the city, and cannot always be seen. Here it is just visible through the hazy air. The most significant issue is that the ice no longer reaches to the ground and the shoreline - along with many others, the Snæfell glacier is retreating as the climate warms (see  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/14/glaciers-iceland-country-loss-plaque-climate-crisis).

We visited a museum with a 360-degrees viewing platform affording panoramic views of the whole city:

The entrance to the museum - note the glass roof supported with earthquake protective shock absorbers on the pillars.

A volcanic-rocky shoreline right in the city centre; children and visitors build stone cairns everywhere in the world!

A public sculpture referencing a Viking ship; called Sun Voyager, it is one of many public sculptures by Jón Gunnar Árnason in the City.

Two other notable visits are detailed separately in the following posts.