My first trip to Iceland was during the summer of 1977. Our plane, a DC-8, had stopped at the airport in Keflavik to take on fuel for the continued trip to Europe. At that time the country was not very friendly to tourist. The United States had a “base” there as part of its agreement with NATO. Forward time by 40+ years and much has changed in the land of “fire and ice.” The country welcomes the income the tourist industry brings, and if one flies Iceland Air to Europe, passengers are encouraged to stay up to seven days without an extra fee charged to the ticket when traveling back and forth to the United States. I have taken advantage of this perk four times. Needless to say, Iceland is one of my favorite countries to visit.
Although I could write much about my visit to Iceland, which may be written in a different section of this site at a later date, I will write a little bit about visiting some of the areas where the “Game of Thrones” was filmed.
It was a cloudy drizzly rain pelted day (11/24) with some clear skies to punctuate the overcast. Anyway, the tour bus left the Grayline depot at 1300 and headed for the backcountry. Turning off the main highway we soon found ourselves near the mountain range of the dragons that formed part of the backdrop of the “Game of Thrones” storyline. It was a cold and windy day up in “thar” hills and mountains. The Interesting feature of this part of the drive, was the huge pipeline that brings thermal water to the town of Reykjavík. The fascinating aspect of the water on the pipeline is when the water is brought to the surface, temperature is 75°. As it traveled down the mountain via gravity it only lost 3° of temperature by the time it reached Reykjavík, By the way, temperatures are measured in Celsius and not Fahrenheit.
From the Dragon backdrop we traveled to the wall which was featured in Season four episode eight. It took 10 days to film the 2 1/2 minutes of the story line. This wall is part of the rift between the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates. From the wall we drove to Viking village that was featured in the massacre in Season four episode four. It took three days to film this aspect of the story-actors had to be taught how to properly die. At this time of year, an improvement for this tour would’ve been to start the about 30 to 60 minutes sooner. It does not start to get light around here until 0915 with full daylight by about 1000. By the time we arrived at the Viking village, it was getting dark. The first picture was taken with some light, but by the time I took the second photo, it was too dark to take a photo without a flash. The difference in time was probably close to five minutes.
Now I could write about the street art I saw while traveling Iceland during the winter of 2014-2015, but Salvör Bergmann does a better job with the article “Graffiti and Street Art in Reykjavík.” Instead I will just display the ones I photographed.
To view the 29 images of street art I photographed Click this link