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Færslur: 2012 Ágúst

25.08.2012 09:00

Rain, finally

It has been awfully dry this summer here in the North, no rain since I came back from Austria and very little before that. So we were really happy when it started raining this week. Not much, just a bit here and there, especially during the nights and enough to make the grass greener again. Today it was rain and sun, sun and rain, just nice to be outside ;)

We took a drive to have a look at the foals and their mothers and they seemed to enjoy the weather too. Þyrnirós, Þokki and Þeysir were asleep when we arrived, Þeysir not even realizing the other two standing up and walking towards us. He was quite surprised to be all alone when he finally woke up and had to call for his friends and mum.

The horses were playful, running and showing off, then grazing again, eating bread Ingólfur was offering them, running off again. So I had enough to do with my camera.

Afterwards we stopped at Helluland and went with Kiddi to see the 4 year old and part of the 5 year old horses in their huge pasture. We were lucky and they were close by, all of them friendly and interested, some nosier than others. Some of them had used the good shelter to scratch themselves and so part of their mane was missing, but nothing that won't grow again. I quite liked what I saw and was very happy about the friendly and open character of these youngsters.

Our youngsters, that stay with another part of Kiddi's herd, live in paradise and look like that...

Afterwards there was a bit of work waiting for us as Bensi came with old hay that we are going to use to cover "naked" spotts in our fence. We unrolled 2 of 10 hayrolls, which was quite dusty work. But we think it's necessary to do that and take care of the land.

Bensi cleaned up the horse manure around the big shelter in the winterfield, he's gonna use it as fertilizer for his land. Nice and clean there again!

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19.08.2012 16:42

Birthdaytrip

It looks like Ingólfur's and Bjössi's birthdaytrip to Þeistareykir is going to be an annual habit. The two of them booked the hut a few weeks ago and yesterday we took a drive up to the highlands. Bensi and his family joined us too. Our car was stuffed with food, drinks and other necessities, barely room for anything else. Hjördís of course joined us too.

When we arrived in the early afternoon, Bjössi and Rakel already awaited us with fresh coffee. A bit later, Bensi, Ella and their kids arrived too, so we could start the party straight away with coffee and cake. An instant later, we got ourselves ready to visit a few caves, Bjössi, Berta and Vignir had discovered a few weeks ago. It was a strange feeling to go underground, not knowing what was awaiting us, just with a few pocketlights (not all of them working). In fact it is an amazing undergroundworld under the lavafield. There are lavadropstones, in some places so many, you have to take care not to step on them, ferns, big and small rocks, mysterious holes, low ceilings, places you have to crawl through to discover the next, huge part of the cave and so on. The kids really enjoyed to explore everything, looking for new caves and so on. I tried to take pics, which went sometimes quite well, sometimes not that well, but you can have a look at them in the album.

The cavesexpedition made us very hungry, so we went back to the hut to prepare the grill for dinner. We picked some mushrooms on the way, on which we put bluecheese after cleaning them and grilled them alongside the meat and potatoes. A delicious sauce (which we nearly forgot at home), zucchini with garlic and homegrown salad made the meal complete.

After dinner, we had some Austrian schnaps as a desert (just the grown ups) and had one or two toast for Ingólfur and Bjössi. We chatted quite a while outside the hut and went later inside to play cards, which was rather funny as we were teaching our friends our favourite card game.

Today we slept rather long (in fact I was awake quite early, but didn't dare to go out of bed, not to wake the others), had a delicious breakfast and got ourselves ready for a walk up Bæjarfjallmountain. As some of us didn't sleep that well, not everybody was ready to come with us. So in the end it was Ingólfur, Ella, Vignir, Hjördís, Berta, Kristján, Pollý the dog and me that went for a walk. It was rather steep uphill, but on top it's a plateau and there is a huge sandstonerock, where people use to engrave their names and the year of their visit. As most of us had already been there, we just refreshed our names and engraved the year. Kristján on the other hand, was there for the first time and, after trying himself and finding out it was too hard for him, asked his mum to engrave his name. But he was at least ready to pose for a pic.

Soon we started our walk back down, slowed down by delicious crow- and blueberries, which had to be picked and eaten. Back at the hut, we gathered our stuff together, squeezed it into the car, cleaned the hut and said goodbye to everyone. The drive back to Húsavík was rather dusty as it hasn't rained here for a very long time.

All in all it was a very, very good trip with wonderful friends. Takk fyrir okkur!

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15.08.2012 09:07

Holiday

We got a really nice invitation to a summerhouse in the East of Iceland and decided to take a holiday during our holiday. The plan was to go east on Monday, go for a good hikingtour on Tuesday and take a relaxed journey back on Wednesday. But first of all, we had to find the place to stay! Ditta gave us a short description, but no name of the place. It was supposed to be just a bit out of Hallormsstaður. Well, there were a few possibilities... When we finally thought that we went too far, we called and got the information that we were just at the right place! It's called Sólheimar and a former farmhouse surrounded by forrest. We had quick dinner and lit the oven afterwards to have coffee and cookies in the livingroom. After deciding about the plan for the next day and watching the weathernews anxiously, we soon went to bed.

Unfortunately the weathernews were right and it was foggy with a bit of rain inbetween. So a rather bad idea to go hiking into Stórurð. Instead we continued our drive to Borgarfjörður eystri and to the little harbour right outside the village, where around 15.000 pairs of puffins nest every year. As we were a bit late in puffinseason, there were just a few left, the mainflock already on sea. Nevertheless we managed to see some and of course the uncountable number of nestingholes. It must me amazing to see the whole place just crowded with puffins.

On the way back we stopped in the small church to have a look at the altarpicture painted by Jóhannes S. Kjarval, one of the most renown Icelandic painters. He owned a small summerhouse in the East, called Kjarvalshvammur. Of course we stopped there too ;)

From the village we took a drive up the valley, passing the farm Grund II, where the colourful mare Milljón frá Grund II was born in the year 1987. After the short sightseeingdrive we started our journey back to Egilsstaðir. Before we went over the pass we stopped at a canyon we had spotted on our way to Borgarfjörður eystri. It's called Innra-Hvannagil and easy to walk up there. You'll be rewarded by a spectacular view and very interesting patterns in the stone. We definitely did not regret the stop there!

Next stop was, as I already said before, Kjarvalshvammur. In fact it's just a tiny hut with a bed inside. The place for Kjarvals boat "Gullmávur" was even bigger than his own hut... But he definitely picked a marvelous place to stay!

Then there was another stop, we were just too curious about the little "shop" on the way. A guy in Egilsstaðir put up a little hut and inside is a vending machine, where you can buy coke, sweets and even dogtreats. Unfortunately it didn't work for us, but we had a lot of fun trying.

Of course we couldn't just drive by Finnsstaðaholt so we made a surprisevisit at Pétur's and Marietta's place. After coffee, some schnaps and a good talk we departed, looking forward to meeting soon again.

We were rather lazy to cook after such a long day and had a quick dinner in Egilsstaðir. The evening we spent in front of the oven, talking about the day.

Ditta went south on Wednesday and we took the drive back north. But we didn't go the straight way. First we drove all the way up to Kárahnjúkardam and Hálslón. On the way we met reindeerhunters that just managed to get one. The herd of around 200 deer was still close and I managed to get a few pics of them.

It was very impressive to see the artificial waterfall "Hverfandi" ("The Disappearing"), which is the overflow of the reservoir. Amazing power!

From there we took a very small gravelroad on the mountainridge between Jökuldalur and Hrafnkelsdalur. It was very deserted, not even sheep up there. On the way down to Hrafnkelsdalur we saw a sick lamb, wrote down it's number and drove to Aðalbólfarm to let know about it.

From there we went on road F907 to Sænautasel, where you can get coffee, tee or cacao with lummur (kind of small, thick pancakes) in the old sheepstable. We decided to take a break and had delicious cacao, while learning about the history of the place and clapping the cat.

Then we went over Geitasandur to Möðrudalur, a very beautiful place and a pitty I never went there before. Soon we were back on Road 1 and on the way home. It was a wonderful trip and there'll many unforgettable memories!

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13.08.2012 08:28

Þyrnirós

As I said before we went to get Vordís and Þyrnirós from Skagafjörður. It was a bit tricky to get her into the trailer as she didn't just follow her mum, but we managed to grab her and put her in. The night they spent in Kiddi's stable, next to the calves, which were quite nosy.

Today it was time to put them with the other mares and foals. Þyrnirós went into the trailer like she had never done anything else, just being a good girl following her mum. When we arrived in Haga, it was time to take some pics and then release them. Vordís just rushed like a lightning followed by a dark shadow with white socks. They soon met the others and it was clear who is the boss... Hope the foals are having a good time together, growing and developing.

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12.08.2012 07:46

Einarsstaðamót

The annual competition of the ridingclub Þjálfi was this weekend and Ingólfur decided to take part with Negla. There were around 200 competers all in all, some taking part with 4 or more horses.

Ingólfur and Negla took part in Gæðingakeppni B-Flokkur (Icelandic Fourgait) and Tölt. I decided not to take part on horseback but to help around and was therefore assistant of one of the judges. As this judge has just the test for Gæðingakeppni but not for Sportstests like Tölt, I had a break then and could take pictures. It was very interesting for me to see and listen what he was saying, get a bit different point of view. Think it's a bit difficult to see everything that is happening in the track, especially in the finals when there are up to 8 horses in at the same time.

Things went quite well for Ingólfur and Negla, they got 8,34 in B-Flokkur, which was 0,01 too little to go to the B-finals. Pitty that didn't work!

Tölt went well too, but we were quite surprised to get the marks as they were very low for what he showed. Specially one judge was very much lower than the others. At the same time there was an other participant that was on gallop for more than just a few meters, but all 3 judges didn't see it and so he got very high marks and went straigth to the A-finals. Maybe judges should draw a better line between the Icelandic Gæðingakeppni, where it is enough to get a whole longside in each gait to get full marks and the Sportscompetition, where the whole thing (short sides of the track too!) has to be good to get good marks. Think this was maybe a bit the problem.

Negla went home on Saturday, she's supposed to take part in Firmakeppni with Kiddi after 2 weeks. Hope this will go as well as last year.

Sunday Ingólfur was a viewer and I was still assistant to the judge. The day started with the B-finals in A-Flokkur, B-Flokkur and Tölt. Then there was a very long lunchbreak (too long for my taste) and so were the finals in Kids, Youth (there we had to stop a horse running crazy) and Young Rider class followed by Senior class. Last but not least A-finals in A, B and Tölt.

When this was over, we grabbed Kiddi's car and horsetrailer and started our trip tp Skagafjörður to fetch Myrká, Lukka and last but not least Vordís and Þyrnirós. Myrká and Lukka were in Dyrfinnustaðir where they had been with Hágangur frá Narfastöðum. Both mares are in foal, which is big luck for Kiddi, both of them being really good breedingmares, but had difficulties the last year to get pregnant. Vordís was first with Þórálfur frá Prestbæ, but was empty when sonared, so we decided to put her with his big brother Þeyr frá Prestbæ, which seems to have worked. When we got to Saurbæ to get her, it was just her, Þeyr and Þyrnirós on a very big field. Of course she had to show herself a bit, not being fond of being caught. Þeyr was much more interested in the breadbag I carried than in Vordís running around. Finally we got her and Ingólfur held the stallion while I walked mother and daughter out off the field. I was surprised how polite and gentle Þeyr was, not making any trouble when we had enough to do to catch Vordís. Looks like he has a character of gold.

As we arrived very late in Helluland, we just kept the mares in the stable over night.

It was a busy weekend, but I think worth it!

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08.08.2012 07:17

Back on duty

After having a great holiday visiting my friend Gabi and then my family I'm back on duty here in Iceland.

I enjoyed it very much to go to a falconryshow in Germany, taking a huge amount of pics. They had about 16 birds with them and even 3 Gyrfalcons, which live in Iceland too. It was amazing to watch these beautiful birds flying free and showing their hunting skills. The Gyrfalcon was the most impressive though (not just because it lives in Iceland too) as it reached amazing speed, going very close over our heads to get the lure.

My days in Austria I mostly spent with my family, helping in my granddad's garden, playing with my nephew and niece, looking for mushrooms in the forest and so on. Time was, as usual, flying and early Mondaymorning I started my journey back.
I got a 5* - 3 courses dinner back home. Tasty hotsmoked salmon, fried prawns and vegetable as a starter, delicious steak with potatoes, vegetables and fried thyme as a main course and greek joghurt with blueberries and Nóa Kropp as a dessert. Delicious!

My garden was well taken care of (roses flowering, salad growing like hell, ...), the horses too and Þeysir is getting a bit too cheeky (have to work on that).