Iceland in April (weather)
While I went to Denmark to take part in the funeral service of Henning Thing and meet up with friends and former colleagues from the Danish Polar Center, Erik went to Iceland to take care of our Toyota Land Cruiser and make it ready for the upcoming field seasons in Iceland. While there, he had time for social visits and various activities, which he has reported here below. Iceland celebrated the first day of summer, but as can be seen on the photo above, summer conditions were not imminently present.
Text by Erik Sturkell
On April 19 I took the late flight from Copenhagen to Iceland. The flight went well but the train ride was disrupted, and we got stuck in Helsingborg. After one hour, busses came and transported us to Malmö. I took the first train across the bridge and arrived in good time for the flight, which had a small delay. I arrived to Blómvallagata around midnight. The next day was a holiday in Iceland “the first summer day”. In the evening I went to Michelle and Adrian Parks for dinner, where Ásta Rut Hjartardóttir was also invited.
On Friday I attempted to get my car from the garage in Hafnarfjörður: Anders Schomacker drew me to the garage but the gate around the garage was closed and I did not have the code. The next day we tried again with the code so on Saturday I was on wheels. Returning to Friday, after the unsuccessful trip to Hafnarfjörður I went to the University of Iceland to meet Halldór Geirsson. He helped me to run the coulomb stress program for seven earthquakes in the Tjörnes fracture zone. This is a part of the research together with Alasdair Skelton at Stockholm University. After some time Halldór managed to circumvent the bugs in the program, and I got the result for the seven earthquakes. It was a perfect timing to visit the university as many were bound for the EGU General Assembly (European Geosciences Union). In the evening Halldór and me went to Stúdentkjallarinn and later neighbour Asdís dropped by for a G&T.
Saturday evening, I visited Kristján Jónasson and wife Katrin. I took the opportunity to discus the route for a geological excursion in the eastern and southeastern part of the country. Thanks to this input I could suggest stops for this upcoming excursion with Stockholm University students in late August.
On Sunday evening I took Anders and his son for dinner at Café Vesturbær.
Early Monday morning I delivered the car to TOYOTA to extinguish some yellow warning lights on the dashboard. At midday the car was ready, and Anders drew me to TOYOTA at Kauptuni. The car works perfect, and it passed the inspection the next day. During the weekend and on Monday afternoon I completed the work with the coulomb data and sent it to Alasdair Skelton. In the evening, Adrian and his Siberian Husky ‘Maja’ came for dinner.
The next day Tuesday after the car passed inspection, I passed by the university and met a lot of friends. Among them Barbara Kleine and Ed Marshall who are leaving for Germany in the beginning of May. It was fortunate to meet them before the left Iceland.
On Wednesday afternoon I drew the car to the garage, met up with the father of the seller to sign the last paper concerning the sale of the garage. Friend Kristin Sigurðardóttir came and picked me up and drew me to the university. There I met Enikö Bali and Guðmundur Guðfinnsson and we went for dinner – pizza in the new restaurant (food court) next the Askja building. I went home and met tenant Talfan Barnie and little later Ed came by after some wine (beer) and rendezvous with Asdís. The next day I went to the airport and settled in in the lounge and had a zoom meeting. All in all a very successful and busy trip, and clearly leaving Iceland in time with dreadful weather (snow) coming in. Time to go home and recover 🙂
