Our Iceland Saga: Earlier Times

Just a few pictures for today...

Early Icelanders lived in turf houses, apparently as a result of both a scarcity of other building materials and the harsh climate. According to Wikipedia, the turf house architecture underwent several major metamorpheses over the last 1000 years, and the style that is mostly preserved today (and shown in these pictures) is fairly new - it was adopted around the end of the 18th century.

This church is still used today (although I don't know how regularly) - there was a ceremony of some sort going on the first time we visited it and we had to return later in the day to get some pictures:

This was an old farmstead that was preserved in Skafatell National Park. The literature said that it had been occupied up until the mid-1940s.

My favorite part of this exhibit - the vintage sewing machine!

Isn't it cool? Have you ever seen one that looks like this?

The hand crank still turned! Man, there is something about an antique sewing machine that makes me feel so connected to the past... :)

A couple of posts ago, Karin asked about the weather during our visit. Temperature wise it was just perfect - daytime highs were in the low 60's (F). Excellent for hiking!

We did have more cloudy, overcast days that I would have asked for, but we also had some beautiful sunny days.

And the days were certainly long enough - that close to the North Pole, the sun didn't set until after 11 pm, and was rising again around 4 am!

Thanks for sticking with me for 2 weeks worth of pictures! Tomorrow is the last day, and I've got pictures of the fabric store we found in Reykjavik! :)