Day 7: Hot Springs

Hot springs seem to be nature’s recompense to Icelanders. According to info at a Geothermal Park (a small park of hot springs and steam pipes), geothermal heat and springs have been (and are now) used for everything. Back in the day, people could throw a bag of potatoes in a spring and haul them out when boiled. They used the steam to pasteurize milk. The water to do laundry. Notably, they use the heat to bake a dense, sweet rye bread, currently sold as “hot spring bread”.

Maybe they bake on platforms like this?

We went on several hikes to and around hot springs. I think we were on the Reykjanes peninsula.

Looks like a UFO crash-landed, doesn't it?

Mud is thrown in the air from the heat of its boiling

With steam rising from the ground all over, no wonder Icelanders believed in fairies. It could easily be a dragon’s breath, ghosts, or smoke/steam from dwarven smithies.

Later we stopped at Seltún Krysuvík to see more hot springs. Sulfur from here used to be sold to make gunpowder.

Lady's just chilling on the mountainside. 

Plaque say that people used to believe that there were hot spring birds that hide from humans by diving into bubbles in the boiling water. Now people think it’s either an optical trick or ghosts (I’m betting more people think the former)

 A wyrm is supposed to live in this lake.  One guide book says it’ll have to show itself soon, as the lake is shrinking.

Signs

On an unrelated side notes, signs are ridiculously descriptive in Iceland. Standardized signs indicate when you’re entering or leaving a city (a picture of buildings with or without a slash across it), and road signs for food show include not just the fork and knife icons, but also a soup with ladle, a hot dog and soda (with straw!), a glass of wine. For the whole trip, I thought the signs were specifying what kind of food you could get, but apparently they mean things like "restaurant", "cooking facilities" and "sales kiosk" (see the whole list of Icelandic signs at Cheap Jeap).

Traveler’s Tips

If you’re looking for a place to eat in Keflavík, Café Duus has great fish.

Also, the restaurant custom in Iceland is to pay your bill up front; places don’t tend to bring you the check.