Play Jaja Ding Dong!
Today we did the “diamond circle” (minus Myvatn, which we saw yesterday), including spending some quality time in Húsavik, now the name of an Oscar-nominated song from a Will Ferrell movie. But more about that later. First, more waterfalls!!!
We started our day at Selfoss and Dettifoss (pictured above). Selfoss is a cool curtain-style waterfall, and Dettifoss is the most powerful waterfall in Europe.
Selfoss is overshadowed by its neighbor, but it also looks cool.
Nearby was also Hafragilsfoss, but the options to get there were either a dirt road or a rocky hike along the steep river cliff. We weren’t willing to risk the latter, and the Hyundai didn’t seem like it’d survive the former, so we took a hiking trail that meets up with the gravel road for the last 25 minutes until you get there. Exciting hike? No. Safe trip to the waterfall? Yes!
After waterfalla-palooza, we motored down to Ásbyrgi, a beautiful U-shaped canyon with a small pond and more trees than we’ve seen anywhere else in Iceland (seriously, they really lack trees here). It was really serene and beautiful until we ran into a tour group (that keeps happening everywhere, of course).
After that relaxing walk through the secluded woods, we headed to Húsavik! There was a nice cliff viewpoint where we took a picture of what I’ll assume is the Arctic Ocean, from the furthest north we’ve ever been, 66.2º.
For anyone who doesn’t know, we are huge Eurovision fans, and in particular fell in love with last summer’s Netflix blockbuster hit😂 Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga from Will Ferrell. In the movie, he and Rachel McAdams play an Icelandic music duo from the small city of Húsavik in northern Iceland, and end up going to Eurovision as Iceland’s entry. But I’m sure you saw it and knew all that already!
Our first stop was the Jaja Ding Dong bar. (Just look up the Jaja Ding Dong scene. Go on, I’ll wait.) In addition to naming all the drinks after songs from the movie, they were building a museum in the back, and gave us a quick preview tour as avid fans. We couldn’t take photos, of course, but they had the original costumes from many key scenes, particularly Rachel McAdams’s stage performance costumes. There was also a more general Eurovision memorabilia room, with heavy focus on Icelandic musicians, and Daði Freyr in particular (he’s awesome).
We also wandered around the city and took a few photos. We found the building that acted as the pub in the movie in exterior shots. It’s also just a very cute port city in Iceland.
And finally we headed back to Akureyri… after stopping at one more waterfall!!
Goðafoss (which Nick has been calling “Godfall”) is named because some local chieftain threw all his statues of the Nordic gods into the falls in 1000AD after coming back from Þingvellir where the parliament decided to all convert to Christianity at once. It’s really cool looking:
And, finally, we headed back and had lasagna for dinner (I kid you not — we needed something other than burgers and fish-n-chips, and this worked). Tomorrow we burn gas down to the Blue Lagoon, and then we’ll be heading home. 😭
