From our expensive-soup selling country hotel, we drive to Hofn, but took a diversion to the Viking film set in the shadow of Vestrahorn, a mountain that supposedly looks like the Batcar, although I couldn’t seen the resemblance.
Horses
The road to the Viking film set is what Icelandic people call a gravel road, which seems to mean soft, crumbled tarmac with enormous potholes. It’s not too difficult to drive on, you just need to swerve at short notice on numerous occasions. On the way, we stopped to look at the horses. The two at the front of the picture were particularly playful, running up to each other in mock-attacks.
Apparently, the Vikings enjoyed horse fighting as a sport. I presume that meant watching horses fight, not fighting horses themselves.
The Viking Film Set
Paying to enter the Viking film set also allows entry to a spit of land including a lighthouse and black sand beach. The Viking film set itself was built, but never fulfilled its intended purpose. Years after it’s construction, it apparently did see some use in the TV series The Witcher. Although inauthentic in terms of being a genuinely historical site, it gives some insight into the lives of Vikings, subsisting in an inhospitable land with the enormous, sprawling Vestahorn behind and the the sea in front. Little wonder so many of them took to the ocean, and raiding.
Hofn Harbour
It’s all going on down at Hofn Harbour. By which I mean, the sunsets are stunning, the restaurants down there are great and there’s a tourist information centre. We ate at Pakka, and it was a really fantastic meal. I had lamb, Jane had herring (or haddock – one of the h fish). the restaurant is well designed in an old warehouse, overlooking the trawler that goes out each morning to catch the fish.
Before the meal, we walked around the harbour and up to a strange little sculpture on a little spit of land that I could make neither hide nor hair of.
We then went to the tourist information centre, because the weather reports looked bad for the next day. We needed advice. A somewhat gloomy man basically told us it was the end of the world and to give up all hope. No way were we going to be able to drive to Egilstadir, the next stop on our Ring Road tour. Snow, ice, low visibility, the works. Still, he did give me a free bendy ruler, the type you can snap around your wrist, so not all was lost.
At the hotel, the receptionist said pretty much the same thing. Keep watching road.is, they both said.
Further Reading
Iceland (1): Land of Chess, Thrones and Soup
Iceland (2): Land of Diamonds, Glaciers and Snow
Iceland (4): Land of Arrows, Thermal Baths and Robot Sculptures
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