Artsy Akureyri

June 29, 2025

Day 9

June 15, 2025

Happy Father’s Day!

Today’s short drive across the northern section of Iceland took us from Mývatn to Akureyri with a few fun stops along the way.

As we first headed out, we took a quick side trip to Grjótagjá Cave – a popular skinny-dipping spot in the age of “Peace, Love, and Music”. Why does my head suddenly picture Woodstock? Grjótagiá Cave is even better known as the site where a pretty famous scene from “Game of Thrones” was filmed. Yep, the hot and steamy scene with Jon &Ygritte happened right here. Due to recent volcanic action, the water temperature has increased to a dangerously hot level, making it a little too hot and steamy, even for them! As you can guess, this beautiful blue water is from a hot spring and the cave is formed from lava. Man, I do love this country! So cool!

In the year 1000 AD, a Viking lawspeaker by the name of Porgeir Ljósvetningagodi was given the enormous responsibility of deciding if Iceland would adopt Christianity or if they would continue worshiping their pagan gods. When he decided Iceland would become Christian, he threw statues of the pagan gods into the falls, giving it its name, Godafoss, “waterfall of the gods”. This is really a stunning waterfall and certainly well worth stopping for and considered a “must do” in our book!

Our last stop was at Santa Land, just outside of Akureyri. I’m not sure it was anything on Adam’s Top 10 list, but I really enjoyed it! My prize for stopping here was the purchase of a hand-knit troll, not the mischievous Spoon-Licker, but an adorable troll that will perfectly fit over a wine bottle for an adorable Christmas decoration!

My Grandma Marguerite used to make these!

Once we arrived in Akureyri, we stopped by the visitor center where a gal gave us a map and highlighted a perfect walking tour for the afternoon. A local artist has turned their backyard into quite the display of their talent -- that talent being repurposing donated items into a fairy tale garden with scenes from all of the fairy tales you can think of! It’s really amazing that they welcome anyone into their backyard. I guess it’s testimony to Iceland being selected for the fifteenth year in a row as the safest country in the world.

Our next stop was at St. Peter’s Catholic Church. Although we got into town too late for Mass, we thought we would stop by and spend a few minutes in praise and adoration.

Akureyri has a beautiful botanical garden that is completely free. In the center of it is a small café where we each grabbed a beverage of choice. That was the difficult part! Coffee or beer? Hmmm. A little too early for a beer for me, so I opted for the coffee. Delicious!

I learned that Icelanders love their ice cream year around and they also love their licorice. Although I’m not Icelandic, I am Scandinavian which must explain why I also love both! Now comes the amazing part! At a little ice-cream shop called Brynja, you can order a bragdarefur (think DQ’s Blizzard). When choosing your three toppings, pick dristur (chocolate-covered licorice), strawberries and Oreos®! One taste and I was almost ready to apply for Icelandic citizenship! My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Thoroughly energized with caffeine from the coffee and calories from the bragdarefur, we next found a hiking trail. This trail took us up a long hill to an amazing view of the Akureyri harbor. The viewpoint is next to a cemetery. The woman at the visitor center told us, “People are dying to see it”. Wah-wah!

From there we hiked back down the trail and into the original town from 1835. It was fun to see how this cute little town began. It looks very different from the Wild West towns of the US!

That evening, Dick and I enjoyed dinner at Backpackers. Backpacker’s doubles as a pub and hostel. If fact, Lauren and Maggie stayed here during their 2016 visit to Iceland. Dick had the chicken tacos and I couldn’t resist the smoked salmon tacos. Delicious!