Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

Well I haven't cranked out a post for a few days, but for good reason, I swear. The past week we've been busy as usual collecting and counting samples, in addition to doing a bit of sightseeing. With all this work I haven't had much free time to be on the internet, and what little time I had was spent working on job applications. I applied for an internship at the EPA Great Lakes National Project Office in Chicago. It's kind of a longshot, but it would be a great thing if I got it. Chicago would be a great place to be for a little while.

We got out and saw some of the sights we'd been neglecting that are within 10 minutes of the house. Hverfjall is a kilometer across, and erupted in about 2500 years ago.



June 17th is Iceland's independence day, and a national holiday. Unfortunately, we aren't Icelanders, so we work. But in the evening we did take some time and had some friends over for dinner and drinks. Ella, our landlady came up for a whiskey and we tried to converse with her in broken English, Icelandic and Norwegian. I think she got most of what we were trying to say. We also took time for a "family photo." It was probably the best light I'd seen so far this summer. I'm surprised we were able to smile after trying the traditional Icelandic dish called Hákarl, which is basically rotten and fermented shark. It was putrid. The party went on and degenerated into a photoshoot up on the hill behind the house, and during the course of the evening we decided on a couple of theme songs for the summer: "Young Forever," by Jay-Z, "Paper Airplanes" by MIA, and "Dancing on my Own" by Robyn were played on repeat throughout the night. I'll never look at them the same.


On Friday Bre, Mireia, David and I took the trek north to collect our northern sites once again. The landscape has become much greener since we did this collecting the last time, which was two weeks ago. The weather again was perfect, though a bit overcast. At Miklavatn, after letting the landowner know we were checking out traps (we are a little intimidated when we talk to this guy, because we all agree he looks like an assassin), we saw our friend the Red Throated Loon and she had a couple of new additions to the family. These little guys didn't quite know what to do when we got close and their mom flew away. They are pretty downy still. I got a few decent pictures of them all. There is a series of the mom taking flight that I have posted on my flickr site.


After that we stopped in Húsavík to have some lunch with Erica and Bíbí and we moved on up the coast to our last site. After a quick stop to look at puffins and the wind on the coast we headed on to Ásbyrgi again because Mireia had not been there yet. The canyon used to be a giant waterfall, when the glacier to the south was much bigger. Icelandic legend says this horseshoe-shaped park was created when Odin's 8-legged flying horse stepped on land here. It is also well known that Ásbyrgi is the capital city of the Hidden People who made off with my iPod, so I went searching for them in hopes of finding it, but to no avail.

Next we went to Dettifoss, (-foss in Icelandic is "falls", I need to ask someone what Detti- means). Dettifoss is the largest waterfall Europe by discharge (meters cubed of water per second). The only way to get there is by dirt road into the highlands. We're lucky to have the Pajero, I can't imagine how horrible it would be to get there by the little rental cars that everyone seems to have here. The road was washboard for many kilometers. The waterfall was beautiful, even if the weather wasn't. It was really great to be up in the highlands, much of it is highly eroded by the wind, so it is all these lava boulders all over, but there is also much green grass and plants. And where there is green, there are sheep. Which made for some slow going on the roads... the sheep just don't know when to get out of the way sometimes.



The next day we went to another waterfall in the highlands, called Aldeyjarfoss. This one is much less visited, and maybe even more scenic than the more well-known Dettifoss.

That is my past week in a nutshell. I'll write about my trip to Rekjavik when I get back!

Randomizations

These are some interesting things about Iceland and my time here that don't necessarily have anything to do with anything.

The hot water for the region I live in comes a big geothermal plant a number of kilometers away, so no one here has hot water heaters and the heat in all the homes is from radiators.

The Icelandic language basically has not changed since the Vikings settled here, which means technically it is a dead language. But Icelanders can read ancient scripts.

Many Icelanders actually do wear those knit sheep's wool sweaters that they sell in the tourist shops. The only difference is that Icelanders probably know the person who knit their sweater.


If there is ever any doubt as to whether or not I am an American, it is quickly vanquished when I pay for something with my quite patriotic Liberty Bank debit card.


The ash that is blowing from the highlands due to the recent eruption of "The Volcano" makes for some spectacular "sunsets" if you can call them sunsets... since the sun never really goes down.

Taken at 12:30 AM

A tollbooth??? NOOOOOO!!!

This past week was quite busy. We had many samples to collect and to count over the week. It was a fairly routine week. Well, as routine as any week is when you’re working in rural Iceland. I started my experiment, (which I will outline below) and since it was rainy toward the end of the week we stayed in the lab and counted samples. As much as I hate to say it, sometimes it is nice to have a grey day and just do some inside work. This was the closest thing we’d had to a day off for almost 3 weeks. We’ve been pretty much going balls to the wall.

Yesterday, we three research assistants, we who toil daily in the fields of black flies, collected our samples at our sites around Mývatn. It was some great team bonding. The drive around the lake is nice, our sites are on a number of farms around the shore and traversing some of the lava fields is always fun. Another nice thing about the Mývatn sites is that there is a conveniently located convenience store, or Verslun where we can pick up something like bulk candy (lots of their candy here is weird... very salty, not so sweet... some tastes like pure sea water), soft serve ice cream, or a hot dog. This trip around the lake I drove, which is special because our vehicle is a 1990 Mitsubishi Pajero SUV… “Born on the rally field, bred with the future’s technology and fashioned for the enjoyment of life” … which has a manual transmission. Before this summer, it has been quite a while since I had driven a manual. I think the last time was when my uncle Jeff taught me in his Camero in 2005 or 2006. I never quite mastered the art of getting it into first gear smoothly. Once I was going it was no big deal… after those lessons I had a new respect for Dad’s driving (or lack thereof) in France, where toll booths, stoplights and crosswalks were the bane of our existence…. Still I can’t help but laugh thinking about it. But anyway I was driving the Pajero, and I must say I’m getting much better. Something just sort of clicked. My confidence is up and putting it in gear while on an incline is even becoming no problem. There was one incident, however of attempting to take off from stopped while in second gear… oops… Kyle and Bre were kind and tried to hold back their laughter, but I knew there was nothing they could do. So Dad, I guess I’m saying I know how you feel, at least to some degree.

So I promised I’d explain my experiment… so here it goes… I’ll try to explain the science behind it in some clear terms. Background knowledge: Midges, which are small aquatic flies that have an aquatic larval stage and a terrestrial adult stage, come out of Lake Mývatn (midge lake) in large numbers… we’re talking billions to trillions of individuals per year. These midges effectively move nutrients from the lake (they only feed during the larval stage, where they eat algae mostly) to the surrounding shoreline. Predators, such as wolf spiders (my organism of interest) eat the midges or else the midges just die and fertilize the plants. All plants and animals are made of varying proportion of a few elements, with two of the most abundant being carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). These elements have a number of isotopes (atoms with a differing number of neutrons in the nucleus) that occur in varying proportions. These isotopes are incorporated into the tissues of organisms in varying proportions, which are often predictable, or at least show certain patterns. For instance, and of importance to my experiment, aquatic organisms usually have a much higher ratio of a heavy isotope of carbon than terrestrial organisms. And the terrestrial organisms that might eat the aquatic organisms will then have an isotopic signature closer to that that would normally be seen in an aquatic organism. What this all boils down to is that we can see what an organism has been eating by grinding it up and seeing what ratios of C and N isotopes are present. My experiment is taking spiders that do not have access normally to aquatic-derived organisms and feeding them midges from the lake. At certain intervals we will collect and analyze the spiders for their isotopes, so that we can see the rate at which the aquatic signature is expressed in the predatory spiders. Whew. It’s hard to explain, but I hope that was cogent.

In other news, we have a newly arrived, albeit temporary member of Team Midge 2010. Mireia, a post-doctoral researcher from Spain who will be at Wisconsin for the next two years, will be with us for about a month taking a few samples for her work and helping us with ours. So far she seems really nice. Only time will tell if she will be able to put up with our shenanigans. She is well on the way to winning our hearts, as she brought some indigenous cured meat in tube form from Spain. It was quickly devoured this evening.

Working Vacation

This weekend, as reported in my last post, an enclave of Team Midge went to the port city of Húsavík (pop. 2200) on a sort of "working vacation." Jamin, Kyle, Bre and I went, and were accompanied by our friend from the field station, Jasmine. We have 6 transects that are not located around our main lake, Mývatn, that we use as controls. These are located throughout the region, and 4 of them happen to be fairly far north so that we travel through Húsavík to get there. And we happen to have friends in Húsavík, which works out nicely. On Saturday, we drove to 3 of the sites (the ones that didn't require collecting live insects) to collect some samples. We made quick work of these sites and thus had some time to stop and do a little touring. We stopped at Öxarfjörður for lunch and to see if we could see some puffins in the fjord below. We did! it was great, even if they were a bit far away to capture well on film. We did have a couple pairs of binoculars which helped. There were some great vistas from the clifftops too.

After lunch we hit one last site, Víkingavatn.


Then we went to Ásbyrgi, a national park which has some beautiful bluffs. They reminded me a bit of a larger version of those along the river at home. This is one of the few wooded places in Iceland, the trees were planted by a youth corps in exchange for use of a clearing for some events. One of my favorite bands, Sigur Rós (they happen to be Icelandic) played a free show in this clearing when they were shooting their film, Heima. It was pretty cool to see where this happened. (also the film is pretty awesome, and even if you don't know the band there is some great footage of Iceland)



We took advantage of the great weather and got in touch with our roots on the playground that was in the clearing. Afterward we took a few minutes to soak up the sun and warmth by napping on the grass. None of us cared that we smashed little mites that left little red dots all over our clothes.

We finally made it back to Húsavík and met up with our friends Yann and Erica and baby BiBi, and shortly thereafter headed out to a meal out at the local N1. N1 is an Icelandic chain of gas stations which happens to serve some reasonably priced food. (resonably priced means $9 for basically what amounts to a Burger King whopper) It was fun to sit in the gas station and watch the Icelandic youths do what they do. They seem to all get in a car, one, two or three per vehicle and cruise up and down the main drag in town. Quite interesting especially considering the price of gas.


We strolled back to the apartment after dinner and commenced the festivities. We were having a great time, and eventually the party (of 7 people total) made it out onto the deck. Not long after the Great Migration the police (4 officers in one SUV) showed up and shut us down! I guess we lost track of time due to the ever present daylight, but it was already 2 am! Good thing bars stay open pretty late in Iceland... we went down to the waterfront and had one last pint before closing time and the inevitable weaving of our way back home to crash on couches and the floor.

The next morning, all of us bearing something of a self inflicted wound, it was back to work. Taking more samples, hiking to sites, and reminiscing about the night previous. We knew we were in for a long day, and that's exactly what we got. But it was worth it. At least we didn't have to count the samples we collected until today...

Barbecue time

Greetings!

The past few days have been quite eventful! I will hit a few of the highlights here.
Tuesday night we got done with work a bit early and I think Kyle, Bre and I all took naps. The long days and short nights are catching up with us a bit. We pretty much all agree that we need a day to sleep in! Which of course doesn’t look like it will happen for another week, at least. We’ll have to start going to bed earlier instead, I guess… After our nap time we had a good dinner of some simple pan fried chicken. The cuts of chicken here are interesting. This was I guess what you would call a shoulder. It was good, although not the meatiest, which happens when you’re shopping on a budget and pretty much the only meat we get is what happens to be on sale at the Bonus that particular week. (aside: Bonus is a chain of discount grocery stores here in Iceland. It is a truly traumatic experience shopping there, especially if you don’t know what is where and you can’t read the name of half of the items, forcing you to guess what something is. Kyle literally got nudged out of the way by this lady last time)

Anyway, after dinner Jamin and David and Claudio were going to work on their papers so we underlings had some time to ourselves. Instead of sitting around we decided we should go out and do something. We threw out some ideas like hiking or going to surf the internet at the field station or just driving around but we decided we were too tired to hike, none of us had emails to send, and driving around cost too much money. So we decided to go relax in a hot spring nearby. I would write the name but it is a bit of a secret, only a select few know where it is, and how to get to it, much less that it even exists. And who knows what kind of secret-revealing hoodlums are patrolling my blog for just this kind of information… But anyway it was a really cool place, the spring/pool was down a narrow, deep crevice in a lava field and we had to climb down about 20 feet to the bottom. The water was unbelievably clear, and very warm. It was nearly the perfect temperature for the evening; great compensation for the chilly air and cold rain that was falling off and on. There was a mist rising from the water that made the whole scene look like a scene from some medieval movie. It was nice and relaxing, save the thought that crept into my head that one little disturbance in the equilibrium in the earth’s crust below me could cause me to be Dante’s Peaked… but it was a risk I was willing to take.

Wednesday after the workday we had our “landlords” Friða and Ella (the two Icelandic women [mother and daughter] whose house we live in) over for dinner. Neither of them speak English, so Árni and Unnur (the Icelanders who run the field station) came over as well. It was really great to learn about the farm we live on. It has been in the same family for over 200 years, and is one of the most prized parcels of land in the region. We had made a couple of minor changes to the house, moving some furniture and taking the pantry door off its hinges, and they noticed almost immediately. They couldn’t stop raving about how good the adjustments we made were! We had been pretty worried that they wouldn’t approve, and even hoped they wouldn’t notice.

We have had some incredible weather the past few days. I even was wearing short sleeves at a couple of points yesterday and today! We decided after we got in from collecting midges at all our field sites that we’d have a barbecue since our last attempt was thwarted by cold and wind and we had to resort to sautéing our hot dogs on the stove (Icelanders love hot dogs, by the way. You can get them almost everywhere, and they’re usually cheap, around $3.00, and much tastier than American ones.) We had quite a success this time, despite our lack of grilling utensils, which then resulted in a lack of hair on my knuckles…



This weekend we are heading to Húsavík for the Fisherman’s Festival and to check some sites up north I’ll write on that when I get back!