Iceland: Colorful Lighthouses and Coastal Scenery
September 22, 2016 5 Comments
We love lighthouses, and we enjoyed seeing a variety of them in Iceland. Some lighthouses have bright colors for best contrast with the landscape. All sit in beautiful locations by the sea. The Reykjanes Lighthouse is particularly scenic because it sits in a geothermal area known as “Smokey Point”. The Gunnuhver fumerole there produces a surprising amount of steam. A life-size great auk statue stands nearby, marking the location where the last great auk lived in 1844. A recent article discusses the possibility of using DNA to bring the great auk back from extinction: http://www.earthtouchnews.com/all-articles/2016/september/01/can-the-great-auk-return-from-extinction/.
The Akranes lighthouse is fun because we think it looks like a rocket ship (we may be biased because we live on the Space Coast of Florida and see launches all the time). There is a wonderful photography/poetry exhibition inside by Mak Jurgen called “I Miss the Days Chasing Lights”. He also plans to publish a book called “Vitar” (lighthouse in Icelandic) by 2020. The view from the top is spectacular!
Mr. Ingvar Hreinsson has repaired all of Iceland’s 104 lighthouses spread out over 3,000 miles of coastline. A recent article about him is at: http://grapevine.is/mag/feature/2016/08/26/shine-a-light-the-icelander-who-repaired-every-single-lighthouse-in-the-country/
All of our posts about Iceland’s lighthouses are at: https://naturetime.wordpress.com/?s=iceland+lighthouse. “Viti” in Icelandic means lighthouse.