This was our first trans-Atlantic cruise from New York to Dover, England, and we visited places we had never been, including Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, as well as countries we had visited before including Scotland and Norway. But it was the visits to Iceland and Greenland which motivated the trip, so here are some of our impressions of these two North Atlantic islands. Our ship was the Ocean Princess.
Greenland is a country that isn't green, and Iceland seems to
have more volcanoes than ice. We
learned that the names for these islands were the result of a
very successful marketing campaign. The Norse explorers
who found what we now call Greenland wanted to lure people to a
very inhospitable place so they gave it a very appealing
name: Greenland. We were greeted upon our arrival by
huge icebergs in the harbor. (Remember that 90% of an
iceberg is below water!!!) While these icebergs had
blocked the harbor the day before, when we arrived they had
moved and were just lovely to view.
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Iceland, on the
other hand, was very similar to the Norse lands the explorers
left. We were told that to discourage migration they
called the island Iceland. We didn't see much ice, but
large grazing and agricultural areas and lots of mountains which
were in fact shield and cinder cone volcanoes.
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Note
steep
stairs leading to houses |
Observe ice around edge of lake |
Our second port of call in Greenland was the native village of
Nanortalik. Tourism is a primary business now and they
were prepared with a dance concert, a choir performance, and
demonstration of their boating skills which provided both
entertainment and education about the local customs. The
men demonstrated rolling their kayaks over in the ice filled
waters. The housing we saw in Greenland today is very
colorful western style with slanted roofs as opposed to the sod
house we saw which was last used as a residence in 1978. The houses were all painted in very
bright reds, blues and greens. The
people dress in modern western clothes, but for hunting and
kayaking, traditional seal skin clothes are used.
There was a very warm seal skin tent for us to
see.
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A definite
highlight of Greenland was the scenerary.
Spectacular vistas of glacier shaped mountains were common from
our ship as we cruised the coast.
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The highlight of our visit to Iceland was to
visit the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which cuts right thought the middle
of Iceland. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge
is the place where two tectonic plates, the Eurasian Plate and
North American Plate are separating at about 1 inch per year. In Iceland, that means that the island
is growing wider at about eight feet every 100 years, pretty
fast in geologic terms.
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We
saw the ridge from two perspectives:
one in a geothermally active area where sulfur
pits and cauldrons of boiling mud created a barren
landscape. The ridge formed
a clear demarcation line: to
the right is Europe and to the left North America.
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Ridge
going
up hill |
Ridge
parallel
to road |
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We saw some really exotic rock formations along the coasts created by wind, waves and time.
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On
one
of our excursions to a remote island we took a beautiful
hike. On the way back from
the hike the group stopped at the only house on the
island for tea and cake which was prearranged. As you
can see in our picture, the locals were enjoying the
sunshine in bathing suits while we were all in our
overcoats and hats!!! |
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