Once again we were dazzled
by the hardiness and the ingenuity of the Icelanders. Much of the display in the museum at Egilsstadir would remind you of pioneer America, and of the hardships the pioneers endured. We did notice that the exhibit used exactly the same photographs of women separating cream and of husband and wife grinding manure that we'd seen at Hofn. I'd say Egilsstadir's museum had a little more of the spit-shine professionalism that some people like, yet it also retained some of the down-home, local charm that I prefer.
There's one image from the museum in Egilsstadir that I cannot dismiss. It is permanently locked in my mind. It is of a device, the front part of which looks something a muzzle you'd slip over a dog's nose and jaw to keep it from barking or biting; the back part of it is a wooden handle that you'd use to hold the device; and between is a piece of metal shaped not unlike a skullcap, except it had a bolt running freely through it. At butchering time, this allowed one man to kill sheep BAM. With one hand you pull the muzzle over the sheep's nose, pull the device back tight so the piece of metal with the bolt is positioned on the sheep's forehead, and BAM with the hammer in the other hand you slam that bolt hard and drive it into the sheep's forehead. Instant death so rudely come. If you've ever had to hit a runt pig in the head with a hammer, you know how it feels to deliver this kind of death.
Once we finished touring the museum, we still had afternoon ahead of us, so we drove south on Highway 931 along Lake Lagarfljot to see Iceland's National Forest, the largest woods in the country. The area has been protected since 1907 in a country that lost 95% of its trees in its first thousand years of settlement. Of the trees which remain, those in the National Forest, we from Wisconsin might in an unkind moment speak of them as scraggily. The largest tree we saw here was no more than a foot across at the base. The rest were lesser trees of three types. Only the evergreens appeared somewhat familiar. The deciduous trees were shrubby, branched, and somewhat squat versions of the Idea of Tree. The third and most populous tree reminded me of our tamaracks, a tree with needles like an evergreen, but it loses that greenness every year and has to re-bud in the spring. On first impression, the National Forest looked to us like it was mostly dead trees, but up close you could see buds beginning to form.
We climbed and climbed in the forest, and got a lovely view of the lake and the forest from our high vantage. There's a Forest Service Center on the grounds, a school, a hotel, and other facilities. The largest building had been a manor house in the last century.
The big lake across the road from the National Forest, Lagarfljot, is reputed to have its monster, called Lagarfljotsormurinn ("The Lagarfljot serpent"), something akin to the Loch Ness monster; oh, yes, "there are many stories of a monster in the lake," our Guide says. We didn't see it.
To be continued....
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