Faces of a valley

On my way eastward along the ring road #1, I came though a remarkable long valley. Here are some pictures and descriptions of its many faces.

The valley started wide, with an equally wide river, named Héraðsvötn. The road goes upstream alongside the river.

Then the valley and the road branches into a side river named Norðurá. There I stopped to admire a point where the river is cut deeply into the land, a thrilling view that didn't seem to thrill the sheep that grazed there. They are used to it, I guess.



And then, driving on, I noticed something mysterious. The road seemed to have climbed a pass after which it seemed to go downhill again. However, the river to the side of the road still flowed in the direction against me -- i.e. the river ran uphill!

It must have been an optical illusion, but a good one. I have read of this phenomenon before. Wikipedia has a list of "magnetic or gravity hills", but this one in Iceland is not yet listed.

Then came a new river, Öxnadalá, and this one behaved normally and ran downhill with the road. The valley became a wide softly rounded groove, eine Rinne.




And when you think that's all there was to see, then you are not prepared for the sudden sight of a frighteningly jagged ridge on your left. These peaks, or the highest of them, is known as Hraundrangi.



The poet Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-1845) grew up at the foot of these mountains in a farmstead called Steinsstaðir. He was one of the founding fathers, and best examples, of romanticism in Iceland. And I think this possibly not least due to his growing up at such a magnificent location.

Jónas Hallgrímsson was a great admirer of the German author Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). Konrad Maurer spent a night here at Steinsstaðir on 28 July 1858.