The country of sheep

As I mentioned in the story of our day trip, we saw lots of sheep on the way. There aren't so many sheep here in Hallormsstadur but I think everywhere else in Iceland you can see them everywhere. I read from a magazine on the plane that cars often have a sheep insurance in Iceland. :) And after driving to Borgafjordur I'm not surprised about the insurance! It's really good to have. I mean, the sheep don't get very scared of cars and just keep on walking on the road although a car is already quite close. Funny creatures. :)

Hengifoss

One of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland, Hengifoss, is quite near to Hallormsstadur. We walked up there to see it. It doesn't look like over 100m high but so the information table claimed. ;) The path up there was okay from the beginning but it got worse on the way. And also a bit dangerous. We had to cross the river as well and there was no sign of a bridge. Luckily the river was quite narrow at that point. The waterfall was quite impressive and worth seeing. :)

A day trip

Thor said we could take the car and drive around on the weekends. So today we made a day trip to Borgarfjordur (don't know if I got the name right, because I can't remember it by heart.. but something like that). That's a small village (or maybe just a village, there's about 200 inhabitants which is quite a lot..) The village looked... well, quite dead. I don't know how to describe it. We just thought why someone would move there because it was so isolated. It looked like a fishing village as it was by the sea.

The way to Borgarfjordur was quite interesting. :) The road looked quite big in the map but blacktop ended quite soon after Egilsstadir. There were lots of sheep all around and they were really close to the road. And they didn't really care even if we drove! We had to drive over a mountain. The road was still quite bad and there were no fences in the side. But it was a very beautiful way. I mean, we don't have mountains at home and although this wasn't very high it was still impressive.

On the way back we drove to the other side of the lake and then around it back to Hallormsstadur. The road wasn't so good over there either but we managed. :) Iceland is really impressive, I'm looking forward to see more! :)

Hallormsstadur

Here's the village where we are staying, Hallormsstadur. Okay, it looks pretty much like only forest. :) And that's what it is.. But none of the places here are big. I mean, Akureyri is the seconde biggest place and there's about 15000 people. Still, enjoying the time here :)

Barbequeing...

This photo was taken already a week ago. We walked in the arboretum and found a place where to do a fire so we decided to barbeque. :) Too bad the wind was blowing so strongly that we were a bit afraid that the whole forest will burn. It would be quite a thing to burn nearly the only forests in Iceland... ;)

Home Sweet Home

This is the house where we are staying here. It's next to the research station and usually the summer workers stay here. There's bedroom and livingroom upstairs, kitchen, dining room, 3 bedrooms, bathroom and toilet downstairs. Quite cousy :)

This is our room upstairs.

This is living room upstairs. There's TV and DVD player and one of the Icelanders has quite a lot of DVDs :)

Here's the dining room. There are also the people who work at the nursery having lunch with us here. The food has been great. :)

Problems to update

Sorry, I've had problems to update the blog. Somehow whenever I get everything ready, the connection fails. :/ I hope to get some new photos soon. :) The work has gone well lately as the trees are now bigger than in the stands where we started. Nice. But the weather... :/ Okay, it's sunny, most of the time at least, but so cold. Yesterday morning it was only +3 degrees!! So, hat and scarf have been really handy.. :) So people in Finland, enjoy the heat, we'll bring the cold there with us :)

This is where we exactly are

Here's a map of Iceland where you can see where Egilsstadir exactly is (the red mark). Hallormstadur is quite straight south from it, about 27 km. It's not the best possible map because the big lake next to us isn't there but at least you can see somehow where we are :)

A normal day at work?

We've seen quite a different stands here. Some of them are ok, well taken care of, perhaps recently thinned. Then again, some are the opposite. In general, the trees aren't so good quality which I've used to at home. Perhaps it's because of the climate here and even more harish conditions than in Finland. Today we had the worst stand ever. And I mean, really, ever. I've never seen something like this. We had to make our way through the stands cutting off the branches with something like an ax (vesuri in Finnish) :) But we managed to measure it :) Luckily, it was Annukka's turn to measure because I wouldn't have done it.. I was already ready to walk away... :)

"Eeeh, guys, we think that you have forgot to do something here.. right?"

We are not alone

We haven't been alone in the forest while we have worked. There has been a lot of birds flying around. The lake right next to the forests is the third biggest in Iceland so I suppose they enjoy being there. Not to mention Icelandic horses which are nearly everywhere. We saw some the other day while we worked and they came really close to us. But the hay I tried to offer to one of them wasn't good... :)

A few photos

I've had some difficulties to get posts here as well as photos but hopefully I'd have better luck from now on.. :)

A view close to Reykjavik. No trees :)

Annukka, Hanna, the lake, the forest and the mountains

Siberian or Russian larch.. no idea which one :)

The first word we've learnt in Icelandic is "klettur". It means rock and it's everywhere in our maps.. :)

In Iceland!!

It was time to leave again on 29th of May. I spent only a few days at home, celebrated my dad's 50th birthday, unpacked and packed my suitcase and then I was again in the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. Iceland.. wow, I never thought I'd end up here, not to mention to do my Master's Thesis here. It's not exactly a forestry country, isn't it? :)

The first few minutes in a bus on the way to Reykjavik showed what we had thought: no signs of trees. Only something like desert.. We flew to Egilsstadir, eastren Iceland from Reykjavik. Basically we flew to the other side of the country. It was quite interesting. First of all, the plane was small and shaking a lot. Then, we only saw snow outside! Oh man... It's May!

We met Thor, the director of the state forest in Egilsstadir in the airport. He is really nice. Although the question: "Pratar ni svenska?" (=Do you speak Swedish?) got us a bit surprised. ;) He took us to Hallormstadur, 30 km from Egilsstadir where the research station is. Here we are staying in a house where usually the summer workers live. It seems really good place. :)

Our task here is to measure Russian and Siberian Larch that the Icelanders have been planting here since 1938. Obviously the forests aren't like what we've been used to at home but it doesn't matter. The landscape is rocky but still, beautiful in its own way. There's a big lake on the otherside and snowy mountains in the other. Not bad. :) Let's see how our work here gets going on...

The blog will be (probably...) written by me and then Annukka, my friend who's here as well. We'll do it in English and Finnish and if requested, also in Swedish ;) We're practising it here a lot..