When we woke up in the morning of the third day of our roadtrip we were swathed in a white blanket of snow. We finally found the winter, or rather the winter found us! After having repacked all our boxes, blankets and jackets from the hut back into the car we were chilled to the bones, which put a little damper on our excitement. But as soon as we set off, we couldn’t do anything else but stick our heads out the windows with wide spread eyes. It felt as if we had stumbled through the back of our wardrobe directly into Narnia. An enchanted landscape of snow and ice…

Fightig against the strong wind we somehow made our way from the car to a small restaurant in Holmavik. The owner, a small ageing woman with a furrowed face and a large smile, was surprised that anyone actually managed visit her shop considering the harsh weather! She immediately started to prepare the baguettes for the sandwiches we had ordered.

To shorten the waiting time, she offered us to visit the exhibition Sorcery and Witchcraft in Iceland nearby – for a small extra charge, of course.

We learned a lot about actually practiced magic in Iceland (or at least the many practitioners believed, that it actually worked) – Mainly aimed to cure infirmities, to detect a robber or to steal the neighbor’s milk. If anyone has a need for things like that: Now we possess the knowledge of all the runes, incantations and secret ingredients needed. (A small hint: The chief ingredient of most spells are either the hair of a virgin or blood from diverse body parts of the wizard…)

Our thoughts still with the different, in parts very disturbing, occultes and witch trials we couldn’t enjoy our baguettes as much… But we were reconciled with a wonderful warm piece of rhubarb cake and lots of whipped cream right afterwards! 😀

Back in the car we drove on to Akureyri. But first, we needed to leave the Westfjords which wasn’t as easy as we had pictured it. In the middle of nowhere, on a narrow Icelandic mountain road, we were tracked down by a fully grown snow storm. With no more than 10 km/h we sneaked from one marker post to the next, always happy if we could see it through the snow flurry. We were very lucky no other car came along the road in the opposite direction, as we were constantly driving in the middle of the “road” in order to maximize our chance of staying on it. In the snow storm we wouldn’t have seen any car on a distance of more than 20 meters!

Nils did a great job! After two hours of pure adrenaline I managed to fall asleep and didn’t wake up until we reached Akureyri.

This article is part of a series called “Winterroadtrip – On the hunt for the Icelandic Winter“.

If you haven’t yet, read the first article here: Winterroadtrip I

The next one will be up soon!

All about winter in Iceland

Our first hike on a glacier: Where the Ice is blue

… And then right into one: Into the glacier – coming soon

A big thanks to our friends over at átak carrental who sponsored the car for this trip!