Móskarðshnúkar Hike
[Photos taken 12 June 2025, posted online 14 May 2026. The weather so far is staying “typical” for May, bright window-weather days (beautiful but very chilly), interspersed with rainy/cloudy milder days.]
My hiking group gathered after work to hike up Móskarðshnúkar (“brownish-grey-pass-peaks”), the Eastern-most part of Mount Esja easily visible from the capital area, one of the very few hikes on my “bucket list”. It’s a 2-3 (?) surprisingly lightly colored triangular peaks on top of a regularly colored base, often shrouded in clouds. Everytime I see them I now say to myself “I’ve been up there!”.
This hike was speed-controlled by the guide who is a physical therapist, and she kept the pace very slow and steady, which was great since it’s just up, up, and up. She also gave me the best technical hiking pointer I’ve ever gotten: it’s actually your back leg that should be doing all the work lifting you upwards. Take short steps, and use your rear-leg butt, back of leg, toes to lift yourself, so the front of the forward-foot thigh doesn’t have to do much except hold steady. This saves the front of the thighs for the descent.
Lo and behold, this was the first time ever that I wasn’t the last one off the mountain, since I still had some juice left in the front of the thighs! Totally blew my mind!
Thursday 12 June 2025
Hiking “The Mosfellian Alps”/ Hafnarfjörður Sailing
[Photos taken 25 – 31 May 2025, posted online 11 April 2026. Most of the snow is gone, the sun is high in the sky, and gosh-darn-it spring may be in the air?!]
I’d signed up for a spring hiking-group, but ended up missing a lot of hikes because a) my Achilles tendons were super sore and fragile, b) I’d already hiked the same place in much better weather. But, finally all the stars aligned, and I made it to a hike, and had a lovely time.
The week that followed included a photo session, matching my deadlift PR of 1×140 kg without injury, making sushi at home (and nobody got sick afterwards), dinner-and-a-walk meet-up with a cousin, seeing signs of spring/summer for real, playing the Blue Prince computer game, buying a new watch, lots of garden work, a junior college graduation party, and going sailing!
Sunday 25 May 2025
Sporhelludalir Hike / Wood Staining / Heatwave Ends
[Photos taken 20 – 24 May 2025, posted online 06 April 2026. Stormy day outside.]
The heatwave continued on, and I joined a few friends for a free guided evening hike close to the capital area. Apparently some of Game of Thrones was filmed around there.
As the weather just kept being awesome, we began sanding and staining various wooden surfaces which needed it, at seemingly all hours of the long days. I got a spring-haircut, we became unwitting hosts to a few mice (which Finnur excitedly removed), and attended a graduation party. The kids are growing up!
Tuesday 20 May 2025
Weeding Day 1 / Búrfellsgjá Hike
[Photos taken 10 – 11 May 2025, posted online 01 March 2026. Currently celebrating my birthday from Munich Airport, en route home.]
Anna wanted to have her university graduation at home, so I was inspired to make the backyard a bit tidier. The first issue was that the grass had crawled over a pebble-filled separator-area to the garden edges, making it impossible to mow properly.
The day after, we went on a hike I’ve wanted to do in daylight for a long time!
Saturday 10 May 2025
Spring Tasks /
[Photos taken 16 – 20 March 2025, posted online 08 November 2025. Snow still lingers after the biggest ever October snowfall in the capital on 28 October. I measured 40 cm /16 inches in our backyard. 07 December 2025. Blog’s taken the metaphorical back seat as life’s been very very busy. Just returned from seeing Radiohead in Copenhagen!]
The temperature reached a convincing 8.5 C / 47 F, and I remembered that the shrubbery needed trimming before they started spring-sprouting.
We went out to dinner with friends, I went on a hike with a new hiking group (that I would miss a lot of hikes with), Emma got a spring-time haircut, and we packed for our upcoming triple-couple-trip to Tenerife!
Sunday 16 March 2025
Lady-Living / Hiking The-Other-Skálafell / Concrete Surveillance
[Photos taken 13 – 20 September 2024, posted online 13 December 2024. Warm weather has washed all ice and snow away, so today it’s just cold and dark. Only 8 days until the days start getting longer...]
One of the sewing club members kindly invited us all for a sleep-over at her estate, a hop and a skip outside the capital area. The afternoon-weather was gorgeous (it turned miserable the following day) and we had a lovely time, managing to celebrate a birthday.
Two days later day I joined another group of ladies to hike up a mini-mount (Skálafell á Hellisheiði). That week Emma got a plan to align her teeth, I met old coworkers for dinner, checked out the massive construction going on by the music school, and the small scale fiber-optic-laying-stuff by our house.
Friday 13 September 2024
Grábrók & Glanni @ Norðurá / Wacky Weather
[Photos taken 21 – 24 July 2024, posted online 11 October 2024. A busload of Italians has invaded the coffee house again!]
I was in a hiking mood, so I contacted a couple of lady-friends who I knew were staying close to our summer house, and they kindly let me join them for a day out and about. We fed them dinner in return!
Then the weather turned windy and rainy, so we mostly just hunkered indoors for a few days, but did make it out to fancy dinner with friends.
Sunday 21 July 2024
Ten Lovely Ladies @ Hveradalir & Gullfoss
[Photos taken 14 July 2024, posted online 09 October 2024. It’s pretty out there.]
Our stay at Gíslaskáli (Gísli’s cabin) came to an end as the storm had finally passed. We decided to drive up to Hveradalir (“Fumarole-valleys” or “Geothermal-valleys”), where we’d attempted to hike to the day before.
On the way there we passed by the pretty Gýgjarfoss waterfalls (two rivers merging into one), passed the Highland Base area, and lots of pretty vistas, before finally oooh-ing and awww-ing over the Hveradalir area. It really is quite beautiful.
We then drove back to civilization, again getting thoroughly shaken on the long unpaved road back to paved asphalt. We stopped at the visitor’s center by Gullfoss (“Golden waterfall”) where a husband awaited us, to whisk his wife and another traveler off to a new adventure. We then drove back to the capital area, all quite happy with how things turned out.
Sunday 14 July 2024
Celebrations / Wacky-Weather / Helgafell Circled
[Photos taken 01 – 13 March 2024, posted online 25 July 2024. The weather continues being wet, wet, wet. The plant-life is loving it, but the humans are getting a bit miserable…]
March 2024 would turn out to be a very busy month. It kicked off with birthday parties, a confirmation, a mild eruption threat, wild weather changes, a new pizza oven, a programming competition for Bjarki, a hike, and work-wonderings. Phew!
Friday 01 March 2024
Chef-lings, Graduation-Season, & Outdoors-ing
[Photos taken 20 – 31 May 2023, posted online 14 20 January 2024. An eruption started early this morning last Sunday just outside the town of Grindavík. Three houses were burned down as lava entered the town itself. The protective wall successfully diverted most of the lava past the town, look for insane footage of the machines being rescued off of the wall as lava surrounds it, and then later in the day closing a wall-gap where the main road was. The ground is all cracked as parts of the town sunk by 1 m, and it’s very dangerous being in town. One road worker died as the ground collapsed under his feet a few days before the eruption. The town remains evacuated, and will be for the foreseeable future.]
Finnur transitioned from a soccer-group-trip to Scotland to working from London the following week, getting the royal treatment at my dad’s & Shirley’s! Meanwhile, I assigned-dinner making to the kids, one dinner each, as Mon/Wed/Fri afternoon gym-class cuts into dinner-prep time.
We all survived the lack of true-chef, and then transitioned over to attending junior-college graduation parties. All this was mixed in with some outdoors-ing.
Saturday 20 May 2023
