The Voyage of the Vikings and the Solar Eclipse — Part II

kwankew

57 minutes ago

6 min read

On August 10, we arrived at Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. The ship had docked for almost two days in Reykjavik at the end of July. I took that time to visit the National Museum, the Settlement Exhibition, and walk the streets. On the second day, I snorkeled in the Silfra, a challenging activity given the stiff dry suit and unwieldy gloves. All in all, I was glad to experience it.

Seyðisfjörður is an idyllic harbor town with many early 19th-century wood buildings. The first thing I did was to take a scenic drive to Borgarfjörður Eystri -- the puffin capital of Iceland. I finally saw these forever youthful, adorable puffins nesting along the cliff face, many of them floating on the sea. I didn’t see any pufflings: were they inside the burrows? I learned they are left to fend for themselves, to fly out to sea for four years on their own before nesting!

The viewing platforms brought me so close to the puffins; I could almost touch one. He was also eyeing me with curiosity. Oh, was I so tempted to do it…I could watch them for hours; one puffin came back with a mouthful of fish. Puffins spend two-thirds of the year at sea alone. I guess they have had enough of their partners and need to take a long break...To recharge?

Back at Seyðisfjörður, I made a brief visit to the blue church and later to the waterfalls closer to the harbor. The town’s steep-sided valleys make it prone to avalanches, and it has its share of tragedy. To defend against such natural disasters, avalanche dams have since been constructed around the town.

Husavík was our next stop; I went horseback riding and missed the whale/puffin watch. I sensed my horse was fatigued and bored; this was his second trip of the morning. The track, worn down to a foot deep, wasn't much fun for riders or horses. We were not allowed to ride freely in the vast open space.

On the day of the solar eclipse, the ship stopped at Grundafjordur on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. The captain canceled all excursions, worried we would not return to the ship on time due to traffic congestion. Instead, I took a local morning trip to visit the lava field, the shark museum, Kolgrafafjörður, the fjord where the massive herring die-offs of the winter of 2012-2013 occurred — a very sad story of both man-made and natural causes and Kirkjufell, the iconic mountain, and Kirkjufellsfoss. All day, the sun struggled with the clouds, and the rain started. At the Iceland Mint in Grundarfjordur, using a sledgehammer, I made a few coins commemorating the solar eclipse.

When the time came for the solar eclipse, we were all disappointed. The sky and horizon became dark, and silence cloaked the sea for a few seconds.

We sailed for 2 days at sea and again through the Prince Christian Sound, gazing at the glacier and icebergs before reaching Qaqortoq, Greenland.

Qaqortoq means the White Place. It was very foggy and wet. The town is home to the oldest fountain in Greenland, Mindebrønden, finished in 1932. A group of artists and craftsmen responsible for the Stone & Man project carved many sculptures into rock faces and boulders all over town. Hiking up the mountains gave me a wonderful view of the colorful town, my feet crunching on a bed of blueberries, making me wonder if a hungry bear was following me.

That evening, we left Greenland for St. Anthony, Newfoundland. Once off the tender, I walked the one mile to the trailhead of the Dare Devil Trail, trekking up 476 wooden steps to the top of Fishing Point Head, being rewarded with a panoramic vista of the cliffs, the ocean, the town, and the Fox Point Lighthouse of the Fishing Point Municipal Park. Many winding trails radiate from the top. Down at sea level, there were trails for whale and iceberg watching; I saw none of them except many birds.

Back in the town, I paid a visit to the Grenfell House. In 1892, Sir Wilfred Thomson Grenfell joined the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen to care for the coastal inhabitants and fishermen. Poverty and tuberculosis were rampant. The mission expanded to the building of schools, an orphanage, cooperatives, industrial work projects, and social work. Dr. Grenfell was convinced that diseases followed poverty. The mission soon included caring for native people and settlers along the Labrador coast and the eastern part of the northern peninsula of Newfoundland.

A short Tea House Hill Walking Trail behind the house leads one to the boulder where the ashes of the doctors, including Sir Grenfell and his wife, Anne Elizabeth Caldwell MacClanahan, were entombed. He wrote many books and was a talented painter, painting Christmas cards for sale as a fundraising event. Mrs. Grenfell was the bulwark behind this man; she was the organizer of his missions and editor of many of his books.

In an entry to his A Labrador Logbook, he wrote, "The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of this world is not 'To have and to hold' but 'To give and to serve.' There can be no other meaning."

St. John, the oldest city in North America, with its history dating back to 1497, flaunted its mix of colorful wooden houses, stately stone churches, colonial and modern buildings. Our excursion took us to Cape Spear, an escarpment jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, the easternmost point of North America. Then 185 steps led us to Cape Spear Lighthouse — the oldest surviving lighthouse in the province, imagining how the lighthouse keeper and his family lived in the mid-19^th century.

Cape Spear, the easternmost point of North America

On December 12, 1901, at Signal Hill, Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal, a faint Morse code letter “S” from Poldhu, Cornwall, England, across the Atlantic.

I left the bus tour group and hiked the 1.7 miles alone from the hilltop to the dock, snaking through the battery, a historic, picturesque fishing town. It has rainbow-colored wooden houses built into the contours of the cliffs of Signal Hill, enjoying the beautiful views while negotiating the wooden steps, narrow cliff path, and rocky ledges. It was a very gusty day.

By the time I reached the town center, I had less than an hour to visit the Rooms, and the Basilica of St. John’s was closed.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, was the cruise's last stop. The public gardens, a Victorian garden, were an oasis amid the busy downtown. The Halifax Citadel National Historic Site of Canada was built from the 18^th through the 19^th century; its fortifications guarded against attacks from the native Indians and the French. From there, we headed to Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia’s fishing village with its iconic lighthouse on the rugged, granite slopes.

Circling back to Halifax to visit the Fairview Lawn Cemetery, where 121 victims of the Titanic disaster are buried. The granite markers are arranged as in a ship's hull. Alma Pålsson and her four children emigrated to join her husband in Chicago. She arrived too late to reach the lifeboats, which were all full; she asked August Wennerström to hold onto two of her children, but he lost his grip, and they disappeared into the water. All five of them perished. There was the grave of the “Unknown Child”, later identified as 19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin by DNA test. The stories of the victims of the Titanic were a difficult thing to end the day at Halifax.

We spent one more day at sea before landing at Boston Harbor, home sweet home— time to go home and see my cat, Kuchi, an indoor/outdoor cat, cooped up for 35 days inside the house while we sailed away to see the world.