We decided to visit Siglufjordur, a small town at the tip of the Trollskaggi Peninsula, overlooking the Arctic Ocean. The northernmost town in Iceland, it is a mere 28 miles from the Arctic Circle.

It was cold. Rain has moved in and the temperatures dropped into the low fifties, along with wind. We had to go through three tunnels to get there. The first one was a doozy. Several km long, it was ONLY ONE LANE, BUT HAD TWO-WAY TRAFFIC, and accommodates semi trucks as well as more petite vehicles. The right hand lane, coming from Akuréyri, had turnouts, while the left did not. We were unfamiliar with the protocol of traversing a one-lane tunnel, never having encountered one before. It seemed to us the oncoming cars would often wait just prior to a turnout to allows us time to pull off. But that isn’t how it works, we discovered when we got to Siglurfjordur; the side with no turnouts has right of way and is not required to stop. The other lane is required to turn off as soon as they see oncoming traffic and stay there until it is clear.

The very short video above may give you some idea of how much fun the one-way tunnel was.

The town just before reaching Siglufjordur was Olafsfjordur, distinguished by a ski jump in the middle of town, next to the swimming pool. Sorry–no pictures.

Siglufjordur was the location for filming “Trapped,” a murder mystery series about a small town in Iceland that is cut off by a blizzard–and experiences more murders than the entire country does in four years. Since the murder rate here is 1.25 murders per year, that wasn’t hard. I highly recommend “Trapped.” You can find it on Amazon. The story, cinematography, and acting are all wonderful.

Siglufjordur appears to be unchanged by its brush with glory. It remains small and quiet. We had incredible hamburgers at TORGID Restaurant, along with the usual amazing potatoes. I told the owner honestly that it was the best burger I had ever had. He rewarded me with a shot of Jaegermeister—ack. Licorice. I hate the stuff, but it is such a popular flavor here that they have licorice-flavored sea salt.

After that, it was a visit to the Herring Museum or Frida’s Chocolates. We chose the latter, each getting two small but bursting-with-flavor chocolates and hot drinks. (It was very cold and rainy.)

If it had not been such bad weather, we probably would have explored more, but honestly, I think we gave Siglufjordur all we had to give today. We headed back to Akuréyri, now armed with the correct method of driving through the one-lane tunnel. Unfortunately, we encountered a semi truck that hadn’t gotten the memo, which forced us into a turnout on the wrong side of the road. But we survived.

Water. It’s hard to communicate just how much water there is here, fresh and salt. Waterfalls cascade down cliffs wherever you look, and as you travel, there are creeks, rivers, lakes, glacial ponds, fjords, inlets. The lava mountains have great snow patches on the heights that leak waterfalls and rivulets everywhere, and the glaciers feed great rivers. Being a Californian, I am somewhat overwhelmed by all the wetness.

But travel into the interior (which we won’t do because the roads are terrible, there are no amenities, and it is dangerous), Iceland is a desert of volcanic rubble and glaciers. It cannot sustain agriculture. It’s a wasteland. In the old days, no one went there unless they were an outlaw, an outcast, or someone who could not travel to the Althingi by water and had to take the dangerous interior route. Life in Iceland exists at the edge.

This is actually at Dummborgír. I forgot to post it. Many, many stones in Iceland are supposed to be trolls that got caught by the morning light and turned to stone. This one looks like a troll roaring. I have no idea if it is a locally-sanctioned troll stone or not.