Iceland

Iceland: Northern Lights

~ Steven A. Melnick ~ 6 Comments
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A mere representation of the Northern Lights created by Icelandic Elves

Remember your first date as a teenager?  When you finally got to go out in a car rather than be driven somewhere by your parents?  The excitement?  The anticipation?  The possibilities…(maybe more a guy thing)?  You picked up your date, probably went out for a bite to eat, maybe a movie.  Then, trying to act as cool as possible, a little drive.  You found a nice, secluded country road with a pull-off and sat, supposedly, to gaze at the stars but secretly hoping to get lucky.  The windows would fog up from all the “talking” and occasionally you’d have to start the engine and run the heater…

That’s exactly what looking for the Northern Lights was like…kinda.  Thwarted by unfavorable weather all week long, our Northern Lights tour was cancelled (no refunds by the way…what a racket).  We had arrived on Monday, our tour was to have been Wednesday evening but by Thursday it was still overcast with occasional rain.  Major bummer.  We didn’t despair because Iceland has a charm of its own and we were enjoying exploring the island nation and it’s many attractions (the friendly people, hot springs, geysers, volcanoes, geologic marvels, the food, beautiful scenery, elves, etc.).

The Icelandic Meteorological Office produces an Aurora Forecast each day indicating when conditions might be best to see the Northern Lights.   We followed their website like two children gazing at penny candy in the display case at the corner store.  Finally, Friday night was predicted to be clear.  We planned a nice dinner, complete with a few shots of Iceland’s “Black Death,” (Brennivin) to keep us warm, and then set off in the rental car to a deserted stretch of Icelandic highway.

We found a little pull-off area that would get us away from passing traffic and the glare from oncoming headlights, and like two teenagers, we sat gazing at the stars.  We gazed… and gazed ….and gazed some more.  We talked.  We fogged up the windows, started the car and ran the heater.  It’s cold in Iceland at night.

The stars were spectacular.  Without any ambient light from the city to obscure them, the stars seemed like, as George H.W. Bush once famously said, “…a thousand points of light.”  Being at such a high latitude (66 degrees north) and only about 160 miles from the Arctic Circle, the North Star (Polaris) was almost directly overhead–seemed a little weird.  Ironically, to see the Northern Lights we actually had to face toward the south.

But alas, no Northern Lights appeared.  As it turns out, not only must the sky be reasonably clear but the solar activity must also be just right.  The quest to see the aurora borealis was a bust.  On the plus side, I got to spend a few hours fogging up the windows with my sweetie gazing at the stars like two teenagers…

Iceland: Straddling the Continents

~ Steven A. Melnick
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Straddling the Continents in Iceland

In 2012 I had the pleasure of visiting Turkey to attend a conference as an invited keynote speaker.  During that trip, I was able to see awe-inspiring sites, ancient ruins from the Roman Empire dating back three centuries before Christ, museum artifacts from millennia past, the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, the underground Cistern, and the Sultan’s Palace to name a few.  The Turkish people are warm and friendly and welcoming.  It is a trip that I will always remember and hope, one day, to be able to do it again.

Istanbul is a city of two continents.  Part of it is in Europe and part in Asia. The city is divided by the Bosphorus Strait connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. In addition to being a key shipping route, the Bosphorus forms part of the continental boundary between Europe and Asia.  As I rode a tour boat up the Bosphorus in Istanbul, I was struck by the fact that I was straddling two continents on that ride.  Iceland gave me the opportunity to do it again.

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Looking down the canyon between the ridges of the Mid-Atlantic Rift in Iceland

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the longest mountain chain in the world, is formed by the up-welling of magma from deep below the earth’s surface on the ocean floor.  It creates an underwater mountain chain about 2-3 kilometers high and pushes the continental plates of North America, Europe, Africa, and South America apart.

While almost all of the ridge is below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, the rift rises to the surface in, …you guessed it …, Iceland.  We drove to Þingvallavegur, Iceland on the northwest side of the lake where the mid-Atlantic rift surfaces.  As you can see in the picture, I am standing in the rift with ridges on either side.  This is a point above the sea floor where North America and Europe are moving apart at about the same rate per year that your fingernails grow.

I’ve now straddled Europe & Asia in Turkey and North American & Europe (actually the Eurasian tectonic plate) in Iceland.  Now on to the San Andreas Fault to be able to straddle the North American and Pacific Plates… I guess I’m going to need some serious scuba gear to do the rest.