January 12th til the 1st of February 2017.
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| Grema the Icelandic sheepdog and I mid-arvo on a snowy day. |
Time truly went the fastest while we were at this workaway, before we knew it an amazing three weeks had flown by... This was our first kid-specific workaway so we weren't really sure what we could be in for, but it turned out to be one of the most rewarding few weeks of the trip! Odinn and Elisa were our Icelandic hosts and they headed the family of 5.
The kids: Alexander was a 10yo boy with mass energy and super athletic. Astro 7, was wise beyond her years, super smart and considered the most responsible of the clan. Asdis 5, had a smile that melted hearts and knew how to use it! On weekends Elisa and Odinn would host some other local kids (sort of foster kids), which increased the energy levels in their modest house and made for plenty of laughing, and just hectic scenes.
Our three weeks were spent milking at a dairy farm with Odinn in the morning, followed by coffee, snacks and a couple of hours on the couch before a couple of outdoor activities feeding bulls, spreading cow shit on the fields or odd jobs outside. If the weather was pretty cold and rough we would have a clean up around the house, run errands or pick up the kids from school or gymnastics training in Akureyri. If there was time we'd help Odinn with the afternoon milking. We truly tried hard to help out as much as we could with kids or around the house because this family was so busy, that even sorting out the odd socks was a help! Overall you could say we didn't have any real routine, as the household was truly ran on a day to day basis which kept things interesting to say the least.
We had a ripper mix of weather, -15degC, rain, snow, sun and wind. Sometimes it was just too cold to go outside, other times if you rugged up and kept dry you would be fine. We have definatly met a new 'cold' on this trip. Although once you go below -6, the cold feels the same unless its windy!
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Looking south outside our workaway house! After a day of rain all the snow had melted revealing the road and some grass! this was unusual for winter but we were pretty thankful because it revealed some beautiful landscapes!
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Our location was half an hour directly south of Akureyri in this valley of farms - mainly dairy but a couple of sheep. Up the road the neighbours also had workaway guests so we got the chance a few times to catch up with them over coffee, and even travel around a bit since one couple had ferried their car over from Denmark. Despite been relatively remote, we had quite a social time.
This workaway was the most flexible, most trusting and most 'freetime' of any of our experiences yet. We became close and comfortable with the hosts, which eventually turned into a night out at the Akureyri pubs and clubs on our last Saturday night with Odinn and Elisa.
Our best memories:
Alexander asking us to call into the Airport on our way home from gymnastics training to pick up a "lost book" when really he was pulling the wool over our eyes and convinced the cafe at the airport to give him a free lollypop.
Late night Icelandic Scrabble with a few beers! (they have loads of weird letters in their alphabet!)
Baking hedgehog and chocolate cake with the girls.
Parenting 101 with Odinn and Elisa.
Having a night out in Akureyri with Odinn and Elisa.
Playing "Eye Spy" in cartrips with the kids.
Playing hide-and-seek with the kids.
Trips to the local pool and water slide in below zero conditions.
Learning how to milk and work in an Icelandic dairy.
On an overnight excursion with some new Czech friends Zuzanna and Simon, we went to the grocery store to buy a couple of frothies - which turned out to be a disgusting orange soft drink! Luckily I had kept the reciept and the shop replaced them!
Multiple "icelandic beer" tasting nights over movies, and just plenty of beers in general!
Seeing the northern lights dance over the house!
Worst Memories:
The hangover after our night out.
Eating a salty, salty liquorice lolly thing supplied by Odinn (thought it was going to be deliciously sweet but we were so wrong).
What we learnt:
Icelandic cows produce on average 5000 liters of milk a year. The top producers are around 8000 litres. The cows are stabled all year round and we experienced a mix of different diary systems from a fully automated robot, to the more laborious mechanical milkers which were taken to each cow in each stall and attached, milked and then removed.
Icelandic lambs average around 17.5kg, and their average lambing percentages are around 200%.
How to walk on Ice - fair dinkum this is a skill and requires a significant amount of concentration when walking from AtoB. We both fully lost our footing and ended up on our arse multiple times on walks, trying to get out of the car in icy conditions and even just trying to walk up the street could be a task.
Traveling in a car for an extended period of time (say an hour), and sitting in the back seat your feet get bloody cold, which is something little and annoying I had never experienced.
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| Plenty of fresh snow at the Christmas house. |
Myvatn Trip
Simon and Zuana were stationed up the road, doing a workaway on another dairy farm. They were from the Czech Republic (Czechland as the Icelandic's referred to it LOL), and had brought their car over via the ferry so we teamed up with them to head up to Myvatn which is one of the highlights of the north of Iceland. It was a brisk -12degrees early in the day but this provided some reasonably clear conditions and meant basically all the sights were tourist-less.
First stop was to Krafia Volcano Crater which was unfortunately all frozen... and turned out to be literally the coldest experience we've ever had. We drove up to an icey top carpark hiked to its peak. We couldn't see much because everything was white. It was so, so icy and we both ate shit hard a couple of times. The phones stopped working and died mid Snapchat and our hands, feet and faces felt like they were going to freeze off.
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| Hveraround geothermal field. |
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| Amy, Zuana and Simon enjoying the sulphur and mud ponds. |
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| Looking over the Myvatn's Krafla Power station from Krafla Volcano Crater |
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Grjotagja - lava cave and thermal spring. A popular swimming hole until the 1970's when local eruptions caused the water to increase to an undesirable 50deg. This location was used in the Game of Thrones where Jon Snow had intimate relations with a Wildling while bathing!!!
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| Earlier in the day it had been -12, at this point it was -4.2 and a toasty 41 in the thermal pools. A good way to finish off a cold day of exploring! |
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| Enjoying the warmth with Simon and Zuana |
Day two we were welcomed by another amazing sunrise! Myvatn as a town is super small and is a good example of how remote Iceland really is. I can imagine in summer it would be bustling with tourists, but in winter it felt almost like an abandoned town. It was hard to get an understanding of what sort of industry, or work might be available out here other then farming and tourism.
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| Enroute to Hverfjall Crater - easily accessible even in winter in a 2WD, we just missed seeing the sunrise from the top of the crater but were lucky enough to get some ripper photos on the way in. |
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One of the last stops on our two day journey north was to Godafoss Waterfall. Stunning!
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| A neighbours robotic milker - since its installation the farmer has been able to produce x4 the milk. Cows wander into the robot at their leisure (when they feel pressure in the utter), get a feed of corn or pellets from the robot and milked at the same time. Each cow is electronically tagged which the robot can recognise. This process allows the farmer to keep an eye on individual milk production and allocate specific feed depending on the cow's condition. On average these cows would self milk 3 times a day compared to the milking system where we worked just twice a day. Despite the increase in milk production, unfortunately milk quality was down since the robot wasn't able to clean the utter as well as the human, but the farmer was working on different pen systems etc. to try and present a cleaner cow to the robot. The technology in the robot was very impressive with lasers in place to recognise teet location etc. Very, very interesting!!! |
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| Elisa had a handful of Icelandic Horses - tough buggers stay outside all year round. Other then feeding them a couple of times and some hoof maintenance (if they have shoes snow builds up under the hoof). If you want to ride horses throughout winter, by law you need to have under cover stables so that after a ride and the horse is all sweaty it's protected from the elements. |
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| Amy on the scraper at the dairy. |
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| Loading up the shit-spreader (basically a big water tank with a pretty simple PTO pump, pumping cow shit onto a plate which sort of directed the crap into a fanlike pattern) before spreading it on the fields! |
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| Some weird ram (left) and an Icelandic ram on the right. |
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| The pregnant ewe in a shed situation. |
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| The neighbours Icelandic sheepdog in full flight! |
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| Typical dress ups with Asdis. |
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| Via the GoPro - which really did a pretty good job at getting plenty of colour of the norther lights. They are pretty amazing and when conditions are perfect you really see them dance about the sky. |
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| Via the olympus - trying to get a little artistic... to get the olympus to focus it needed something lit up. Really our lense wasn't good enough to capture a truly great image over long shutter speeds but we managed to get a couple. |
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| GoPro did a great job!! |
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| A day trip to Husavik - north east of the workaway |
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| The sun setting over Akureyri. |
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| Akureyri on our way back from Husavik just after the sunset. |
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| Day trip to Siglufjordur. This tiny village actually had a pretty handy ski field. |
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| The closest church to our stay was a cheeky wooden/turf arrangement built in the 1800's. |
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| Enroute to Akureyri one night to pick up the kids. |
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| Akureyri church. Saw a local end up on his lid walking down these icy stairs. |
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| The squad! Thanks to these legends for putting us up! We wished we could have stayed longer! |
So much could be said about our couple of weeks at this workaway. The experience was amazing and how these people have managed to live in one of the most vast and remote places in the world is truly amazing. The scenery is unrivalled by our experiences so far and we felt so lucky that we had the opportunity to stay so long in such an amazing place with true Icelandic people!
Icelandic tucker we enjoyed:
- Sour rams testicals
- Sheeps head
- Rye bread
- Dried fish
- Hung and smoked meat
- Skyr
- Liquorice
What a fantastic place. Sounds udderly amazing. Great photos and thanks for sharing. Take care.
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