June 2022
It is always interesting when ones preconceived notions are tossed to the wind and then brought back again. In the first two days of driving in Iceland, I was awestruck by the green hills, fertile valleys, and luscious hills. But this is not what I had expected. I had expected black sand, black gravel, and volcanic, well…black.
Then I began driving through the Skeiðarársandur…
The Skeiðarársandur (referred to from here on out as sander) sand flats are flat and empty regions along Iceland’s southern coast. They are created by glaciers that are situated high in the mountains. The glaciers scrape up silt, sand, and gravel, which eventually finds its way down to the coast via glacial rivers, where this collection of mother nature is dumped in huge desert-like plains. The sander here is so huge that the Icelandic word (singular: sander) is used internationally to describe the topographic phenomenon of a glacial outwash plain.
Looking out at the Skeiðarársandur
This is the largest sander in the world and covers a 510 square mile area. This sander has swallowed up a considerable amount of farmland and continues to grow.
The Ring Road that crosses the sander was the last part of the national highway to be constructed in 1974 due to this vast outwash.
The highway that runs through Skeiðarársandur
In November 1996, the road crossing the Skeloararsandur sandflats was washed away in a huge glacial flood following an eruption of the volcano in the Vatnojaokull glacier. The flood water rose, reaching its highest level in 15 hours, and then took two days to subside.
Pieces of the bridge left after the great flood
Huge blocks of ice were swept along by the flood causing damage to the road and washing the Gigjukvisl Bridge completely away. It is estimated that the icebergs that reached the bridge weighed between 1,000 and 2,000 tons.
If nothing else, this all showed how sensitive the Icelandic road system is to natural disasters.
Eventually, nature takes over, and some moss does grow.
So to keep this post from simply being photos of black, let me bring you some fabulous scenes before and after this amazing expanse of black that one just sees along the road.
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Lupine, while gorgeous, has become an invasive species in Iceland.