North took us by the heart so much I have to write some more about it. Especially about the herring town of Siglufjörður, then through Eyjafjörður to Akureyri, the second biggest city of Iceland.
In between Skagafjörður and Eyjafjörður, you will find the town of Siglufjörður. We fell in love with this little town and in the end decided to stay for a few days. It is the northernmost town in Europe with all year round population. The town´s golden era lasted 100 years, with population over three thousand people, and constituted in fishing and processing herrings. There is a fantastically made museum of this era where you will find everything from types of boats and life on them, ways of processing herring and different usages of the products (for example Nivea cream used to be made from these herrings, or rather their oil), to the stories of herring girls who lived there, processed the fish and how they lived their lifes. Allow enough time for the visit as it is in 5 buildings.
There is also a nice hiking trail from the town which goes up the fjord and around the hills. We somehow lost the trail taking a bad turn at the beggining, but made our own hike anyway, climbing the steep slopes above the town. Afterwards, we got rewarded by magnificient views from a meadow just beyond the avalanche blocks.
Where to eat? Try Kaffi Rauðka where they serve very good local food. If you are courageous enough, you can also try the rotten shark. We did, but I could feel it even the next day…:-/ For an evening out, there are basically two options – coctails in the Sigló Hotel Bar
or the Harbour House Café, a small place in the harbour taken care of by an older sympathetic fellow. If the flag is up, it is open 🙂 Locals meet there almost every evening, so we spent a long night with them, having fun and discussing everything. Another interesting fact about the town of Siglufjörður – the famous Icelandic TV series shot in cooperation with BBC Trapped was shot here, or at least most of it.
Moving down from Siglufjörður one will get to Dalvík and from here leaves the ferry to Grímsey island, the northernmost part of Iceland which crosses the Arctic Circle. It makes for a nice day trip. The ferry runs twice a week during summer, the journey takes 3 hours and then you get 4 hours on the island before it departs back to the mainland. There is also an airport and a plane flies there daily during summer, but it is more expensive, obviously. Going north from the port, you soon cross the Arctic Circle, marked by a pole, and get to cliffs with a lot of birds, including puffins and arctic terns who attack if one comes too close to their eggs. Once back at Dalvík, you can grab something at Gregor´s Pub, nice restaurant close to the port with a summer garden.
A little bit south from Dalvík there is a tiny village of Hauganes with the most lovely guesthouse called Selá. Situated above the village, 5 minutes walk from the port from which Whale Watching Tour leaves, it offers such beautiful rooms for such a reasonable price we had to stay for 2 nights. The owner buys all of the equipment second hand, restores it and it all makes for such a lovely place. There is also a cosy lobby from which you can see the midnight sun in summer or the Northern Lights in winter.
Deep down in the Eyjafjörður is situated Akureyri, the second largest city of Iceland with population of about 18 000 people. There is Akureyrarkirkja which was build by the same architect as the cathedral in Reykjavík, and close to it is the city center which is basically made by two streets – Hafnarstraeti and Skipagata. We visited the Strikið restaurant with a rooftop terrace, original cocktails and good food, and the Café Amour where they have live music, pubquiz nights and also a second storey with projections of sport events (which was good for the EURO matches;-) ). In Akureyri, there is also a vinbúðin with quite good opening hours 😉
