July 27, 1999 Day 5
At 65 km I turned left onto the road to the Laki Fissure. At first the road is fine, but once past the last farmhouse the road becomes rough and loose and sometimes steep. Twice I bounced both rear panniers off of the bike going down hill. I fixed that by putting cross lashing the bags with a 1 inch nylon strap. At least the road was not sandy, the only times I pushed were on steep uphills, but even on level stretches the pace was slow. There were five or six stream crossings, but the water was only mid-shin deep and not cold or fast. I finished the day at an old sheep station, Blagil, after 101 km.
July 28, 1999 Day 6
Had the fissure to myself. Interesting, but not worth another night.
The fissure starts near the large mountain on the right. The hills on the other side of the lava field are some of the spatter cones.
The Laki Story
The Laki Fissure is about 30km long and has about 100 volcanic spatter cones situated on it. The fissure erupted in 1783 for a period of 10 months. 30 billion tons of lava and 90 million tons of sulphuric acid escaped through the fissure. High Fluorine content ash caused massive poisoning of grazing animals. Half of Iceland's farm animals died as a result. About 25% (possibly 9,000) of Iceland's population died in the following famine. The Eldhraun lava field was created by the Laki eruptions. The Eldhraun is about 40 km south from here.
