This is our last full day in Iceland. As part of the tour, we stopped in Akureyri for the morning to explore this beautiful northern city. Although you can find them in other places, the trolls in Akureyri seem to be especially friendly and well-mannered.
Trolls and elves play a central role in the folklore of Iceland including their Christmas celebrations where there are 13 trolls that visit children at that time of the year and are basically their Santa Clauses. They are known as Yule Lads and there is a good book about them in my possession that I intend to read very soon.
Like Reykjavik, Akureyri also has an interesting Lutheran Church (Akureyrarkirkja), but this one seems a little more interesting because it has some features in its otherwise bare interior. Most notably are the stained glass windows, the central one of which comes from 1400’s England. The one in the picture below shows an important event in Iceland’s history when the heathen idols of the old religion were thrown into Goðafoss after the decision to convert to Christianity.
There is also a large concert hall in Akureyri called HOF which was built around the same time as the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik. It isn’t as large or as colourful, but it has its own charms including a circular exterior covered in long stones and a mysterious statue of a fisher boy out back. No one in the tourist office could tell us what it was; it just appeared there one day.
The rest of the day was spent eating and flying. There is actually an airport in Reykjavik that is used for domestic flights and some international ones, so it made getting to the hotel for our final night much easier. The hotel room that we were assigned actually turned out to be a fairly spacious (compared to past rooms) kitchenette suite with a shared balcony area. Despite the opportunity to cook my own food, I had to go out for dinner with the group one last time at the #1 restaurant in Reykjavik according to Tripadvisor. It lived up to its reputation. I had the fish feast which was not anything like a fish feast a Canadian would picture. It was well cooked, not breaded, included various sides in small quantities including a couscous one. The feast also included a seafood soup to start and a Crème brûlée with a lot going on for dessert.
