Reykjavík Grapevine - aug 2019, Qupperneq 43

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Graceful bulk
At this point, I’ll admit that I’m a
whale-watching sceptic. I’ve lived
in Iceland for almost six years,
and have never once been tempt-
ed to go. The appeal of floating
around on the cold ocean to catch
a glimpse of a dorsal fin, and may-
be a tail, eluded me.
But suddenly, as we’re speed-
ing along right above a humpback
whale, I break out into a wide grin.
The whale’s huge bulk glides just
under the surface; we can make out
the immense fins and the texture
of its skin as it speeds gracefully
through the water. It surfaces again,
sending a huge spout of water over
the boat, and arches its back; its gi-
ant grey tail rears up out of the wa-
ter, metres high, and then it’s gone,
plunging deep into the ocean.
Over the course of the next
hour, we stalk this whale, and
see several others, with various
boats buzzing around trying not
to crowd each other. The whales,
we’re told, aren’t disturbed by the
human presence, and can actual-
ly be playful and curious. As we
finally turn back, I admit to my
companion that it was a more en-
joyable and eye opening experi-
ence than I could have imagined.
Festival surprise
After warming up with some sea-
food soup on the harbour, we
go for a look around the town’s
museums. There’s an excellent
whale museum with huge, com-
plete whale skeletons hanging
in the space—all of which were
beached, not hunted—and videos
of whales singing, swimming, and
manoeuvring gracefully under the
surface. A wall diagram shows the
evolution of whales, and there’s a
room dedicated to the history of
Iceland’s thankfully all-but extinct
whaling industry.
Just up the street is the Explo-
ration Museum, which examines
mankind’s exploration of extremes,
whether it’s early geographical ex-
ploration, space, the deep sea, or
the poles. The museum is closed,
but a sign tells us the reason—it’s
the weekend of the annual Explor-
ers Festival, which is taking place
around the corner.
Explorers unite
We arrive at the town museum
having, sadly, missed a talk about
the founding of an Icelandic Space
Agency, and covering NASA’s con-
tinued use of Iceland as a habitat
analogue for testing new equip-
ment.
We do, however, catch an hour-
long talk by David Concannon,
who recounts the tale of being
tasked by Jeff Bezos with finding
the Apollo F-1 engines that pro-
pelled man to the moon for the
first time. The engines were jet-
tisoned during flight, and lost on
the ocean floor—it took a huge
operation to find and retrieve
them. But David succeeded, and
they’re now on display at the Seat-
tle Museum of Flight in the Unit-
ed States. Clive Oppenheimer also
speaks, giving a layman’s account
of his thirteen field seasons spent
studying Mount Erebus, a perpet-
ually active volcano in Antarctica,
and his theories about how lava
systems work.
It’s an unexpected cherry on the
cake of this trip to hear adventur-
ers like these discussing their travels
and travails. The sleepy village of
Húsavík, it’s safe to say, has more
to it than meets the eye, both at sea,
and on dry land.
“The whale’s huge bulk glides just
under the surface; we can make
out the immense fins and the
texture of its skin as it speeds
through the water.”
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