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Photos By UA Staff

Images of Iceland

Photos by Lisa Sporleder

Sporleder was in Iceland for a total of two weeks, including a 10-day tour with 10 other folks from across North America. They based in Reykjavik, and took day trips to the Snaefellsnes peninsula (central west Iceland), the south coast, and the Golden Circle tour northeast of the city. The days in between, they toured Reykjavik and the surrounding area. Due to the family ties of the tour guide (his grandfather's step-brother donated the property), they were lucky enough to get a tour of Iceland's "White House," which is not a normal part of the tourist circuit.

View additional pictures from her visit:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2C6_dvi3y3xc2ZPTV9Wd1hOcWs&usp=sharing

The Blue Lagoon is a spa and resort with a large geothermal swimming pool. The water is actually the effluent from the geothermal power plant in the background. After running the steam turbines to produce electricity, the mineral waters flow into a pond. It was a wonderful place to relax and enjoy a little spa treatment after the long flight to Iceland...and then I headed to my hotel in Reykjavik.

�ingvellir is where the people of Iceland gathered annually from the 900s through the 1800s to read out the existing laws of the land and make new ones, if needed. It is also a rift valley, the place where the North American and Eurasian continental plates are spreading at the rate of nearly a centimeter a year...amazingly fast for geologic time!

The church at Oddi is a good example of a parish church that has been around for hundreds of years. Churches of this size can be found across the countryside. Church grounds also serve as local cemeteries. The storm clouds brewing on the horizon brought a bit of rain, but not as much as they could have!

This statue of jazz musicians is located outside Perlan, a set of five hot water storage tanks on a hill in Reykjavik. It serves to maintain central hot water pressure and, in the event of a water outage, there is enough geothermal water stored there to serve the city for over a day, for both heating and hot tapwater needs. The storage tanks are topped by a geodesic dome that is surrounded by a viewing deck and houses a revolving restaurant at the top.

A lovely little fishing village on the south coast of the Snaefellsness peninsula, on the central west side of Iceland. The whole is formed of volcanic rock that juts out of the landscape in many shapes and forms. Another 30 miles down the road is Snaefellsnesjokull, the glacier-topped volcano that served as the starting point for the Jules Verne novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Photos by Statewide Staff from Alaska and Beyond

Green and white: the unpredictable colors of May. Photo by Leah Glasscock-Sanders

Flightseeing in Misty Fjords National Monument. Photo by Amber Gichard

The cabin at Ward Lake. Photo by Amber Gichard

Sunset in Refuge Cove, Ketchikan. Photo by Amber Gichard

Museum of the North

Photos by Leah Glasscock-Sanders