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This fishing village (pop. just under 1,000) could quite easily slip the port call net if time is not taken to explore all it has to offer.
The meet and greet is an absolute delight: local women dressed up in colourful (and, incidentally, superbly photogenic) national costumes along with children bearing wild flowers whilst shyly delivering quaint welcome greetings. It’s old fashioned and it’s charming. You really are made to feel welcome in Grundarfjörður.
It is well located for excursions near farms, villages and towns on the peninsula that are sites of the Viking Saga past. Along these picturesque shores occurred the terrifying haunting of Eyrbyggja Saga and the tragic romance Laxdaela Saga.
Moreover, Snaefellsjökull Glacier has long been rumoured to hold mystical powers. The respected Viking “Bárður Snæfellsás” (a man descended from the so-called stone dwellers) often spoke of its energy and his special relationship with it. It is believed that he ended his days by descending into the glacier and becoming a spirit of the land. Novelist Jules Verne starts his quest to find the “Centre of the Earth” by entering the volcano/glacier, and in recent years, it has become a place of pilgrimage for New Agers in search of cosmic experiences...powerful karma!
The peninsula is of extreme geological interest as it spans the entire geological history of Iceland.
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