Category: travel

Out and about Reykjavik

July 20, 2025 • 10:30 am

I have been here only a bit more than two days, so I can’t claim to know Reykjavik, but I have seen a lot of the downtown after two several-hour walks. l It is not a big town: Wikipedia claims that Reykjavik (the world’s northernmost capital of any sovereign state) has a population of just 139,000 as of 2025, and “the surrounding Capital Region has a population of around 249,000, constituting around 64% of the country’s population.”

Summer is tourist season, and so the streets are crawling with visitors like me, and you hear English spoken everywhere.  The fluency of every Icelander I’ve met in English is of course a boon to the visiting Anglophone. All you need is a credit card to survive here, as I haven’t found a place yet, including taxis and coffee shops, that doesn’t take cards, even for tiny purchases. I have $100 in Icelandic krona that I still haven’t spent.

Tomorrow I leave town to go on a bus tour of some of the famous sights of SW Iceland, though I doubt the Blue Lagoon, a famous geothermal spa, will be open because of the recent fissure eruption of a nearby volcano. So it goes.

I’m not yet sure if I’ll make it to the famous Iceland Phallological Museum, devoted to displays of penises, which several readers have suggested I visit. If I go, the highlight will be the plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix’s member as produced by the late Cynthia Plaster Caster (there’s a photo of the junk on her Wikipedia page). But there are also preserved penises and baculums from many animal species. There are no vaginas, and I suspect it would be hard to construct a female equivalent of this museum. I’m told that most of the visitors to this museum are in fact women, though I would have thought that men would predominate, eager to compare their size with that of other species. (There is only one genuine human penis in the museum, a preserved member of a 95-year-old man who swore he employed it sexually until the end.)

In the meantime, here are some random photos I took on my meanderings this morning and early afternoon, with one or two from the day before yesterday.

First, where I am staying: a “guest house” (more like a hostel, which is what it’s called on the sign) north of downtown.  The rooms are small and spartan, but believe me, I’ve seen much worse (viz., India and Turkey). But, like all things Icelandic, they are pricey, even compared to the U.S.  The price (ca. 750 Euro for my five nights) at least includes a breakfast (croissant, roll, jam, butter, orange juice, cheese, and a tangerine) placed in a bag outside my door each morning. To supplement the brekkie, I went grocery shopping at “Bonus,” supposedly the cheapest supermarket in Iceland,

Photos of a more touristic nature (e.g., the cathedral) will follow when I have time to put them up.

My hostel/guesthouse:

My cozy room. There are no amenities like t.v., but I never watch it anyway (even on the ship), and I’m happy with my book and the Internet:

There is a coffee room where you can cook your own food (this makes it more hostel-like than guesthouse-like), but as for getting a decent cup of coffee, it’s well nigh impossible. There is coffee and a complicated machine, but no milk and no spoons that I could find. My first goal, then, was to find coffee on my morning walk.

When I strolled into town, the first thing I saw was a Starbucks, and I was drawn into it as if by Jupiter’s gravity to quaff a large latte. Behold a $10 Icelandic latte below. In contrast to American lattes at Starbucks (which I rarely patronize), it had a design on top. It also seemed larger.

Judging by the prices of burgers, beer, fish and chips, and other items whose prices I’m familiar with, the Icelandic price is usually between two- and three-fold higher than the American.  Now most goods have to be imported here, so that’s understandable, but I’m told that the salaries of locals are not commensurately higher. Perhaps it’s because the country has an extensive social safety net, so people don’t get saddled with stuff like high medical bills, but I’m not qualified to pronounce on economics.

Below: voilà—a $7.66 box of Cheerios in the cheapest supermarket in Iceland. I have no idea what Cheerios cost in America, but I’m sure it’s less than this. If you understand Icelandic, give us the translation below.

Below: an “Icelandic menu” at one restaurant featuring a SMOKED PUFFIN APPETIZER (Fratercula arctica) and an MINKE WHALE STEAK (Balaenoptera acutorostrata).  Iceland is the only country in the world where it’s legal to hunt puffins, and the species is classified as “vulnerable.” Iceland also allows restricted hunting of whales, with 209 fin whales and 217 minke whales permitted to be killed each year for the next five years. Along with Norway and Japan, Iceland is one of only three countries in the world that allow whaling.

Our ship’s naturalists warned us about menus like this, and of course I’ll stay a mile away from them (n.b.: anyone who tells me that avoiding whale and puffin but eating cow makes me a hypocrite better tread very lightly!)

“Skyr” is a smooth Icelandic dairy product described as somewhere between yogurt and curd cheese. I bought a large container of mango skyr to have as dessert.

Two animals I saw on the streets today. First, a lovely gull resting on a cafe table. I don’t know the species, but am sure at least one reader will (identify it in the comments, please):

And a semi-friendly gray tuxedo cat which let me pet it, though it wandered off after a minute or so. It is the first live cat I’ve seen since I left the U.S. Notice that it has the same tough Viking-esque expression as the Reykjavik cat sent in by a reader yesterday.

One of the first things you notice wandering about is the presence of both murals and artistic graffiti.  The former are commissioned, while the latter appear on isolated and hidden walls, but are still more artistic than graffiti murals I’ve seen in the U.S. and Europe.

First, some graffiti, which includes a fearsome felid. This was on an abandoned building:

And the entire side of the building (click to enlarge):

Murals are everywhere, expressing political sentiments or advertising businesses. The artists are given due credit at the lower right of each mural. Here’s one of the former painted by two Ukrainian artists and an artist from Iceland, all honoring Icelandic/Ukrainian friendship and Icelandic hospitality towards displaced Ukrainians:

And the explanation:

. . . and murals decorating businesses:

Two views of a store:

Is this a female Viking? Wings seem to be a leitmotif in these murals.

A vampire mural:

And a lovely bird mural. Again, someone will have to identify it for me:

A rainbow-decorated cafe:

And a nearby brasserie advertising its wares:

Finally, as far as I can see, Reykjavik is not a town of gaudy and expensive houses, though there may be a section for such homes.  Most streets, however, are fairly bare and spartan, though some of the houses are painted bright colors. Since these streets are around the downtown area (and these are typical streets in that area), it supports the view that Icelanders don’t have salaries commensurate with the high cost of living:

Remember, this is a superficial tourist’s take on what I saw as I wandered about. More photos as I take ’em, and the natural history will come after I return to Chicago.

Nooz, etc.

July 19, 2025 • 7:30 am

A few news items have come to my attention:

*I have finally got a tenuous handle on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Tell me if I’m wrong, but there is no evidence that the government has a list of Epstein’s clients, nor any evidence that he died other than by suicide.  If this is the case, why is the public, especially Republicans, going nuts? My theory, which is not mine, is that MAGA-ites want there to be a conspiracy as they are addicted to such theories (remember QAnon?), and are going nuts since there’s no evidence of a conspiracy with Epstein. (Side note: t the QAnon January 6 shaman is not going to get his spear and helmet returned.) Trump has even ordered attorney general Bondi to show what the government has got:

The Justice Department asked a federal judge on Friday to unseal grand jury testimony from the prosecution of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as President Trump seeks to dispel a storm of criticism and conspiracy theories coming from many of his supporters.

The request was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where Mr. Epstein was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges six years ago when he was found dead by hanging in his jail cell about a month after he was arrested. The New York City medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.

The government also sought the unsealing of grand jury testimony from the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite who in a 2021 trial was convicted of helping Mr. Epstein facilitate his sex-trafficking scheme and sentenced to 20 years in prison. She has appealed her conviction.

“Public officials, lawmakers, pundits and ordinary citizens remain deeply interested and concerned about the Epstein matter,” Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, wrote in a motion to the court seeking to unseal the transcripts. “The time for the public to guess what they contain should end.”

Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche referred in the motion to Mr. Epstein as “the most infamous pedophile in American history,” and called the facts of the case “a tale of national disgrace.”

The filings on Friday followed Mr. Trump’s announcement in a social media post Thursday night that he had authorized Ms. Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.”

Still, as Ezra Klein said:

Does the plea deal Epstein got in Florida look unusually sweet? Yes. Does Epstein’s death seem weird to me? It does.

There is a remainder, a remnant, that will probably never be resolved. But I don’t find it easier to resolve that remnant in a conspiracy so total that no government, no law firm, no media organization, seems able to breach it.

What MAGA wanted out of Epstein was the same thing it wanted out of QAnon: a story that collapsed reality down to something that is well-ordered.

. . . But now Donald Trump is pitting himself against that fantasy. The reason the fizzling of the Epstein case has mattered in MAGA is it does something worse than undermine a conspiracy theory. It undermines a worldview.

*At a time when it’s becoming increasingly hard for researchers to get NIH and NSF grants to support their scientific work, Duke University’s med school has implemented a policy that seems almost draconian. From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Duke University School of Medicine (SOM) plans to implement new faculty productivity guidelines that would tie tenured professors’ salaries to external research funding, according to documents reviewed by The Chronicle.

Set to go in effect in 2026, the proposed policy would apply to the school’s basic science units, which include departments ranging from biochemistry to neurobiology and various centers and institutes such as the Duke Cancer Institute and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute. These units rely heavily on grants from the National Institutes of Health, which have been increasingly difficult to come by due to slowdowns in grant review processes, an uptick in terminations and a lack of new funding opportunities since President Donald Trump assumed office.

Under the guidelines, each department must establish a minimum expectation for external grant funding. Tenured faculty members who do not meet the threshold — measured as a three-year average — would be given the option to either enter a 12-month “Safe Harbor” period, after which further inability to meet productivity standards will result in salary reductions, or consider career transition alternatives.

SOM administration initially proposed the guidelines in late May, drawing backlash that they had sidestepped shared governance processes. The May proposal stated that faculty members who failed to secure the minimum externally funded effort would be subject to a 10% salary “decrement” every six months to a minimum base of $50,000 a year — an amount lower than the salary of most postdoctoral researchers.

Note that while the standards are called “productivity” standards, they say nothing about what researcher’s have produced, but only whether they have garnered federal money. Granted, one’s scientific productivity is usually correlated with ability to support research, but for some areas, like theoretical work, the connection is more tenuous. In the end, though universities should do what mine does: explicitly judge a faculty member on production of scientific research, explicitly ruling out any discussion of grant funding.

*Remember Uri Berliner, the NPR editor who, in a widely-publicized Free Press piece last year, called attention to National Public Radio’s move towards progressivism, a slant on the news that he (and I) see as unconscionable given the public funding (not large) of NPR.  He got in trouble and then quit NPR.

Now Congress has cut $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which partly funds NPR and PBS, and it’s because of this slant (if an organization purports to give objective news to a public that partly pays its way, it’s obligated to be as objective as possible.

Anyway, Berliner has followed up his original piece by celebrating NPR’s “independence day” (independence on public funding, which was, again, so meager that its absence won’t much hurt NPR. Click below to read it or find the piece archived here for free:

From Berliner’s piece.

The vote is a victory for Republicans who have long had National Public Radio (NPR) in their sights. But it is also a victory for those of any political stripe who believe the government has no business funding the media.

I didn’t use to count myself among them. But over the past year, under the leadership of a divisive new CEO, instead of taking criticisms of its coverage to heart, NPR instead doubled down on agenda-driven journalism. So, as someone who had spent most of his career at the network, I didn’t support defunding. I instead suggested that NPR could build back credibility by voluntarily giving up federal support. Obviously that didn’t happen.

. . .Embracing the mantras of the Great Awokening, NPR became a caricature of itself with headlines like these:

Microfeminism: The Next Big Thing in Fighting the Patriarchy

Which Skin Color Emoji Should You Use? The Answer Can Be More Complex than You Think

Black Women’s Groups Find Health and Healing on Hikes, But Sometimes Racism, Too

Bringing Diversity to Maine’s Nearly All-White Lobster Fleet

Diet Culture Can Hurt Kids. This Author Advises Parents to Reclaim the Word ‘Fat’

These Drag Artists Know How to Turn Climate Activism into a Joyful Blowout

Inside NPR, rules on the use of language reflected the direction and mindset of the organization. We were told to avoid the term biological sex, warned not to say illegal immigrant (a hurtful label). A racial punctuation hierarchy was imposed; black would be uppercase, white lowercase. NPR adopted the phrase “gender affirming care” to describe childhood medical interventions that can mean sterilization and the surgical removal of genitals. These were not merely style choices. They were tribal signals, ideological markers.

NPR could have addressed these failings. I wrote my essay because I hoped the network might rediscover the values on which its success had been built. NPR could have regained some equilibrium, reclaimed a smidgen of independence, by copping to this reality even a little. It could have taken some visible steps back to the journalism gold standard of neutral impartiality. And it could have done all this prior to Trump’s reelection, so it wouldn’t look like NPR was caving to pressure from his administration.

No saying “biological sex”!  Oy! I listen to NPR when I’m driving, and its descent into wokeness is palpable, and unpalatable even to left-centrists like me.  Taxpayers should not be funding the organization, but cut it loose to be as woke as it wants.

*I guess when I was in the Arctic the government decided to start supporting Ukraine again, perhaps because Putin had become recalcitrant. European and American sanctions on Russia are in the offing, and that’s good. But what’s even better is that the U.S. is again helping deliver weapons to the beleaguered Ukraine:

The Trump administration has moved Germany ahead of Switzerland for the next Patriot air-defense systems off the production line, paving the way for Berlin to send two Patriots it already has to Ukraine, according to three U.S. officials.

The U.S. promise to quickly replace Germany’s Patriots is the first instance of the Pentagon facilitating weapons deliveries for Ukraine since President Trump announced earlier this month that he favored sending more arms.

But the move also underscored the difficulty in providing Patriots and other weapons to Kyiv, as defense production lines in the West struggle to keep up with Ukraine’s appeals for help defending its cities and front line forces against increasing Russian missile and drone attacks.

The effort to speed Patriots to Ukraine by backfilling Germany with systems from the American production line is consistent with Trump’s vow to have NATO allies pay the U.S. as part of providing additional weapons for Ukraine.

The initial deal is similar to a move made in 2024 by the Biden administration, which moved Ukraine to the front of the line to receive air defense interceptors directly from the U.S.

Ukraine may lose this war, and lose it big time, giving up much or even all of its territory to Russia. But if America stands for anything, even in these Trumpian days, we should stand for the defense of freedom against the incursions of despots like Putin.  We should re-arm Ukraine to the best of our ability.

*Finally, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column, called this week “TGIF: The Client List.” (This of course refers to the brouhaha about Jeffrey Epstein that has erupted since I flew to Finland, and I still don’t understand what all the hubub is about

→ How to score a Beamer in London: This story is from March, but it’s new to me, so bear with me. In the UK, the government will give disabled people cars. It’s a really lovely idea. The trouble: You can claim any disability, including depression. It kind of relies on people acting in good faith, in a high-trust society where people don’t lie about such things. Did I mention that the government will help you get a brand-new BMW? And give you a new one every three years? You’ll be shocked to hear the program is now so popular that roughly one out of every five new cars sold in Britain is provided via this government program for the disabled. And what sort of disabilities are people reporting when they come for their Beamer? A huge number of people claiming disability in the UK report mental health issues, depression and anxiety and such (I assume it’s depression over not having a BMW). As in, “I’m too anxious to take the Tube; I need a Beamer.” Some of the car recipients actually report that their disability is acne (good, hide in the car, I don’t want to see that mountainous chin looming at me on the Tube). A handful of claimants even suffer from “factitious disorder,” in which your disease is thinking you are diseased. They get Beamers too, and a new speaker system thrown in so that they can really relax on those long drives to the NHS to check out another benign mole. This all comes from a Telegraph report on the program and is 100 percent real. I repeat: Beamers for Acne. Beamers for Fakers. Time for me to make a little trip to ye bonny England.

→ Doing reporting I don’t like is literal murder: Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, is freaking out at The Washington Free Beacon, which has been getting huge scoops on things like universities investigated for illegal DEI hiring methods and apparently race-conscious submissions practices at the Harvard Law Review. Or, in Jill’s telling: The site has been “a potentially lethal weapon aimed at elite universities.” Which is a weird way to describe reporting, if you’re ostensibly a member of and fan of the press? But that wasn’t the end of her reporter-as-murderer assessment: “It’s not just that the Beacon is conservative; it’s that it seems to be on a jihad, publishing scoops that have left blood on the floor at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Duke, and other prestigious corners of academia.” Lethal weapon, jihad, blood on the floor.

She goes through all of the greatest hits of Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium—who I guess is a hitman or a jihadi? “Besides helping to bring down Claudine Gay, the Free Beacon bedeviled the Harvard Law Review in May by publishing insider documents leaked by a whistleblower on its staff.” Aaron Sibarium is stabbing administrators in the chest and dragging their bodies through marble halls (which is how it feels emotionally when he reports on their meetings).

I love that she’s articulating her philosophy so clearly. I’m personally forever indebted to legacy media’s belief that ignoring the most interesting stories will make them go away. And I can only hope they continue. Jill, run every newspaper! Now if I could get Aaron—that absolute killer, that stone-cold stunner, that literal jihadist murderer, like guys, he has a knife—to join The Free Press.

. . . and I can’t wait for this one! Mexican coke (available at a premium in some American towns) at American prices!

→ Trump trying to distract everyone with soda: While his party was undergoing its first civil war, Trump was trying to shore up his MAHAs over on Truth Social: “I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them—You’ll see. It’s just better!” Soft drink soft power at work, folks. Catch me at the soda fountain next Tuesday, with a big old scoop of vanilla ice cream and an old-fashioned Coke. I don’t know if this makes America great again, but I am all for it.

And one extra:

→ Americans are getting very comfortable with political violence: Following a wave of antisemitic violence, the ADL conducted a survey “to assess the national mood toward antisemitism” and found that 24 percent of people felt recent violent attacks on Jews were understandable, with 13 percent saying they were justified. So that’s been keeping me up at night. No jokes here, just a knot in my stomach and a bigger hunch in my back.

***********

Today’s Caturday feature. First, a sign I saw yesterday in downtown Reykjavik:

Andhere’s moggie from Reykjavik sent in reader Ken Phelps. Titled “Reyk Cat”, Ken added this caption:

Here’s one tough cat in Reykjavik. Graciously accepted a a bit of head scratching, then gave me a good swat and moved away about a foot before sitting back down and dismissing me.

If Vikings were cats, they’d look like this one!

I have landed. . . .

July 18, 2025 • 12:45 pm

. . . in Reykjavik.  Yes, our voyage is over, we have left the ship, and our “expedition,” as they call it, is now an ex-expedition. Still, I have five days and six nights left to entertain myself in this small but scenic island before I fly home.

At the the moment, Iceland is experiencing a fairly sizeable volcanic emission of lava and smoke from a fissure in the ground not too far away.  Fortunately for me, no flights have been affected so far, though tourists have been evacuated from the fabled Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa that, I’m told, is fantastic for a few hours of soaking. I may have to miss that one.

A ship friend and I wandered around the main part of downtown this afternoon, because, in one of those increasingly odious capitalistic ploys, we couldn’t check into the ship-provided hotel until 3 p.m. But that allowed a good wander around town and a visit to the second tallest building in Iceland (74.5 m; there are no skyscrapers here)—the Hallgrímskirkja, a spartan but lovely Lutheran church finished in 1986. (It has two organs.) More about that later as I’m exhausted.  And of course all that wandering worked up a thirst, which we quenched with pricey beers.

The first thing you learn in Iceland is that everything is expensive. The one beer I’m holding below was about $18 when converted from the local currency, and, looking up taxi fares to the international airport, I discovered they’re around $200 for a 45-minute ride.  But I kvetch too much, as this is one place where you can use your credit card for everything and there is no need to tip except for extra-special service, as in France.

At any rate, tomorrow I move to a guest house of my own choosing and start finding out how much of the island I’ll be able to see in a short time.

The ship voyage to Svalbard and Jan Mayen was, as you may have suspected from previous posts, terrific. I’m sorry that I couldn’t post simultaneously as I traveled because of the lack of internet as well as the plethora of things to do. I trust you can wait for the non-degraded pictures and travelogue. In the meantime, cheers!

Photo by Michael, who drank the flight of four local brews in the foreground. I couldn’t handle that much brewski, so I had one glass of the strongest beer (about 8.5% alcohol). It turned out to be an IPA, not my favorite brew because of the excessive hoppiness, but in terms of getting me tipsy, it did the job. Since I cut back on alcohol because of my insomnia, I am easily made a few sheets to the wind. In fact, now, more than four hours later, I still haven’t recovered.

 

Lunch!

July 16, 2025 • 10:45 am

Readers have clamored for photos of the food aboard, so I made a special trip to the Bistro, the fancy “real” restaurant aboard, instead of the bistro, which is smaller, has almost all the same stuff, and has better views.  (I almost always eat at the bistro.) So here is the selection from the “Balena” restaurant on Deck 5. I haven’t cropped the photos, so they’re a bit rough—not to mention that I was holding a plate in one hand and my Panasonic Lumix in the other.

First, the two menus you can peruse before you enter (click to enlarge). Note that there are two pages. And yes, they have everything that’s mentioned, and the menu changes with every meal (though breakfast varies little).

Note that burgers and hotdogs are always available, presumably for the Yanks, though we do have 28 nationalities on board if one includes the crew.

One difference between the Balena and the informal bistro is that the former always has a special “exotic food” station. Below is today’s, making shawarma to your taste. I avoid these as the food isn’t as good as the regular stuff, and the lines are long:

The first station is for salads; the bowl of lettuce is out of sight to the right, but you can see all the things you can put on top. There are always three kinds of dressings as well, and you can see trays of cold cuts, which often include lox.

Croque-monsieurs (toasted ham and cheese sandwiches) and chicken picatta. I don’t know what the latter is, but I got both of these, as well as a dollop of mashed potatoes (upper right).

Stuffed peppers. I probably should have gotten one of these instead of the chicken and sandwich, but it was too late; there was no more room on my plate.  If you are reading this (especially Alice Dreger), note that I LOVE stuffed peppers.  My mom used to make them, as well as stuffed cabbage.

What you’ve been waiting for: the first part of the dessert table, with superfluous fruits flanking the good stuff. There are always three small pastries, and they are always good.

More of the dessert table. There are always three flavors of ice cream in the Balena. The choices today were (l to r) strawberry, mango, and melon vegan ice cream, the latter properly known as “melon sorbet”. Naturally, I got mango, my favorite fruit:

And how could I resist hot cherry cobbler with a custard sauce?

I wasn’t that hungry at lunch (mirabile dictu, I skipped it yesterday), so I had the items noted above as well as salad.  I almost never drink when I’m traveling; for some reason I lose all desire for alcohol on trips. I had a diet Coke.

. . . and only two desserts: the mango ice cream, which was great, and the cherry cobbler with custard sauce, also great.

All three daily meals on offer are equally copious, so you have to be careful, especially if you’re landing and hiking after breakfast or lunch.  But I have seen people of size with plates loaded to the ceiling.

If you have questions, please put them in the comments.

To Jan Mayen

July 15, 2025 • 8:00 am

Our destination is isolated Jan Mayen Island, home of the world’s most notherly active volcano (the last eruption was 1985). From Wikipedia:

For some time scientists doubted that the Beerenberg volcano [JAC: the big one in the pictures; there are two others] would become active, but in 1970 it erupted for about three weeks, adding another 3 km2 (1.2 sq mi) of land area to the island. It also erupted in 1973 and 1985. During an eruption, the sea temperature around the island may increase from just above freezing to about 30 °C (86 °F).

A nice warm bath! That’s the only thing that would persuade me to take the infamous “Polar Plunge”, a staple of Arctic and Antarctic cruises. You put on your bathing suit, tether yourself to a rope, and then jump into the sea emitting a porcine squeal as you hit the freezing water (3 degrees C).  Half of the passengers did this, which I see as a bizarre form of braggadocio and masochism. However, you do get a nifty badge for your efforts.

Jan Mayan appeared, as if by magic, early this morning, and is the only bit of land for hundreds of km around. Here’s its location from a CIA map given on Wikipedia. I’ve added the arrow. It’s a two-day sea voyage SW of Svalbard:

The island is spoon-shaped, with the spoon part containing the big volcano and its effluent:

. Like Svalbard, it’s also also Norwegian, and is often lumped together with the archipelago.  It has no permanent inhabitants but plenty of gravel. We were told at last night’s briefing that there are 18 inhabitants, most of them members of the Norwegian military, but also two meteorologists. There’s also a gift shop that will be open for our arrival; I’m curious to see what they are selling.

Most ships are not allowed to land there, but with some clever bargaining on the part of our expedition leader, we were given permission to land this afternoon.

As Wikipedia notes:

Jan Mayen (Urban East Norwegian: [jɑnˈmɑ̀ɪən]) is a Norwegian volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean with no permanent population. It is 55 km (34 mi) long (southwest-northeast) and 377 km2 (146 sq mi) in area, partly covered by glaciers (an area of 114.2 km2 (44.1 sq mi) around the Beerenberg volcano). It has two parts: larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by a 2.5 km (1.6 mi) wide isthmus. It lies 600 km (370 mi) northeast of Iceland (495 km [305 mi] NE of Kolbeinsey), 500 km (310 mi) east of central Greenland, and 900 km (560 mi) northwest of Vesterålen, Norway.

The island is mountainous, the highest summit being the Beerenberg volcano in the north. The isthmus is the location of the two largest lakes of the island, Sørlaguna (South Lagoon) and Nordlaguna (North Lagoon). A third lake is called Ullerenglaguna (Ullereng Lagoon). Jan Mayen was formed by the Jan Mayen hotspot and is defined by geologists as a microcontinent.[2]

Although administered separately, in the ISO 3166-1 standard, Jan Mayen and Svalbard are collectively designated as Svalbard and Jan Mayen, with the two-letter country code “SJ”. It was also given the web domain of .sj. However, the domain is not in use and Norway’s .no is used in its place.

Jan Mayen is home to Beerenberg, which is the northernmost subaerial active volcano in the world.[3][4]

And one more factoid (two, actually; bolding is m):

Jan Mayen Island has one exploitable natural resource, gravel, from a site located at Trongskaret. Other than this, economic activity is limited to providing services for employees of Norway’s radio communications and meteorological stations located on the island.

GRAVEL!

And, as Poseidon Adventures notes:

Though it is an integral part of the Kingdom of Norway and there are people living on the island year round, there is no way for a tourist to get to Jan Mayen other than by cruise ship or yacht. Though the island’s stunning scenery and abundant birdlife would easily place it among the world’s top wilderness tourism destinations, only a few hundred people make it to the island each year because of the infrequency of cruises.

We are 180 of those lucky people.  Here are some photos of the Beerenberg Volcano taken from the ship a few minutes ago. We are approaching from the north. Since I have better internet now, the resolution is higher (I had to degrade them by only about 55%). The volcanos arose because the island sites on a number of intersecting fault lines and on the mid-Atlantic ridge.

From inside the ship:

And on the ship’s bridge navigation pane, which is duplicated in the lounge. The position of the ship is the circle, and Jan Mayen is to the south:

Closer in as we pass down the west side of the island to the landing harbor. Note the snow cloud blowing off the peak:

A close-up of the peak and its blowing snow:

. . . and the view from my cabin. I can’t nap when there’s something like this right out the window.

More, of course, after we land and when I get a chance to put in proper photos. What kind of plants and animals will we encounter after our landing. Will I see a puffin? What’s in the gift shop? There are many lingering questions.

Sweets at sea

July 14, 2025 • 9:49 am

We finally emerged from the Great Northern Zone of No Internet, and I finally attained email, which isn’t necessarily a boon. I’m pretty sure I can post more regularly now, and larger photos, too. But I won’t tempt fate.

And, as it’s late in the day (we land at Jan Mayen tomorrow after two days at sea), I’ll just put up the desserts I had in the last day. I swear, the food is very good here, and I try to eat fairly healthy main courses (always with a salad), but the desserts, which are copious and scrumptious, will be the death of me. It’s a good thing the voyage and its meals are time-limited.

Here, enjoy, and of course I’ll have a full account of the trip later, complete with photos. Remember, I limit myself to three small dessert items out of a selection of seven or eight. I will call that “abstemious.”

Dessert at yesterday’s lunch: some kind of trifle with fruit (a BIG dessert) and a small thick vanilla custard with cherries:

Dessert at yesterday’s dinner: a different kind of trifle with raspberry, peach, and cranberry layers, along with tarte citron with a candied lemon slice on top:

On sea days they have teatime in the bistro at 4 pm, and since I deliberately skipped lunch today (yes, food fatigue can set in), I went for tea. Along with the pastry selection, there were cucumber sandwiches, and tuna sandwiches. I had the latter, along with a small piece of pineapple cake and a rather large bowl of chocolate ice cream topped with warm cherries jubilee.

You will be banned for food-shaming, as I always say when I travel. I never eat like this at home, having a latte in the morning, no lunch, a moderate dinner, and NO dessert.

Note: they don’t have desserts at breakfast, but you can still get your load of fat and sugar there should you so desire.

p.s. I repeat: NO FOOD SHAMING!

 

Sea day

July 13, 2025 • 7:15 am

First, If you’re trying to email me, hold on for about five days until we get to Iceland, as I cannot access my email from the ship.

Today are making our way from Svalbard to Jan Mayen island, a mostly uninhabited island between Svalbard and Iceland. We were informed soon before the trip that this island was no longer on the schedule, as the Base Commander (there’s a base) had canceled all tourist ship landings.

Fortunately, our expedition leader managed to secure permission for us to land, and since I can’t look it up on the Internet (it’s all I can do to post), I can’t see what is there. Readers are invited to look it up themselves and then tell me what I can see. Today I rest (insomnia is still with me), go to a few talks, read (the ship has an excellent library of polar-related books), and, of course, eat, though downing three meals a day is sapping my desire for food.

Here is a mother polar bear and cub taken from the ship yesterday, sleeping on a patch of snow. No, they are not dead. Yes, it was taken from a long way away, but 1.5 polar bears are better than none: