Iceland Explained

Radek Werbowski
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  • Places & Travel

Iceland Explained is for the ones who want to experience Iceland before they arrive, and for the ones already here who suspect the photo is not the point. This is A STORY. NOT A GUIDE, and not an audio tour telling you where to stand. It is Iceland told through wind, lava, salt, weather, folklore, towns, roads, silence, and pressure. Not what to capture. What to notice. What the place does to you. Because the island is indifferent to your itinerary. ICELAND. TOLD.

  1. 2d ago

    Brúarfoss, Iceland: Blue Water, a Broken Bridge and Skálholt's Bishops

    Close your eyes on the wooden footbridge at Brúarfoss. The river sends a low vibration through the planks into your boots. When you look again, the black crack below is full of luminous cyan water. The Brúará reaches this colour by travelling through porous lava before pouring inward from both sides of a dark volcanic shelf. Downstream, salmon meet a rock barrier. A Harlequin duck approaches the same fast water with considerably more enthusiasm. The river's name remembers a bridge that has disappeared. A later account connects its destruction to the famine of 1602, starving families and the food stores of Skálholt. Go further back, and another story brings a bishop out of his cathedral toward the freezing current. Listen along the river ladder from Hlauptungufoss and Miðfoss to the humming bridge at Brúarfoss. The water stays blue throughout. Our reasons for looking at it change. A STORY. NOT A GUIDE. ICELAND. TOLD. Help fund the next story: https://ko-fi.com/icelandexplained Field Notes and sources: https://icelandexplained.com28

    Brúarfoss, Iceland: Blue Water, a Broken Bridge and Skálholt's Bishops

  2. 5d ago

    Kerið, Iceland: A Collapsed Volcano, a Groundwater Lake and the Nykur

    Halfway down the steps at Kerið, the wind passes over your head and disappears. At the water's edge, you can hear loose cinder rolling down the opposite wall. The red crater beside Iceland's Golden Circle began as a cone of gas-filled volcanic rock. Its iron oxidized in the heat; later, the cone collapsed as support drained away below it. The lake at the bottom rises and falls with groundwater moving through the Grímsnes lava fields. Local households gave that unseen connection a resident: the Nykur, a handsome horse with backward hooves and a lethal grip. The crater's acoustics found a more agreeable use when Björk sang from a floating raft. On the slopes above, slow-growing moss and thousands of boots eventually made free access an expensive question. Just across the lava field, excavators work another set of red cones. Listen from the exposed rim to the sheltered shore, with the quarry still close enough to complicate the view. A STORY. NOT A GUIDE. ICELAND. TOLD. Help fund the next story: https://ko-fi.com/icelandexplained Field Notes and sources: https://icelandexplained.com

    Kerið, Iceland: A Collapsed Volcano, a Groundwater Lake and the Nykur

  3. Oct 25

    Selfoss, Iceland: The Bridge Collapse, Earthquake and Rebuilt Old Town

    A milk tanker rolls onto the suspension bridge at Selfoss. Through the walkway, you feel the deck rise and settle. The supermarket is close. So is a river you cannot see into. In 1891, imported steel and hand-worked suspension rods gave the southern Icelandic farmlands their crossing. Fifty-three years later, two milk trucks went through it. One driver was still inside his cab when it dropped into the deep channel. The story stays with the things that held, failed or had to be built again. Tryggvaskáli, the house beside the bridge, kept a royal beer bill and a ghost story. The 2008 earthquake tested concrete and timber across the plain below Ingólfsfjall. In the centre of town, a demolished dairy returned from old blueprints as part of a newly built historic district. Away from the traffic, Bobby Fischer’s headstone stands in wet grass at Laugardælir. Then the sound of another milk tanker brings us back to the walkway. A STORY. NOT A GUIDE.ICELAND. TOLD. Support research, writing, audio and production:https://ko-fi.com/icelandexplained Field Notes, sources and more Iceland Explained stories:https://icelandexplained.com

    Selfoss, Iceland: The Bridge Collapse, Earthquake and Rebuilt Old Town

  4. Oct 24

    Gullfoss, Iceland: Sigríður's Court Case and the Farm Beside the Falls

    Spray lands on your sleeve. A voice beside you disappears into the roar. At Gullfoss in Iceland, the path down to the water can seem like a small practical detail. Sigríður Tómasdóttir and her sisters helped make it for a royal visit in 1907. Her later campaign over the waterfall is usually easier to remember: the farmer's daughter who stood against the developers. The court verdict makes that account less comfortable. Back at Brattholt, there were still sheep to gather, visitors to guide and a household to keep going between journeys to Reykjavík. The river has its own method of removing support. Glacial water from Langjökull washes loose gravel from beneath the hard ledges until blocks fall into the gorge. This Iceland Explained story follows that work alongside the water rights, local tales and ordinary farm arrangements around it. A fishing agreement downstream was settled with every third salmon carried up to the farmhouse. The paperwork upstream required rather more effort. A STORY. NOT A GUIDE. ICELAND. TOLD. Help pay for research, scripts, audio and production: https://ko-fi.com/icelandexplained Field Notes, sources and more Iceland Explained stories: https://icelandexplained.com

    Gullfoss, Iceland: Sigríður's Court Case and the Farm Beside the Falls

  5. Oct 23

    Öxarárfoss, Þingvellir: A Diverted River and the Drowning Pool

    Spray settles on the wooden deck below Öxarárfoss. Above it, white water breaks over basalt. At Þingvellir in southwestern Iceland, this familiar waterfall may owe its route to a practical problem: the people attending the national assembly needed a drink. Medieval accounts describe the Öxará being diverted into the gorge. Dry channels and the rock beneath the current offer clues to that history. The river has its own interruptions, too, including a drought in 1740 followed by a sudden return of water over the cliff. Downstream, Drekkingarhylur takes the story into the courts. Under the Grand Verdict and other laws, the river became a place of execution. Guðrún Jónsdóttir's story survives in the records; the pool itself was later altered by bridge construction. Iceland Explained follows the water through those changes, and into a New Year's folktale about wine that becomes blood. All along, the assembly grounds still needed their water supply. A STORY. NOT A GUIDE. ICELAND. TOLD. Support independent research, writing, audio and production: https://ko-fi.com/icelandexplained Field Notes, sources and more Iceland stories: https://icelandexplained.com

    Öxarárfoss, Þingvellir: A Diverted River and the Drowning Pool

  6. Oct 22

    Silfra, Þingvellir: Clear Water, Cold Shock and the Long Glacier

    The rubber dry suit squeaks when you move. Your breath rasps through the snorkel. In Silfra, at Iceland's Þingvellir, those small sounds accompany a much larger problem with distance: a rock thirty feet below can look close enough to touch. Clear water is supposed to make things easier to see. Here, it strips away familiar depth cues while two-degree water gives your face something less ambiguous to report. The body and the eyes produce rather different accounts of the same place. This short Iceland Explained story follows that sensory mismatch back through basalt to the Long Glacier, where the water's journey began decades earlier. Blue light and green “Troll Hair” algae complete a scene that looks rendered, right up to the point where the cold interrupts. After climbing out, there is another use of the rift to consider. Öxarárfoss carries the story into law. Silfra leaves you with a less reliable estimate of arm's reach. A STORY. NOT A GUIDE. ICELAND. TOLD. Support independent research, writing, audio and production: https://ko-fi.com/icelandexplained Field Notes, sources and the Iceland Explained archive: https://icelandexplained.com

    Silfra, Þingvellir: Clear Water, Cold Shock and the Long Glacier

  7. Oct 21

    Geysir & Strokkur: Steam, Silica and Waiting in Haukadalur

    A low thump travels through the waiting at Strokkur. In Iceland's Haukadalur valley, the eruption begins well before water clears the ground. Geysir gave the world's geysers their name. These days, Strokkur does most of the performing. Steam collects below a column of water; above it, a crowd waits behind a rope with phones raised. The blue dome is the brief moment both groups are waiting for, though only one has a bus to catch. Silica helps build the underground plumbing and coats the pale ground around it. Elsewhere in the valley, orange and green microbial mats mark cooling water. Royal monograms attempt something more permanent, and the legend of Bergþór puts a troll within hearing distance of church bells. From Laugarfjall to the twin pools of Blesi, this is a story of heat made visible, audible and difficult to wash out of wool. The last eruption is over. The smell gets on the bus with you. A STORY. NOT A GUIDE. ICELAND. TOLD. Support independent research, writing, audio and production: https://ko-fi.com/icelandexplained Field Notes, sources and the Iceland Explained archive: https://icelandexplained.com

    Geysir & Strokkur: Steam, Silica and Waiting in Haukadalur

  8. Oct 19

    Thingvellir: Tectonic Plates, the Alþing and Iceland’s Law Rock

    A law speaker stands against basalt, trying to make himself heard over the wind. At Thingvellir (Þingvellir), Iceland’s early assembly used a landscape already coming apart between the North American and Eurasian plates. Almannagjá gives this story its sound. Lögberg, the Law Rock, gives it a human problem: keeping a legal code alive through memory and public recitation. Around the assembly, turf booths formed a temporary city of trade, obligations and disputes. Their remains barely interrupt the grass. Across Lake Þingvallavatn, a great northern diver announces its territory. Arctic char occupy different niches in the water below. Human claims on this ground take a harsher turn as the episode reaches the execution sites and the crowd that gathered in the rain for the founding of the republic in 1944. Today, visitors can recognise a television location before they recognise the assembly. The turf offers very little help. A STORY. NOT A GUIDE.ICELAND. TOLD. Support independent research and production:https://ko-fi.com/icelandexplained Field Notes, sources and more Iceland Explained:https://icelandexplained.com

    Thingvellir: Tectonic Plates, the Alþing and Iceland’s Law Rock
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About

Iceland Explained is for the ones who want to experience Iceland before they arrive, and for the ones already here who suspect the photo is not the point. This is A STORY. NOT A GUIDE, and not an audio tour telling you where to stand. It is Iceland told through wind, lava, salt, weather, folklore, towns, roads, silence, and pressure. Not what to capture. What to notice. What the place does to you. Because the island is indifferent to your itinerary. ICELAND. TOLD.

Information

  • Creator
    Radek Werbowski
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Radek Werbowski
  • Show Website
    Iceland Explained