Above: All adventure geared up!

After a couple of hours on this first walk I felt hungry and noticed all the little berries at my feet… I tentatively nibbled a few, and they were sweet and delicious, so after a quick forage I had a good handful… a great snack. After munching on them I decided to try and google “edible berries iceland” to confirm my suspicions that these were indeed good tucker!

above: Crow berries/ Krækiber /Empetrum nigrum.
These, some says taste bitter, to me they taste in between sweet, tasteless, sour and bitter…

above: Blueberries

Above: Bilberries

The top trumps of this wild Nordic bilberry include:
– higher vitamin C content than in cultivated blueberry
– higher vitamin E content than in cultivated blueberry
– very high content of anthocyanin, multiple times higher than in cultivated blueberry

Additionally, there has been some scientific debate about whether large daily consumption of bilberries helps to produce new brain cells. …. I might even come back smarter!!!!

The locals are like some rare bird species and are proving fairly elusive… or perhaps they are just wary of the visiting artists at the old school house… they are about- I occasionally see a tractor whiz by… I had heard they all hang out at the local thermal pool, so off I went last night to mingle with the locals in the thermal pool… I studied up on Icelandic Pool Etiquette, and tottered off down one of the two small streets on Hrisey. I had a lovely swim in the warm water and a quick stew in the hot tub… all on my own some… not a local in sight. Today I am going to go visit the lady I met on the ferry and hope she is home!

You can not take a bad photo here- it is truly remarkable. Here are a few shots from my iPhone…