Subarctic Sheep in an Unexpected Heaven

3.  Monday. We leave Reykjavik. A long first day's drive from up the west coast to the island to the largest fjord on the north coast, stopping at the way in Borgarnes to see an exhibit on the sagas at a heritage museum.
At this subarctic latitude (65°41′N), the hay and sheep farms are lush and green, like Wyoming in late spring, but without irrigation needed.
We stay in another Icelandair hotel, in Akureyri, the island's second largest city, a quaint college town where the evening breeze is still warm in mid September, even though out the fjord northwards is nothing between here and the North Pole.  In the morning, I get up early and walk around quiet to see people going to work.

4.  Tuesday. After breakfast in the hotel---we always have skyr, of course---we drive out of town, heading across the wasteland part of the island. We stop at Goðafoss, the mighty glacial falls where the last great pagan chieftain through his idols in the water, a thousand years ago when Iceland became Christian.. Against a volcanic landscape a bit like Death Valley, we navigate among steam plumes until we find in the Myvatn baths, where take in the warm pool amidst some Swedish tourists. Later we reach the great cascade of Dettifos, and take photos of ourselves standing next to rainbows.. From there we cut inland across the flat interior volcanic plateau, where no one lives at all, and there are no sheep to be seen for many miles. We pass through the downwind wafting of the very sulfuric plume of the eruption of Bárðarbunga, visible on the horizon to the south. In the afternoon we come down to the fjords again on the east coast, and the land is lush again with sheep. We stay the night in the historic guesthouse farmstead of Egilsstaðirr, which is now the nucleus of the largest town on the eastern coast.