Island Life: Explosives Wash Up, Ferry Crash, Wheelbarrow Travel

There’s a lot going on out there in the sleepy Icelandic countryside. To keep you up to date with the rural news, here’s another episode of Island Life.

A mysterious steel box marked EXPLOSIVES washed up on the shores of Berufjörður, east Iceland, near the village of Djúpivogur recently. This was later determined to be a box of military-grade flares but, taking no chances, bomb experts exploded the package at a safe location. Amazingly, bomb experts in the east regularly have to do this, albeit with WW2-era mortars and mines.

Stykkishólmur is feeling the impact of tourism—literally, as the cruise ship Ocean Diamond sidled up to the town’s wooden pier with a little too much speed, damaging the timber holding the structure together, crushing a post in the process. The damage was not great, but no one knows exactly what caused the mishap.

Icelander Hugi Garðarsson will travel the circumference of Iceland walking a wheelbarrow, in an effort to raise money for cancer research. He is in South Iceland at the time of writing, and hopes to visit some 70 towns and villages over the course of his 3,500km journey. He aims to cover 20 to 25 kilometres per day.

Read more Island Life – News From The Icelandic Countryside, here.