JodockWorldTravel

August 8, 2025

“Valley of Waterfalls.” That was the title of today’s tour – and we did see waterfalls, but it seems to us that the entirety of Iceland could claim this title. Everywhere we look in all of these towns surrounded by towering fjords there are waterfalls. It’s a bit like churches or castles in Europe.

Today we are in Djupivogur, Iceland. We have no idea how to pronounce it. When we look up the pronunciation of the name of the town online it gives us an Icelandic pronunciation, which was no help at all to these dumb Americans. Here: you try it: ˈtjuːpɪˌvɔːɣʏr̥. How’d that work for you? So, we’ll just call it D-Town.

If Seydisfjordur was the most picturesque town we’ve visited, D-Town is probably the most non-descript.

This map might suggest otherwise but we hit every point of interest in less than 45 minutes.

Highlights included a very colorful building and piano walkway created in honor of the annual Hammond Music Festival. Yes, that Hammond – as in the piano and organ name many of us are familiar with. In this case the festival is in honor of the Hammond pipe organ. The Hammond pipe organ was invented by an American in America, and we could find no explanation for why they celebrate it here in D-Town, but they’ve been doing it since 2006, making it one of Iceland’s oldest music festivals. It’s held the first day of summer every year, which apparently always falls on a Thursday, continues through the weekend and culminates in one singer performing to the sounds of the organ in the Church of Djupivogur.

The other honorable mention is an artist’s tribute to the birds of the area. The artist created a copy of the egg of each of the thirty-four species of birds that call this area of Iceland home, then placed each one of those eggs on a pillar. The pillars had been around for a while and were becoming a bit of an eyesore. The artist thought this would be a great solution. From a distance they may look like they’re all the same, but each is slightly different, in color and in shape. Our guide felt it necessary to point out that they are not built to scale.

As we were walking the town we passed this house that seemed to be the epitome of what it means to live here…a 4-wheel drive vehicle, camper and 4-runner for the snow.

But this was not our excursion. Our excursion was to load up in a group of 4x4s and explore this Valley of the Waterfalls. We weren’t sure whether those 4x4s would be of the variety of the yellow one in the picture above, open-air jeeps or what. We were pleasantly surprised to find that they were very nice, super-lifted 4-door pick-up trucks with heat and great shocks. Those shocks and 4-wheel-drive would come in handy before we were through!

Heading out of town we had a great view of this guy across the way. This is Bulandstindur, a mountain famous in Icelandic folklore for its ability to grant wishes during summer solstice, when the sun is in its most northernly point in the Earth’s sky. Unfortunately for us summer solstice was at precisely 02:42:02 on June 21st this year, so looks like we won’t be getting our wishes granted. Bummer.

As we continued on we passed the now-familiar fishing nets, but with a much bigger story this time around. Our guide (whose name was pronounced like Goodenough, but I think was really Gudenur) works for the fishing company here, the islands main industry, and gave us a great education. Believe it or not, this little town of fewer than 500 people is one of Iceland’s biggest producers of salmon. Each net in this “farm” will produce 120,000-125,000 salmon. This is just one site; there are many along the coastline not only of this island but several others. Gudenur’s job is to feed the fish, which he does through a computer operation in the office. The white hose looking object you see running from the boat out to the nets is actually a feeding tube with specific disbursement points for each individual net. From his desk in the office Gudenur dispenses food into the tubes and is able to determine if there are any issues with the feeding mechanism or the fish. They also have something that circulates the food once disbursed to ensure all of the fish have equal opportunity to eat. Pretty amazing!

We took in the surrounding scenery while Gudenur told us about life in this small fishing village surrounded by two fjords and a mountain. They have all the essential services he says – a grocery store, school, doctor, dental services. Of course, there is no hospital, and the dentist only comes once every other week. There’s a “local” hospital two hours away, but if there’s something really serious that hospital will have to send you to Reykjavik. “What if there’s an emergency?” Pam asks. “You die,” Gudenur says, without missing a beat. He’s completely serious and recounts for us the story of two neighbors, one who had a stroke and the other a heart attack for whom that was true.

There are basically three families who own all of the land around the town – we’re talking MASSIVE amounts of land – and all of them are related. One is Gudenur’s and the other two belong to Gudenur’s cousin. Gudenur’s great-grandfather was one of the first settlers here, and at one point they were the last farmers left. Gudenur is the 7th consecutive generation of his family to live here.

With such large families and such a small population there’s a lot of on-line dating and mail order brides. The town has a surprisingly large Phillipino population related to a couple of mail order brides whose families followed them here. We asked about family feuds similar to the Hatfields and McCoys. Gudenur laughed uproariously and said, “More like The Real Housewives!”

We stop at our first waterfall. Gudenur tells us they’ve been measuring the volume of the falls since 1968. Historically these falls have had a volume of more than 2,000 gallons/second. In recent years that has fallen to just a little over 500 gallons/second. The most they’ve ever recorded was during a year of record snowfall and rain when they saw in excess of 100,000 gallons of water/second. That’s crazy! But last year the town experienced a summer heat wave of 80 degrees every day for two weeks. Hard to doubt global warming when you hear these things about Iceland.

Gudenur tells a little about his family history in the area and shares that everything we can see around us is his family’s property. In the U.S. this would make him and his family very rich, but here in Iceland he still needs multiple jobs. Gudenur works full-time at the fish hatchery, is a sheep farmer with about 500 head of sheep, and is a tour guide on his days off from the hatchery.

We stop at what at first glance appears to be a pile of rocks. Gudenur explains that this is his family’s old homestead. The home was originally built in 1852; the last people to live here were Gudenur’s great-uncle. He moved here with his bride in 1922. Twenty-two years and seventeen children later they left because the lack of roads made commercial farming impossible. The only transportation they had the entire time they lived here were horses and their own two feet. If they ordered something they couldn’t get on the island it would be brought in by boat and they had to figure out how to get it up this steep rocky terrain to their house.

It’s hard to explain the pictures, but we’ll try. In the second picture you see a conclave area filled with rocks. The area that appears to be just above it was the vegetable garden where the family grew root vegetables, the only vegetables that would survive the harsh conditions. Above the conclave area would have been the kitchen and entrance to the house. Immediately behind the kitchen was the cow’s room. Yes, that’s right, the cow’s room. Dairy cows were extremely important for their milk, and they couldn’t take the bitter outdoor cold, so they had their own special place in the house. The rest of the house was contained within the perimeter of the rocks you see scattered around the edges. As many as fourteen people and one cow filled this space at any given time. Gudener’s great-aunt lived to be 95. She was once interviewed by a local paper who commented on how crowded the living conditions must have been. Her response: “We were very comfortable. We had plenty of space.” They slept three kids to a bed and never thought a thing about it. Can you imagine this lifestyle? No neighbors, no midwife, nobody to help in case of an emergency…that’s some serious self-sufficiency!

We continued making our way up, up, up the mountain, engaging the 4-wheel drive as we made our way up this rugged road that didn’t exist until 1989.

We eventually make our way to the top of this rugged terrain, climbing steep hills and crossing riverbeds along the way.

We saw one final waterfall on the return trip, where we were also treated to some very hot chocolate, coffee and homemade cakes. We were the first to arrive at the perfect photo op spot, which led to Ken doing what Ken does – taking others’ pictures for them.

One final note about D-Town. When doing her pre-cruise research, Pam learned that D-Town is part of the Cittaslow Movement, an initiative begun in Italy in 1999. It promotes “slow living” as a way to achieve personal and environmental health. The three primary goals are to 1) improve quality of life; 2) preserve local culture; and 3) promote sustainability. More than three hundred cities world-wide, representing thirty-three areas of the globe, have signed on to the program. D-Town is the only Icelandic community to do so; Sonoma, CA is the only city in the U.S. We don’t know about the rest of it, but we can definitely confirm that D-Town has the “less frantic” part of the commitment of Cittaslow down pat!