Geographers from Years 9-13 had a fantastic adventure to Iceland over half term. On their first day, they managed to get in a quick walk to check out the lava formations on the Reykjanes peninsula before a dip in the beautiful blue lagoon. It was pretty windy and cold but they commented on how amazing it felt to explore such an incredible and unusual landscape.
On the second day, the weather turned and this delayed some activities but once this had passed they enjoyed some better weather at Skógafoss, a waterfall on the Skógá River in the south of Iceland, where they got wet from the spray of the waterfall instead of the rain!
Exploring Sólheimajökull, one of Iceland’s incredible valley glaciers, was a breath-taking experience. They trekked to the terminus (or front) of the glacier and then donned their harnesses and crampons to safely walk onto the ice. The guides were able to tell pupils a great deal about the way that glacial ice forms and moves on a non uniform manner resulting in the crevasses that they could see on the surface. Staff and pupils loved hearing about the lines of ash within the ice from previous volcanic eruptions and also seeing how ash had insulated some areas of glacial ice and slowed melting down. They even saw a large block of ice break off the front of the glacier into the glacial lake! In addition, they saw an experimental line placed by Icelandic scientists to measure the rate of melting in the glacier and observed that it had melted at a rate of 8m since last summer. The guides estimate this particular glacier is shrinking at a rate of 12m per year and in about 20 years will be inaccessible to walk on.
On the following day, pupils visited the Kerid crater. It’s pretty unusual to see a crater lake like this and the pupils found it very impressive and asked some excellent questions about how the caldera formed. Great curious minds despite some windy and cold conditions!
There was also a little bit of non-curriculum fun in the form of a highly competitive Troll design challenge! The Icelandic judge praised the realistic design of the winning entry found it reminiscent of a favourite troll saga from his childhood. Pupils really enjoyed learning about Icelandic folklore stories, called sagas. In them, Icelandic people are often terrorised by trolls who are alive at night but turn to stone in daylight and take the form of some of Iceland’s incredible rock formations.
The final visits included the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant and Raufarhólshellir lava tube. The Hellisheidi geothermal power plant is one of the world’s ten biggest geothermal power plants. It is a flash steam combined heat and power plant generating 303MW of electricity and 400MW of thermal energy. It was really inspiring to hear about Iceland’s expertise in and commitment to developing geothermal power, a sustainable source of energy. There are some incredible careers linked to geography and science and it was particularly interesting to learn about innovations on carbon capture that Icelandic scientists have been pioneering and how renewables are represented so well in Iceland’s energy mix. The lava tube is one of the longest and best-known lava tubes in Iceland and it was a great opportunity to witness the inner workings of a volcanic eruption, walking in the path of lava that flowed during the Leitahraun eruption, which occurred east of the Bláfjöll mountains about 5200 years ago.
It was a fantastic and informative trip, visiting such an incredible country and learning so much about its geography. Truly unforgettable.
Huge thanks to the staff accompanying on the trip, Mrs Dracup, Mr Batty, Ms Inchenko and Ms Gonzalez Lens, who made the visit possible.
