Ingólfshöfði
CAPE INGÓLFSHÖFÐI NATURE RESERVE
Geology
Cape Ingólfshöfði is a basalt promontory, an igneous rock formation, which is the most common type of rock in Iceland. The promontory rests on a tuff base.
Cape Ingólfshöfði is 1,200m long and 750m wide, with its highest point 76m above sea level. It is encircled by rocky cliffs, except for the western side where there is a huge sand dune, the Kóngsalda, which leads down to Kóngsvík Cove (Kings Cove). The names derive from a story of a king who acquired the cove − with the accompanying sand dune − from a man who hanged himself. Cape Ingólfshöfði was originally an island, but the sand and alluvial load from the glacial rivers has joined the Cape to the land.
Across the Cape there is a basin that extends from the Gönguklif cliffs in the north to the Votaberg rock in the south. The area east of the basin is called the Grashöfði promontory, while the area to the west is called the Grjóthöfði promontory.
Nature Reserve
Cape Ingólfshöfði is one of the oldest historical spots in Iceland, being where the Norse began their settlement of Iceland. Cape Ingólfshöfði was designated a Nature Reserve by an Act of the Alþingi in 1974, which was amended in 1978.
The area of the Nature Reserve is 90 hectares and its boundaries are demarcated by imaginary lines drawn from a distance of 100 metres from the outermost edges of the rocks on the Cape.
The trail that leads to Cape Ingólfshöfði is 9 km (six miles) long and branches off from the main road. But it is only passable by amphibious vehicles and tractors. Marker poles demarcate the trail as it winds along over mudflats and passes channels that may be quite deep, which is why it is very risky to leave the trail. Travellers are advised not to drive to the Cape in their own vehicles but rather to use the services of the Öræfaferðir travel agency.
Although Cape Ingólfshöfði is now a Nature Reserve, the traditional use of natural resources by local farmers has been preserved through a special agreement with the Environment and Food Agency of Iceland. All present structures and buildings must be maintained in consultation with the Environment and Food Agency of Iceland. Travellers on foot and on horseback are permitted to pass through the area, but visitors are asked to follow the trails of the promontory, be careful not to trample the vegetation, nor disturb the bird life or frighten the sheep. People are kindly asked not to leave litter when visiting the area. Driving is prohibited on the promontory. Any use of firearms is prohibited.
History
Cape Ingólfshöfði is named after the settler Ingólfur Arnarson, who sailed from Norway to Iceland with his wife Hallveig and landed their ship at the promontory, where they settled for the winter. Legend says that they lived at Höfðanef, which is the eastern and northernmost part of the promontory. The story also recounts that north of the Cape there was a fjord that Ingólfur entered with his ship and moored it to Selaklettur cliff. It is believed that these events took place in AD 874. In memory of Ingólfur’s settlement, a columnar basalt pillar of rock was erected on the Cape with the inscription from Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements):
“Ingólfur landed at what today is called Ingólfshöfði.”
“In Memory of Eleven Centuries 1974.”
Ingólfur later settled in Reykjavík, which was where he discovered his custom chair posts brought from Norway and thrown overboard for the sole purpose of guiding him to his final destination for settlement.
Not far from the Ingólfur Arnarson monument, there is a cairn that Björn Gunnlaugsson had piled up in 1839 when he conducted geodetic surveys of Cape Ingólfshöfði. The place names Skiphellir (boat cove) and Árabólstorfa (literally, oar turf), which are connected with the northern part of the rock face, indicate that Cape Ingólfshöfði was a place from which people rowed out to fish. The rock face at Árabólstorfa has a small cave called Púki. Oral legend has it that this small cave was used for storing fishing gear during the period when the cave was used for rowing out to fish from the Cape.
It is thought that the glacial burst in the Skeiðará river in 1774 destroyed the landing for the fishing boats east of Cape Ingólfshöfði, so that sea fishing from there subsequently ceased. Early in 1903, the German trawler Friederich Albert became stranded on the shore of Svínafellsfjara. Eleven days after the stranding, the farmer Sigurður Jónsson from Orustustaðir in Vestur Skaftafellssýsla was herding his sheep when he suddenly noticed a movement on the sand that he did not recognize, so he rode up closer. He then saw that this was a human being crawling on all fours and on the point of collapse − his clothes frozen to his body and his shoes completely worn out. Sigurður brought the man into his home and assembled a search party to find the other castaways that he had understood were still on the sand. Eight men were found alive, most of them badly suffering from frostbite to the hands and feet. The district physician, Bjarni Jensson, from Breiðabólstaður at Síða, Þorgrímur Þórðarson, a physician from Borgir at Nesjar, and others came to the aid of the shipwrecked men, because some of them had to have a frostbitten limb amputated.
The disaster that befell these castaways and their suffering resulted in people wanting to prevent a recurrence of these events. Therefore, a shelter for castaways – the first of its kind in Iceland – was erected in 1904 at Skeiðarársandur, while in 1912 another such shelter was built at Cape Ingólfshöfði, mainly through the initiative of the Danish merchant D. Thomsen, who was a German consul to Iceland.
In 1917 the landing facilities at Ingólfshöfði by Eiríksnef were improved. A gap was blasted in the rock and a winch with a wire leading down the rock was installed (still visible). That way, goods and supplies could be unloaded from cargo ships that were berthed at Eiríksnef. The destiny of the improved landing facilities was grim; ocean waves destroyed them the following winter. The first lighthouse on Ingólfshöfði was erected in 1916. It was made from angle iron and had become weatherbeaten when work began on a new lighthouse in 1948, based on the drawings of the engineer Axel Sveinsson.
“State electricity” arrived in the Öræfi region in 1974, but until then the area got its electricity from domestic electric power stations constructed in the area since 1922. With the new electricity source, another lighthouse was erected in 1974 with an aeronautical beacon, as was a nautical radio beacon on the older lighthouse. The aeronautical beacon is an omnidirectional VHS transmitter owned by the Civil Aviation Administration, which controls the international approach to Iceland as well as domestic flights to Hornafjörður.
Vegetation
The Grashöfði grassy cape consists of thick sod covered with common field grasses. The Öræfi Regional Youth Association grew potatoes there for a few years, in association with farmers from the eastern part of the region.
The Grjóthöfði rocky cape was originally rocky with little vegetation, as its name indicates, but since 1950 the vegetation has increased because of guano deposits after blackbacked gulls and lesser blackbacked gulls started nesting there. The gulls have now virtually stopped nesting on the Cape, but the great skua nests there instead.
Drift sand has suffocated the vegetation on the Cape in many places, but wood geranium, creeping thyme, sea plantain, sea campion, mountain avens and crowberry can be found. The crowberries can become particularly large, possibly because of the heat from the black sand.
In the basin between Grasand Grjóthöfði you can find marsh species such as common sedge, smallfruited yellow sedge, common cottongrass, vernal waterstarwort, jointed rush and glaucous sedge.
The rock has rich vegetation in numerous places, except where kittiwake and birds from the auk family dominate. Garden angelica, Scots lovage, common scurvygrass, roseroot, common saltmarsh grass and even lyme grass can be found, along with other grasses on the rocky ledges.
Insects
There are numerous species of insects on Cape Ingólfshöfði, including beetles (Coleoptera) in particular, some of whom are rather conspicuous. Examples include the ground beetles Nebria rufescens, Patrobus septentrionis,and Calathus melanocephalus − the water beetle Agabus solieri − as well as several species of tiger beetles.
The most conspicuous twowinged insects are the greenbottle blowfly (Cynomya mortuorum) and the yellow dung fly (Scathophaga stercoraria). Several species of moths appear at Ingólfshöfði, the most noticeable of whom are the red carpet moth (Xanthorhoe decoloraria), the antler moth (Cerapteryx graminis), the ingrailed clay (Diarsia mendica) and the tortricid moth Eana osseana.
The Cape is also home to peculiar insects with three tails, which the animals use to jump. Not too surprisingly, they are called jumping bristletails (Petrobius brevistylus). When fully grown, the animal is 10 mm long. The jumping bristletail can be found by the seaside or at the location or former shorelines.
Wildlife
On the way out to Ingólfshöfði you may expect to find the redthroated diver, the great skua, the greylag goose and the dunlin. In August you can see the sanderling (in winter plumage) arriving from Greenland.
Fulmars almost dominate the northern part of Cape Ingólfshöfði. To the east and the south, the fulmar shares the rock face with the puffin, guillemot, Brünnich’s guillemot, razorbill and kittiwake.
Gannets have not nested on Cape Ingólfshöfði, but from time to time they appropriate large areas for resting. Cormorants frequently alight on skerries and stones by the Cape to dry their wings. Petrels and storm petrels also inhabit the Cape, but are seldom seen because they almost exclusively fly at night. A pair of ravens lives on the Cape and protects their territory from other ravens. Snow buntings keep to the rock edges.
White wagtails and meadow pipits are known to nest on the Cape, while the rock pipit, a rare bird in Iceland, is thought to have nested there.
The greylag goose and mallard occasionally nest on the Cape.
The great skua has greatly increased in numbers during the past decades on the Cape − from 10 pairs in 1975 to 104 in 1999. Great skuas will sometimes use their wings to hit humans who get too close to their nesting grounds.
The arctic fox is found in numerous places on the Cape.
Land Utilization
Sandfellskirkja church in the Öræfi region owned the bird cliff on the Cape and utilized it extensively. Bird catching was quite common until the 1950s and still is practised to a limited extent.
The first puffin nets came to the Öræfi region in 1872 from the Faroe Islands. Before that time, hunters used snares and a kind of spear to catch birds. People also used to descend the cliff face by rope in search of eggs from the auks in the spring, and some still do so. The number of eggs collected has been recorded in books for many decades.
Several ewes with lambs are kept on the Cape during summer.
Organized trips to the Cape for tourists began in 1991. The travel company Öræfaferðir in Hofsnes takes people to the Cape in a hay wagon. On arrival, the tourists walk about the place, view the bird life and learn the area’s history. Most of the tourists are foreign.
Folk Belief
It is said that Cape Ingólfshöfði and Jökulsá river on Breiðamerkursandur beach reflect each other in some sense, i.e. if someone perishes at Ingólfshöfði, someone else will perish at the Jökulsá river.
In 1927, Jón Pálsson from Svínafell died on Breiðamerkurjökull glacier while he was on the way to the Öræfi region. He was in the company of others and crossed the glacier because the Jökulsá river was not passable due to high water. Jón was tending the horses while a passage was being forged across the glacier for both people and horses. Suddenly a fissure opened in the glacier, into which Jón fell along with three of the horses. The southern edge of the glacier had cracked, split and collapsed, with the above results.
Three years later, in 1930, a young boy staying at Hofsnes fell to his death from Cape Ingólfshöfði.
Seabirds
Around 70 species of birds nest in Iceland every year. Although seabirds represent only a third of the number of species, they make up the greatest number of individuals. Seabirds therefore constitute a significant part of bird life in Iceland, and over the years people have used them as a food source, as well as utilizing feathers for pillows and duvets.
All seabirds obviously must spend a spell on land during the nesting period and many of them live in dense communities, e.g. on the bird cliffs. Seabirds are late in becoming sexually mature, can reach a high age, are faithful to their spouses and return to the same nesting grounds year after year. Auk is a collective term for the razorbill, guillemot, Brünnich’s guillemot, little auk, black guillemot and puffin.
There are a relatively large number of puffins (Fratercula arctica) at Ingólfshöfði. The puffin digs a long tunnel through the grass at the edge of the cliff. Deep inside, there is a cavity where she lays her sole egg and where the offspring stays when first hatched. Hatching usually occurs 3045 days after the egg has been laid.
The adult puffins stop bringing food to the young in early August, and thus starve the young puffins from their holes. Sandeel is the mainstay diet of Icelandic seabirds, particularly during summer. During winter they principally feed on capelin.
The puffins are migrant birds to some extent. During their first winter, they migrate to Newfoundland, but the older birds tend to stick to the open ocean south and southwest of Iceland.
Puffins nest far and wide across the North Atlantic, from Maine in the USA to the Brittany peninsula in France, and even as far north as Svalbard. But the majority nest in Iceland. The oldest puffin on record in Iceland was 35 years old. Guillemot (Uria aalge) nests on the Cape; the shape of the eggs prevents them from rolling off the cliff. The eggs are much thinner at one end and will therefore roll in a circle if brought into motion. The young leave the ledge at around three weeks of age.
While still flightless, the young birds will jump off the cliff and turn like a centrifuge on their wing tips − feet stretched into the sea − where the adult birds wait and encourage them with a feeble squeak.
Brünnich’s guillemot (Uria lomvia) nests on the Cape and has done so for a long time. Arriving later at the Cape than their cousins, the guillemot, each female Brünnich’s guillemot lays a single egg on the rock ledges.
Iceland is the only nesting place of Brünnich’s guillemot south of the polar circle.
