Orlaskas on the road: Houses, a church and some out buildings

OK. One of the most fascinating things to me was how Iceland was settled. As were traveling around, we're traveling on the "Ring Road" - which is a fairly recent road and is only two lanes wide. There were no earlier roads or even trails transversing the lava fields, glacial gravel beds or the glacier fields - back in 900-1100 AD. That means around 1000+ years ago, someone was tootling along the shore in a boat and thought to themselves, "I think I'll build a farm up on that hillside". So, they waded ashore, carrying their belongs and sheep, hiked to their farm site, built some dwellings into the hillside and called it home. Wow, that is tough! To make sure they didn't get scurvy - they ate stuff called scurvy grass! Yumm!!

This is what I mean. We're looking out to our right from the road to see this. The ocean is off to our left - miles and miles to our left.

The Bolti Farmhouse was where we stayed for a night. Their cooking facilities were in the blue-ish building behind Ann.

This is much more roomy than some of the buildings we've seen.

This is an entrance to an old sod house near our lodging. It's a bit fallen in - a "fixer upper" in the eyes of a real estate agent!

All the fences around the home and out buildings are made of rock. This homestead had been in existence since 1162, hence the growth over the top of the rocks. LOL

One of the places we stopped was an early village - all sod houses, most in good shape. A place where Iceland Park Services wanted you to go in and out of the buildings and really take it in.

The roof of a barn. Notice the rock piled up on top of the timbers. Timber - by the way, there is none on Iceland. The joke goes: "What do you do if you get lost in a forest in Iceland? Answer: Stand up!" So, most of this timber came from the ships when they settled or was carted in from ships that followed.