I intended to show the video (below) on the post I wrote in early October about some of the sites we’d visited during our holiday in Iceland. (A glimpse of Iceland). Well… I can come up with several excuses for not doing so, but the main ones are simply that I hadn’t got around to getting it onto YouTube – and then, when I did, it looked far too jumpy and shaky to use.
The moral of the story is that for good, ‘steady’ videos we need a tripod. It’s impossible not to be jostled around at popular tourist spots and holding a camera perfectly level whilst moving it along to show different aspects of the feature is a big no-no (for me anyway).
Gullfoss (Golden Falls) is the most spectacular and well known of the Icelandic waterfalls, and we visited it as part of the popular Golden Circle Tour. The roaring noise is fascinating! Anyway, here’s the shaky video:
The second half of this video has somehow been lopped off – which is probably just as well, as it was far worse than the first half!
Here’s a little bit of additional information about these falls, mostly from tourist information boards at the site:
The Gullfoss Falls are on the River Hvitá where it descends from the highlands into the Hvítårgljúfor Canyon. The waterfall cascades in two tiers into the canyon and is about 31m high. The upper waterfall faces south and is 11 m high, the lower one faces west and is 20 m high. The two tiers can be seen in this photo:
For many years attempts were made to buy or rent the waterfall and harness its power, and disputes continued throughout the 20th century. A woman named Sigridur Tómasdóttir (1871-1957), a farmer’s daughter and later owner of the nearby farm, Brattholt, became ‘standard bearer’ in the fight to protect the Gullfoss, and devoted most of her long life to preventing its destruction.
Happily, Gullfoss and its environs were designated a nature reserve in 1979.
There are a couple of theories as to why these falls became known as the ‘Golden Falls’. The first is because of the golden evening hue which often colours its glacial waters. The second is that the name was inspired by the rainbow that often appears when the sunshine hits the water spray. But I prefer this story, which tallies with all the other fanciful tales abounding in Iceland. It was found in the travel journal of Sveinn Pálsson:
A farmer named Gýgur lived at Gýgurjarhóll. He had plenty of gold and could not bear the thought of anyone else having it after he’d died. (What a meanie!) So he placed the gold in a coffer and threw it in the waterfall – which has been called Gullfoss ever since.
Well that’s the last post I’ll be doing on Iceland – for a while, anyway 🙂
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Millie Thom 