Dyrhólaey, Skógafoss and Back to Reykjavík

On the last day of our Iceland trip, we continued on the Ring Road along the southern flank of Vatnajökull, with a breathtaking view of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier tongue. 

Vatnajökull reached its greatest extent in the late 19th century, but its tongues have since retreated due to climate change. The glacier covers seven active volcanoes, so geothermal heat keeps lakes beneath it. Glacial rivers originating from Vatnajökull created large outwash plains.

Our first stop was the Skeiðará Bridge Monument, a monument made of twisted iron girders. In October 1996, the dormant Gjálp volcano erupted beneath the Vatnajökull. The heat melted massive amounts of ice, which collected beneath the glacier to form a lake. In late November, this subglacial lake burst, resulting in a jökulhlaup (glacial flood) that carried up to 45,000 m³ of water per second, along with meter-high floating ice floes.

The flood wave destroyed a large section of Iceland's Ring Road as well as its longest bridge, the 900-meter Skeiðará Bridge. The bent steel girders, twisted like wire, bear witness to the impact of the plummeting masses of ice.

An artist's idealized view of the south side of the Vatnajökull

And here is the map. On the left is the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier tongue and Jökulsárlón; in the middle is the mighty Skeiðarárjökull tongue.

Further west, we visited the Vatnajökull National Park visitor center in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, where lava samples were on display. 

On the left is Apalhraun (A'a) lava filled with gas that makes it porous and its surface rugged. On the right is Stuðuli (basalt) lava, which forms hexagonal columns as it cools.

This is a good introduction to Eldhraun, the world's largest lava field, covering about 565 km² and located south of the Ring Road between Kirkjubæjarklaustur and Vík.

On June 8, 1783, preceded by several earthquakes, the Laki crater fissure opened, and approximately 12–14 km³ of basaltic lava poured over part of southern Iceland. The eruptions lasted until February 7, 1784, and are considered one of the largest documented in recorded history.

The eruption devastated much of southern Iceland. Approximately 10,000 people (about 20% of the population) died from famine and fluorine poisoning, as toxic gases destroyed livestock and crops. In Iceland, this is called Móðuharðindin (the fog disaster), as aerosols spread across the Northern Hemisphere, causing crop failures and a cooler summer. Some historians think that the poor harvests in France and the resulting famines were one trigger of the  Revolution.

The vegetation is hraungambri (fringed moss) that thrives on nutrient-poor, porous lava rock because it absorbs water and nutrients not through roots but through a fine network of leaves. Over about 250 years, a thick, cottony-soft layer of moss has formed, up to 40-60 cm thick in places. When dry, it appears grayish-white (little rain in Iceland, too), but when wet it glows a rich green. The moss is extremely delicate, which is why it is only allowed to walk along marked trails. Once trampled, the moss takes decades to recover.

Low-hanging clouds and a little church

Vík, Iceland's southernmost town, is not far from Dyrhólaey, the southernmost point of the Icelandic mainland.

Tourists were everywhere, and a cheeky fly had settled on the sign.

  

Dyrhólaey (door hill island) is thought to have formed 80,000 years ago in a submarine volcanic eruption. 

Atlantic waves have since eroded the black lava columns, forming the sand and leaving vertical cliffs.

Looking south, you notice a gigantic black arch of lava standing in the sea, eroded by the waves. The rock protrusion extending from the mainland, with the hole, gave the peninsula its name, Dyrhólaey (door hill island).

As promised by the tour operator, we not only enjoyed a spectacular view of the coastline, but since it was summer, we had the chance to spot numerous adorable puffins.

In German, these cute birds are called Papageientaucher (parrot divers).

We continued toward Reykjavík and passed the Skógafoss waterfall.

The Eyjafjallajökull and Myrdaljökull glaciers. To the left is Iceland's capital, Reykjavík

The river Skóga is fed by meltwater from the Eyjafjallajökull and Myrdaljökull glaciers. When the water reaches the cliffs, it rushes down as a beautifully shaped waterfall: Skógafoss, 15 m wide and 62 m high.

These cliffs formed from marine erosion at the end of the last Ice Age, when the sea level was much higher than it is now. As the glacier melted and its weight lifted, the land rose out of the sea.

Our ever-concerned tour guide, Andrí, is looking for his flock.

©Steinninn/Wikipedia

After we arrived in Reykjavík, we visited a national shrine. In front of the church stands the statue of Leif Eiríksson, the Iceland-born early explorer of the Americas.

Hallgrímskirkja* is a Lutheran parish church in Reykjavík built in Icelandic modernism and natural aesthetics. The form is inspired by basalt columns. It is Iceland's largest church and, at 74 meters, the country's second-tallest building.

*The church is named after the Church hymn writer and cleric Hallgrímur Pétursson

Since its completion in 1986, it has been regarded not only as Reykjavík's architectural landmark but also as an important symbol of Iceland's national identity.

I focused on the statue of Christ on the left.

The statue is a replica of the original located in Copenhagen Cathedral (Vor Frue Kirke). Kristus is considered one of the most significant works of Scandinavian classicism by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

But this artwork in the church's northern aisle intrigued me.

Known as Madonna And Child, Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavik

A stained-glass window depicts Mary and the Baby Jesus. A Marian chapel in a Lutheran church? Red Baron asked ChatGPT.

Hallgrímskirkja received the stained-glass window of the Virgin Mary as a gift, and indeed parishioners initially found its acceptance controversial. However, the church is not simply decorated in a Catholic style; rather, Mary is understood here in a Christological sense: the focus is not on Mary, but on the Christ Child.

In an ancient Christian iconographic tradition, Mary sits with the Christ Child in a cosmic, star-filled heavenly setting. She appears here not as a realistic mother, but as the Theotokos (God-bearer).

The Christ Child spreads his arms wide, which can be understood as a reference to his later crucifixion. In this way, the depiction links Christ's birth and Passion.

Were these also the reasons why Luther, despite his aversion to all saints, venerated the Mother of God throughout his life — and why there is a St. Mary's Church in Wittenberg and the Church of "Our Lady" in Dresden?

This ends the heptalogy of my Iceland blogs, as there are:

My Icelandic Diary

On Yule Lads, Alðingi and BCPPs

Of Craters, Rural Postmen, and Cruise Ships

Grenjaðarstaður and Myvátn

Dimmuborgir, Dettifoss and Hverarönd

Rjúkandafoss, Reyðarfjörður, Djúpivogur and Jökulsárlón

and this blog.

Goodbye, Iceland.

Will Democracy Survive?

The Christian Democrats more than halved, the AfD nearly doubled

The election results in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt particularly shocked former Chancellor Merkel, as she explained in an interview with the news channel NTV.

I transcribed ans translated her remarks. Her unedited, verbatim German text is attached to this blog as an appendix.

You can see it in the polls in the days leading up to the election, but when you see it in black and white on Sunday evening, it’s simply shocking - at least that’s how I felt.

 
This is a turning point - a real turning point - that we’re witnessing in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, and to add a personal note, as a CDU member, it breaks my heart; I really have to say that.

Our former chancellor, visibly struggling to find the right words

But now we have to consider, for example, the reach that the AfD has on social media - in other words, its influence over the flow of information. It’s not enough to simply say, “Well, we don’t use TikTok”- we have to face this head-on and meet people where they are. We won’t be able to win them all back - I want to make that explicitly clear - because the AfD also wants to abolish public television. So how do we achieve this now?

  

In the spirit of the Enlightenment, we really must not allow a situation where, when it’s said that unemployment has fallen in Saxony-Anhalt and individual prosperity has risen - a position that could win a majority or nearly win a majority - the leading candidate then says, “Maybe so, but that’s not how it feels,” because then the emotion is being played upon. Emotion suddenly becomes just as important as the facts.

And if we allow that - and this, again, is a responsibility we all share - that was the progress of the Enlightenment: that the collective could agree on facts, and based on those facts, people then arrived at different preferences for political parties and so on.

But no one has ever disputed that the facts matter. When we communicate with one another now—and we’re actually supposed to be having a meeting to discuss specific facts - people say, “I’m just not feeling it today. We can’t talk about it.” If that mindset takes hold, then we’re taking steps backward in terms of civilization - at least that’s what I believe - and we need to raise awareness of that again.

I’ll be completely honest: I don’t have the answer. I just know that some things - AI aside - are perhaps even more important than they were before: addressing citizens on an individual level. And this is becoming crucial now, because everyone has their own information sphere.

But what’s also being demanded of candidates, for example - they now have to, so to speak; it’s no longer the case that the slogan comes from the Adenauer Haus* and then you walk out the front door and tell them that, and they say, “Nah, we’re not interested.” I have a question - I mean, the candidates also have to be really on top of things.
*The CDU party headquarters in Berlin

What’s happening to some extent now is that the AfD is so dominant that the others are already intimidated and don’t even show up anymore - and that’s not illegal yet - so as a democratic party, I have to seek out contact with citizens all the more.

 
So much for Angela; she tries desperately, but doesn’t have the answer.

Red Baron fears that our Western democracies may be destroyed by people’s selfishness and stupidity.

The reasons to vote AfD

Let’s try to analyze the situation for Germany: Why did people in Sachsen-Anhalt vote for the AfD? A poll shows:

21% are dissatisfied with the Merz administration.

Pluralism and democracy are always good as long as freely elected governments can hand out benefits. In that case, citizens even accept - sometimes grudgingly - that the distribution isn’t always fair and that the gap between rich and poor keeps widening. But with sufficient economic growth, the pie gets larger, so everyone gets a bigger slice.

But when economic growth stagnates or even “shrinks,” and tax revenues are low, there’s nothing more to distribute. When it comes to the point where our government has to take back some of those previously granted benefits, it hurts.

In a stagnant economy, apparent growth can only be produced artificially by taking on debt or increasing the share of the pie at others' expense.

An example is China. Chinese automakers are now flooding the European market with cheap, government-subsidized electric cars after the American market shut them out. The European auto industry is powerless against these dumping prices.

Fast-rising Chinese national debt

The price China is paying is a rising national debt. They couldn’t care less.

With the cornucopia of benefits empty, the erosion of democracy begins insidiously, and it accelerates when reforms roll back established privileges. AfD’s co-chair Alice Weidel swears: “Those at the top are flat nose pliers* (dimwits) who can’t get anything done.”
*Flachzangen in German, coined by Alice

In her statement, Weidel represents the 22% of AfD voters who are discontent with the political system. 

 
Decision-making in a democracy almost always involves compromise, and that takes time, so people voice dissatisfaction with the democratic system. Do they prefer a “strong” man or woman?

 
Germany’s postwar constitution was written to produce a “militant” democracy, with a robust toolkit for battling extremism.

As early as 2023, the Saxony-Anhalt Intelligence Agency for the Protection of the Constitution classified the state chapter of the AfD as a confirmed far-right extremist movement: “It holds views that undermine the central principles of the Basic Law*, such as the guarantee of human dignity under Article 1 and the principle of democracy under Article 20. The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt seeks to abolish parliamentary democracy in its current form and attempts to delegitimize the democratic system and its institutions.”
*The German constitution

Winston Churchill already said in the House of Commons on November 11, 1947, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

So let us fight for democracy. What alerts me most is that 34% of AfD voters in Sachsen-Anhalt cite the interests of the German Volk as their reason.

Nationalism, which reared its head in the France of Louis XIV and was elevated to prominence during the French Revolution, has brought nothing but disaster to Europe. Nationalism has erected borders, separated European neighbors from one another, and ultimately erupted into two bloody world wars.

The AfD wants to leave the Schengen Area, abolish the euro, and give the German people back their Germany. This would be a disaster not only for the common European House but also for our economy.

Where do we go from here?

And once again, a rift is opening up between Europeans who see the far right as a threat to democracy, and a growing number who see it as democracy’s savior.

The former warn that the far right will dismantle checks and balances, while treating minorities as second-class citizens. So far, Meloni, after a flirtation with Trump, seems like a good European, but shouldn't we reckon with the German fury?

The latter see the far right as a bulwark against an out-of-touch governing elite that has eroded their national identity and endangered their livelihoods. On average, people in Germany’s eastern federal states are worse off financially than those in the west. They criticize Germany's spending on refugees and aid to Ukraine, while many older people have to get by on small pensions.

Next step: How to form a government in Sachsen-Anhalt.

Appendix.
Das Merkel-Interview bei NTV:
Man sieht das in den Tagen vorher in den Umfragen, aber wenn man’s dann am Sonntagabend schwarz auf weiß hat, dann ist das einfach schockierend, jedenfalls mir ging’s so.

 
Das ist ein Einschnitt ein wirklicher Einschnitt, den wir in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland erleben, und um jetzt noch was aus etwas Emotionales zu sagen, mir als CDU Mitglied blutet das Herz, das muss ich wirklich sagen.

Jetzt müssen wir aber überlegen, welche Reichweite zum Beispiel die AfD in den sozialen Medien hat. Also welche Informationshoheit. Dann ist es damit nicht getan zu sagen, ja aber wir gehen nicht auf TikTok, sondern dann müssen wir uns dem schon stellen und die Menschen da auch abholen, wo sie sind. Wir werden sie nicht, ich will das ausdrücklich sagen, weil die AfD auch das öffentlich-rechtliche Fernsehen abschaffen will, nicht alle zurückholen und wie schaffen wir das jetzt?

 
Wir dürfen im Sinne der Aufklärung wirklich nicht zulassen, dass es, wenn gesagt wird, die Arbeitslosigkeit ist gesunken in Sachsen-Anhalt und der individuelle Wohlstand ist gestiegen, mehrheitsfähig ist oder fast mehrheitsfähig, der Spitzenkandidat dann sagt: "Kann sein, aber das wird nicht so gefühlt", denn dann wird das Gefühl bedient. Das Gefühl ist plötzlich genauso wichtig wie das Faktum.

 
Und wenn wir das zulassen, und das ist wieder eine Aufgabe von allen, das war der Fortschritt der Aufklärung, dass sich die Summe der Menschen auf Fakten einigen konnte, und auf der Basis dieser Fakten kam man dann zu unterschiedlichen Präferenzen für politische Parteien und so weiter. Aber es ist nie in Abrede gestellt worden, dass das Faktum das Wichtige ist.

 
Wenn wir jetzt miteinander kommunizieren und eigentlich sollten wir ein Meeting haben und uns über bestimmte Fakten austauschen, dann sagt man: "Ich fühl mich heut nicht so. Wir können nicht drüber sprechen." Wenn das die Hoheit übernimmt, dann gehen wir zivilisatorische Schritte zurück, das glaube ich jedenfalls, und das muss auch wieder bewusst gemacht werden.

 
Ich sag jetzt ganz offen, ich hab die Antwort nicht. Ich weiß nur, manche Sachen, KI hin und her, sind vielleicht noch wichtiger als sie vorher waren: Die individuelle Ansprache der Bürger, und es wird jetzt ganz wichtig, weil ja auch jeder seinen Informationsraum hat.

 
Aber was wird da auch von Kandidaten zum Beispiel verlangt die müssen jetzt sozusagen, es ist nicht mehr die Parole kommt aus Adenauer-Haus und dann gehst du vor die Haustür und sagst ihnen das, dann sagen die, nee, interessiert uns nicht. Ich hab die Frage, ich hab die Frage, d.h., die Kandidaten müssen auch richtig fit sein.

 
Was jetzt zum Teil passiert ist, dass die AfD so dominant auftritt, dass die andern schon verschüchtert gar nicht mehr hingehen und das ist ja noch nicht verboten und deshalb muss ich jetzt umso mehr als demokratische Partei den Kontakt zum Bürger suchen.
**

Rjúkandafoss, Reyðarfjörður, Djúpivogur and Jökulsárlón

Before we arrived at the Hotel Austur in Reyðarfjörður for the night, we enjoyed another foss, the Rjúkandafoss.

Entering Reyðarfjörður.

Reyðarfjörður harbor in the morning sun

The following morning, we packed up for Jökulsárlón (the glacial river lagoon) and stopped at Djúpivogur, a village intertwined with German history, as Hanseatic merchants were the first to be granted trading rights here in 1589.

Today, the residents make their living from fishing and tourism.

The village has colorful houses, including one painted red, Langabúð, considered one of the most beautiful in Iceland. 

A liberty monument

We continued to Jökulsárlón.

In the background, a tongue of the Vatnajökull (Glacier of Lakes)

Around the south coast on our way on the national N1 ring road ...

... we longed Iceland's giant Vatnajökull glacier.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Vatnajökull's tongue, the Breiðamerkurjökull (Glacier of Wide Woodland), extended almost to the sea. Today it is more than 6 kilometers from the coast. Lakes have formed at the glacier's edge, such as the well-known Jökulsárlón, which covers 17 km².

With a depth of around 300 m, the lagoon is Iceland's deepest lake. It never freezes over because saltwater regularly flows into it from the sea. Jökulsárlón

Icebergs up to 15 meters tall break away from the glacier tongue. They may float in the lagoon for 5 years, drift slowly to its mouth, and eventually flow via a small tributary toward the ocean.

Our group booked a boat ride on the lagoon, but it was canceled because of high winds.

On the way to our hotel, we stopped at another foss near Fagurhólsmýri.

During an evening stroll, we tried to approach a flock of grazing sheep, but they kept an eye on us and drifted away, keeping their distance.

** 

Franco-German Partnerships in AI

Red Baron took part in the French Summer University at the Frankreich Zentrum of Freiburg University once again this year.

One of the topics covered at the Sommeruniversität was artificial intelligence, a field where Europe lags behind and where one looks for Une intelligence artificielle européenne with partenariats franco-allemands dans le domaine.

Our teacher surprised us with an AI-generated photo. Nice try, but you can't see the Minster Church from the lecture hall. Madame had crutches, alright, but she exuded a "few more years" of experience.

AI is almost everywhere.

ChatGPT, how does it work?

AI understands, learns, and generates.

The slide above shows the European misery. Only DeepL and Mistral make it in the European charts, while the software market is dominated by American companies.

 

The challenges

Working together to build European technical, ethical, and competitive sovereignty.

 
Geopolitical and economic challenges
- Digital sovereignty
- Strategic independence
- Competitiveness

 
Ethical and societal challenges
- Respect for values
- Data protection

 
Technological and industrial challenges
- Access to resources
- Brain drain*
*The French have that cute fuite des cerveaux, while in German we simply adopted brain drain since Fachkräfteabwanderung sounds indeed clumsy.

Red Baron thinks the European program is too ambitious and comes too late, especially since international players tend to regard ethical and data protection concerns as secondary when it comes to maximizing profits.

Moreover, the mills of EU bureaucracy in Brussels turn too slowly and are already being steamrolled by accelerating technological developments.

 

French President Emmanuel Macron (l) and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
take part in the European Digital Sovereignty Summit
Nov. 18, 2025, in Berlin, Germany (©Kay Nietfeld/dpa Picture-Alliance via AFP)

Still, President Macron and Chancellor Merz believe it is worth a try.

Marianne kicks out Windows while little Linux walks in

American dominance is overwhelming, yet France got the ball already rolling with some housekeeping.

So far, Europe hasn't fully taken Chinese AI into account.

And what about the ecological impact of AI?

A simple query to ChatGPT requires 0.3 Wh and produces up to 4.3 g of CO₂. AI's electricity consumption already accounts for 2% of global electricity generation, and that figure is rising.

 
The lively discussion gave us plenty of opportunities to practice our French.

 

At the end of the course, our teacher invited us to write the lyrics for a chanson, which ChatGPT Suno then set to music. It was fun.

**