The home base
Halló everyone, I am Kody Shugars. I am greeting you from Saudárkrókur, Iceland in the Skagafjördur where my internship is in archeology.
My first week here has been crazy. I arrived on July 4 into Keflavik International Airport, and met my mentor, Dr. John Steinberg, an anthropologist who studies the colonization patterns in New England and the North Atlantic.
Once I found him we hit the road north to Saudárkrókur, my home for the next six weeks. Along the way we made a few stops including one at a cute, family-owned farm called Minna-Mosfell where we had our lunch.
What coring looks like. The orange line near the bottom is a volcanic eruption known as H3.
Next we proceeded north until we reached Saudárkrókur where we moved beds into our homes (in rented out buildings) and settled in for the night.
My first day at work I was given a tour of the area including ongoing sites, visited standing turf houses, and got a general overview of the land, all while being in awe of the amazing views.
The next day I began coring; that is, driving a hollow tube into the ground to get a stratigraphic sample. The core allows us to see possible remnants of settlements and to roughly date them by analyzing the tephra (material produced by a volcanic eruption) layers.
The site of an old midevil harbor called Kolkuós
I continued coring on a site not so far from the first on Friday and Saturday. It’s a lot of work, but it is all made worthwhile by the daily trip to the hot springs for showering.
On Sunday, our day off, I went down to Varmahlíð to a small shop that sells iconic Icelandic sweaters. I am now a proud owner of a itchy sweater!
Beautiful Iceland
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