Fáilte
Djupivogur
Iomramh 2011.
Djupivogur
15th June 2011
View Photos - Djupivogur Museum
View Photos - Djupivogur Church
We were awoken at 8.30 am by Frank Nugent who had been in the local campsite waiting for us to arrive. He is joining the crew for the rest of the journey back to Ireland. I last met Frank at the singing weekend in the Belbridge Hotel a few years ago. He is now one of the directors of Goilin.
Fortunately, the morning was fine so everything was taken out of the cabin and dried out on deck and we strolled around the village. Djupivogur -pronounced 'Jupivour' has a post office\bank, a reasonable supermarket, church, gift shop, police station and most importantly a hotel, where we can get internet access. There is also a tourist office cum museum, and the girl in charge, Bryndis, came and invited us up for a tour of the museum and church.
Djupivogur was selected as our Icelandic landfall because of the adjacent island - Papey. According to the brochure:
"Papey's history plays an important role for the history of Iceland, because Irish monks are thought to have lived there before the Viking incursion. They went away when the Vikings came, because they did not want to live among heathens. The island itself is named after the monks, who were called Papar and other local names also remind of them like Irskuhólarnir (the Irish hills) and Papataettur.
As it happened, we did not get the opportunity to visit the island. The round trip takes 4 hours and cost €40 per person.
It seems that Gunnthor Ingasson, our prime Icelandic contact had been in touch with Bryndis, before our arrival and she was able to tell us that arrangements had been made for us to attend a conference on Irish monks and stuff - 'we' are to be the speakers!. two cars will collect us at 1.00pm tomorrow to bring us to the conference centre. One of the cars will be driven by Gunnthor, a Lutheran Minister from Reykjavik, who will be travelling with us on the boat to the Vestmann Islands, South Iceland.
Most of the day spent recovering from the journey yesterday, doing small repairs on the boat, and emails etc.
In the evening, after dinner we went to the hotel for drink and music. Although there were other visitors in the hotel we were left mostly on our own, which is not something we do well. Whoever else is anywhere near us gets dragged into our sessions. Eventually a radio reporter turned up and did an interview with Padraig and then Danny, who refused to say anything until he got whisky (or Whiskey as it turned out!), and when the reporter bought this he did "Mo chara is mo namhaid". We also ‘captured’ some Americans who were writing a travelogue and they took some photos of us to include in it.