Day 28: Class at the University Centre in the Westfjords

Early in the morning on July 4th, Thordur had to drive our bus to Reykjavik to return it (for some reason) and then took a flight back to Westfjords to meet up with us in the evening. So...we had to rent a bus from town and this beauty showed up at our place this morning. The name on the side of the bus is actually our bus driver's name. The bus is ancient and super funky, but in a good way.





We left the house around 9 am and drove for about twenty minutes to the University Centre in the Westfjords. We had two lectures, one before lunch and one after. The first lecture was a basic overview of the Westfjords area, and we learned about its history, landscape, and policies. Then we had lunch, and some people took advantage of the badminton court outside and played a few games. I'm definitely going to play tomorrow. After lunch we had another lecture about legislation and the importance of planning when dealing with a small and fragile area such as the Westfjords. We were given a map of Iceland and focused on a specific fjord which was marked with certain usages such as fishing and aquaculture, tourism and infrastructure. We then had to figure out a way to balance these usages and come up with policies so that the fjord would not be compromised by any one usage.



Departing from the university at about 3 pm, we headed over to Holl, a local farm which utilized hydropower to provide its electricity.







We met with the owner and he walked us up a path which lead to a stream which feeds water through a turbine that produces the electricity to power his farm. Next he's hoping to upgrade his turbine to increase his output and to the use hydropower to create ammonia to use as fertilizer.








The turbine



Heading back towards his house he showed us his cattle. He uses them for dairy products as well as meat production. He has an automatic milker that uses a laser to find the cow's teet. It's all robotic and takes care of milking every cow. The barn was quite big and the cows can walk around or line up to eat hay.


The robotic milker and a nosy cow






By now we were all getting hungry so we got on the bus and headed back to our house. The group in charge of dinner tonight cooked breakfast for dinner so we had bacon, eggs and pancakes, which was delicious.

After dinner we had to finish our proposals for our projects which were due at midnight. I decided to analyze tidal power in Iceland (since it's an energy source that I know little about) and determine where its output can be maximized and what method of harnessing tidal power would be the most lucrative. In addition, environmental and socio-economic concerns must be taken into account. It's going to be a difficult project (and we only have a week to do it) but I'm hoping that if I do some good research that I can end up with a good project.

Well, tomorrow we're at the University Centre again so I should probably get some rest. Goda Nott!