Snæfellsnes

Geographical location

The Snæfellsnes [' stnai ː fɛlsnɛs ] Peninsula lies to the west of the Borgarfjorður in West Iceland. The sparsely populated peninsula can boast numerous scenic beauties and you have it already called " Iceland in miniature " because it reflects all the charms of the big island in the smallest space.

Geography

Snæfellsnes is located between the bay and the fjord Faxaflói Breiðafjörður. The Snæfellsjökul located at the tip of the peninsula, it is a highly visible, 1446 m high stratovolcano. Around him is one of the four National Parks of Iceland, the Snæfellsjökul National Park. He has to have many marked hiking trails, such as an old road along the coast of Dritvík after Djúpalónssandur.

On the peninsula, the boroughs Snæfellsbær, Helgafellssveit, Grundarfjörður Stykkishólmur and parts of Dalabyggð with their respective locations.

Near Hellissandur the Icelandic Broadcasting operates a transmission facility for longwave. The belonging to this system Sendemast Gufuskálar is 412 meters high and probably the tallest building in Western Europe to be.

Geology

Approx. 7 million years old or older, the basement in Snæfellsnes, that is, from the time when the plate boundaries and the active volcanic belt located in this area. The volcanic activity stopped on Snæfellsnes, as the plate boundaries shifted 7 million years ago. But for unknown reasons they started again about 2 million years ago.

First there was volcanic eruptions in the volcanic system Lýsuskarð, which is approximately in the middle of the peninsula, and before 1 million years, the Snæfellsjökuls and Ljósufjöllsysteme began to stir. The Ljósufjöll the system, which is located at the eastern end of the peninsula is, with a remarkable length of over 90 km of one of the longest active volcanic systems in Iceland. It ranges from lava Berserkjahraun Stykkishólmur through sweat cinder cone Eldborg in Hnappadalur on the way from Borgarnes to Snæfellsnes to the Grábrókkratern Bifrost. The last eruptions on Snæfellsnes were around the time of colonization of Iceland in Hnappadalur.

Name

The name of the peninsula is the Schneeberg Peninsula. Isl Snæfell = Schneeberg. isl. hide = mountain, isl. Snær is a synonym for snjór = dt snow. Isl nes = dt headland peninsula.

In the case referred to the mountain Snæfellsjökul at the tip of the peninsula, which is often called Snjofell in older texts, such as in the book of Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson researchers. Today it is called Snæfellsjökul, that is, the snow mountain glacier, also to distinguish it from two other mountains with the name Snæfell located in East Iceland near Kárahnjúkar or at the southern edge of Vatnajökull.