If we are already in the land of ice and fire, we must at least have been on a glacier. And there are enough of them here. The largest glacier in Europe lies on her, the Vatnajökull. Part of it is Svinafellsjökull and we take part in a tour over this accumulation of ice. The guide Selma should show us the most beautiful places and make sure that we don’t fall into a crevasse.

We are equipped with helmets, picks, spikes and harnesses. Then it starts.

We are accompanied by a couple from Germany, but the group remains small.

First we have to get to the glacier in the first place. To do this, we first walk through the landscape without the crampons, which seems to have remained from a million years ago – and conversely, it is one of the youngest landscapes on our planet.

We hike along the glacier lake, which used to be completely different. We learn that here too the glacier has melted enormously and that a few years ago it reached the sea.

Ultimately, we are equipped with everything, the crampons attached and the harnesses lashed again. Especially when climbing the glacier there is a high potential for slipping, so Selma uses a rope that attaches her in front of us and we secure ourselves to it as if we were climbing.

Step by step we climb the glacier and see more of its large dimensions. Now we also have a much greater foresight and can look over the great black desert, on which the glacier once extended, to the sea.

We’re getting further than Selma planned. “You are a pretty fit group” is one of the few things our silent guide says.

For an Icelander she is downright talkative. Icelanders don’t like to talk. And they don’t like strangers. Or they don’t show it.

We are extremely sad when we start our way back. We really feel at home on the ice and would like to discover more. Perhaps the access to the interior of the earth is waiting here.