Well. We spent the day cleaning our trenches and opening a new one nearby. We put the new one in a location where our machines said we should find a wall, but we found only a broad midden, albeit one with some steps appearing in profile. We believe this may have been a place where people cut turf, and the machine gave us an inaccurate picture by stressing the contrast in the picture it provided. The picture showed an area surrounded by walls, but should have depicted a broad, low-lying area. We need to refine our methods.

In the afternoon a tephra expert visited the site and looked at all of our trench sides, as well as a number of drainage ditches. We came away frustrated and confused by the bits of tephra that show up here and there, all mixed up. Sometimes it's in the dissolved turves, sometimes in situ where it fell. The three main tephra layers of interest to us date from A.D. 1300 and A.D. 1104, and 2800 B.P. All come from Mount Hekla, some distance away to the east. But sometimes the tephra layers do not appear in profiles, or appear in patches of varying thickness, so we're finding it hard to make heads and tails of what's going on. Sometimes the layers blend together with the surrounding soil, and sometimes they stand out quite obviously.

Last night, with the great weather, I hiked up to a rocky outcrop overlooking the farm and shot a panorama of the valley where we live. i also shot close-ups of a number of flowers and lichen; this seems to be flower season. I'll get the panorama posted as soon as possible. At 11:30 P.M. we had one of the best sunsets I've ever seen, and it just lasted, and lasted and lasted. The sun really is going down for a short period now, but it does not really get dark.

Because the house we rent had been reserved prior to our use, we have to vacate for the weekend, so John has decided to send five of us in a car off on an adventure. Our itinerary includes a visit to Reykholt, the home of Snorri Sturlusson (the guy who set down many of the Icelandic sagas), a hotel that owns a lava tunnel several km long and gives tours of it, Geysir (the original erupting geothermal vent, although it's broken now), and Gullfoss, the largest waterfall in Europe. We will drive back here on Monday. Because of this expedition, I'll not be posting again until Monday at the earliest.

After this entry is saved, I will move the panoramas posted yesterday to their own journal entry, and explain what they show.