Yesterday one of the trenches at Glaumbaer was extended five meters, so Shelley and I spent most of the day profiling it at a 1:10 ratio on small graph paper. Usually we profile at 1:20 scale, but this trench lies within the interior of a structure and we wanted the extra detail. During the whole day we had a northwind funneling down the valley, and it had strong gusts of wind that kept blowing dirt around annoyingly.

But at the end of the day, the nice people at the cafe at the Glaumbaer museum invited us in for hot drinks and traditional Icelandic fare that they sell to visitors. Amongst the tasty items available, we had Icelandic pancakes, open-face sandwiches of salmon and some sort of cheesecake. The Icelandic pancakes come in two kinds: crepes rolled very tightly with cinnamon sugar inside, and crepes folder over and filled with cream.

This morning Nilka, Minna, Ilana and Anna headed off to Reykjavik in one of the cars, so that they can catch their various flights and see a bit of the town. We're starting to pack up everything and backfill the trenches. Some of the trenches get filled by backhoe, but others we have to shovel back in. In both cases, after the dirt goes back in, we have to put the cut sod chunks back on top, then rake in loose dirt and stomp them all down.

Before we fill the trenches, however, we throw in a few modern coins and lay down a kind of cloth matting so that someone wanting to re-excavate the trenches knows that all the dirt above the coins and matting isn't historical. We still have various things to do at the computer to wrap things up, such as add entries to our finds database that lists all the artifacts, bags of bones, dating samples, and similar items that we have collected over the past month. We'll put in a few hours doing this tonight.

Tomorrow we plan to complete all the equipment packing and trench backfilling, have one last hot pot session and dinner, then pack the vehicles for leaving town. Shelley and I will pick up our rental car tomorrow morning, and currently plan to head east around the island starting early Monday morning.