Iceland & Norway - Southampton return

The south of England boasts a dramatic coastline that encloses some of the most beautiful countryside in Britain. The landscape of hills and heaths, downs and forests, valleys and dales, is without rival. Southampton serves as your gateway to the countryside - and to a wide variety of historic sites, national landmarks and charming. And of course, London is a two-hour drive by modern highway. The United Kingdom's premier passenger ship port, Southampton was home for many years to the great transatlantic liners of yesteryear.

This quaint town perched on the North Sea boasts dual personalities. While renowned as the site where Viking king Harald Harfagre united Norway as a kingdom in the 9th century, it's also one of the country's most popular destinations for the annual Sildajazz Festival and Norwegian Film Festival. Add in a thriving town center with hundreds of shops and cultural diversions to jaw-dropping scenery and thrilling excursions, your stay in Haugesund promises to be an enthralling experience you won't soon forget.

By the mid-19th century, European travelers were cruising the waters of the Nordfjord and visiting the village of Olden. The Romantic Movement inspired this new taste for dramatic landscape, and Norway had plenty of dramatic landscape. Then as now, travelers were impressed, moved, and not frequently overwhelmed by the stark contrast between peaceful rural farmsteads and a towering wilderness of mountain peaks and glaciers. For many years Olden was home to American landscape artist William H. Singer (1868-1943). Scion of a Pittsburgh steel family, Singer provided Olden with a road and a regional hospital.

The island of Giske is the reputed birthplace of the great Viking Rollo, who laid siege to Paris and founded the Duchy of Normandy. William the Conqueror was his grandson. In 1904, a massive fire destroyed 800 buildings in this fishing port. Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II responded with immediate aid, and Alesund was reborn. Not surprisingly, the town was rebuilt in the then-popular Art Nouveau style known as Jugendstil. The result is one of the prettiest ports in Norway. Buildings with elegant turrets and spires can be seen lining the streets of the city center. Today, the city is one of Norway's most important fishing harbors and the world's largest supplier of stockfish (Klippfisk) - dried cod. Alesund's major attractions are the surrounding fjords and the stunning Sunnmore Alps.

The town is your gateway to the famous "Land of Fire and Ice", Iceland's dramatic landscape of volcanic craters, extinct lava lakes and majestic waterfalls. Visitors to Akureyri have a hard time grasping the fact that the town lies just below the Arctic Circle. The climate here is temperate; flower boxes fill the windows of houses, and trees line the neat, well-tended avenues. Thanks to that mild climate, Akureyri's Botanical Gardens provide a home for over 2,000 species of flora from around the world, all surviving without greenhouses. No wonder Icelanders refer to Akureyri as the most pleasant town on the entire island. Travel Tip, Akureyri rhymes with Tipperary.

The town of Isafjordur is the municipal centre of the West Fjords peninsula. The West Fjords are Iceland's least populated region, with 9,600 inhabitants in the area of 9,520 km. Isafjordur (population 3,500) formerly one of Iceland's main trading posts, was granted municipal status in 1886. Some of Iceland's oldest and best-preserved buildings, dating from the 18th century, are located in Isafjordur. The town is still predominantly a fishing centre. A vigorous and varied cultural and artistic scene flourishes in the town as well. Mountains surround Isafjordur on the three sides and the sea on the other. The ancient settlement site of Eyri downtown is enclosed by the narrow Skutulsfjordur fjord, which shelters the harbour in all weathers.

Iceland is a land of volcanoes and glaciers, lava fields and green pastures, boiling thermal springs and ice-cold rivers teeming with salmon. This unspoiled demi-paradise is also home to a very old and sophisticated culture. The northernmost capital in the world, Reykjavik was founded in 874 when Ingolfur Arnarson threw wood pillars into the sea, vowing to settle where the pillars washed ashore. Today, Iceland is an international center of commerce and home to one of the most technologically sophisticated societies in the world. Reykjavik is the gateway to Iceland's natural wonders, which range from ice fields to thermal pools. The island is in a continual process of transformation much like its society, which blends Nordic tradition with sophisticated technology.

Sailing into Grundarfjordur, one travels into Iceland's heroic past, for this township, village really, is one of the oldest settlements on the island. The imposing landscape with its austere mountains, volcanoes and lava fields provided the dramatic setting for one of Iceland's cultural treasures, the sagas. Composed in the 10 and 11th centuries, the Icelandic sagas represent one of the oldest literary traditions in Western Europe. They are tales of migration and settlement, war and blood feud, Christianity versus the old dark gods of Norse mythology. In Grundarfjordur, the world of the saga is still present. One can tread the "Berserkers' Path' or climb the hillock called Helgafell, the 'Holy Hill" mentioned in the Laxdaela saga where Vikings once worshipped Thor. Much of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula is a national park. The park's centerpiece is the mighty Snaefellsjokull, an imposing stratovolcano with flanks buried beneath a glacial flow. The mountain is a frequent setting in Icelandic myth. The peninsula is also a birdwatcher's paradise.

The south of England boasts a dramatic coastline that encloses some of the most beautiful countryside in Britain. The landscape of hills and heaths, downs and forests, valleys and dales, is without rival. Southampton serves as your gateway to the countryside, and to a wide variety of historic sites, national landmarks and charming. And of course, London is a two-hour drive by modern highway. The United Kingdom's premier passenger ship port, Southampton was home for many years to the great transatlantic liners of yesteryear.