It has been way too quiet for way too long here on our blog! Somehow life happened and maybe we were a bit too lazy to write blogs. Or we might have been too busy. Or both? Who could tell? 😉 In any case, a blog without any new content is rather boring, so we‘ll try to keep it up a bit better again from now on!
In the meantime, we haven‘t been just chilling along. We have had some very busy seasons at Saltvík / Riding Iceland. It will be hard to write 1 compact story about everything that happened in the past years, so I will not try to do that here.
But I do think we should at least name and highlight a bit the biggest project Bjarni has set up in the history of Saltvík / Riding Iceland; the Landvættir project! The landvættir are the guardians of Iceland, and after the first Dreamtour seasons Bjarni was super keen to keep this project going, but still wanted to do something new again. Because after all, that is why it is called the Dreamtour: he is always dreaming of trying new trails and simply loves to take old and new friends along on those rides!
So, as you have probably seen in the tourprogram, we‘ve started the Landvættir project in 2025, and we will continu with this project until 2028, riding through each quarter of Iceland with it‘s own guardian during the course of those 4 years.
Here‘s a bit of the information about this project (which you can as well find on the tourpage):
Landvættir (“land spirits” or “land wights”) are spirits of the land in Old Nordic religion. They are closely associated with specific locations and it is believed that their wellbeing is required for the land they inhabit to be fruitful. In Old Norse sources, they are depicted as being potentially harmful and capable of driving away unwanted individuals. Good relationships between humans and landvættir were believed to be fostered through acts like leaving out food for them and showing respect in any possible way.
The Guardians of Iceland refer to the story from Landnámabók when King Harald of Norway told one of his warlocks to travel to Iceland in some altered shape and bring back useful information about the island in the north. The warlock set out in the shape of a whale and when he came near the land he saw all the mountains and hills full of guardian spirits, and each time he reached a new part he was driven away. In the east a huge dragon followed by snakes, toads, and lizards who blew atter and poison at him. In the north, it was a great eagle with wings so wide that they filled up the fjord he was entering. The eagle was followed by other birds huge and small all screaming out loud. In the west, there came a large bull followed by other creatures stepping on the ground so rocks and mountains shook. And finally, in the south, it was a giant with an iron staff followed by trolls and elves blocking access to land. The warlock swam back to Norway and told King Harald to give up any plans to overtake this little island in the north!
Last year we did the north part of this tour; the Eagle.
It was an amazing tour, with 5 separate parts, and many of our guests joined the rides over known and unknown trails in the North of Iceland, where the Eagle guarded us safely from Saltvík along the very north coast, through the highlands towards and past Mývatn and then via Flateyjardalur over parts of both Sprengisandur and Kjölur highland routes, all the way to our base at Reynhólar in the NorthWest.
Now this year 2026, we will ride with the Dragon in the East. We at Saltvík, and -we‘re pretty sure- everybody who has signed up for one of the Dragon tour parts (5 parts again) are very excited about this new adventure and we are very keen to share our adventures with you all again here on the blog page! Stay tuned… 😉
