Picture of Sunrise over a sea-sculpted ice rock, once part of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier (Jökulsárlón, Iceland)

Sea-sculpted ice rock on the volcanic beach at Jökulsárlón

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One of the most spectacular sights of Iceland, Jökulsárlón is an ever-changing landscape of icebergs floating in a lake at the end of Vatnajökull glacier.
As the first daylight was chasing away the darkness of night, I was still driving towards Jökulsárlón. Slowly, the landscape around me, which I had no clue what it looked like, was taking shape. Mighty glaciers and mountains on my left, a flat landscape reaching to the Atlantic on my right. When I crossed the bridge at Jökulsárlón, I decided to go to the beach first, for a good view of sunrise. When I got closer, I noticed strange formations on the shoreline. As I reached the sea, an otherworldly scene unfolded before my eyes. The black beach appeared to be littered with chunks of ice, small and big, all in different, unique shapes. Some looked like big diamonds, meticulously shaped, while others were still plump masses of bluish-white ice. I immediately understood: the ice calving off Breiðamerkurjökull glacier eventually floats to the sea, where it gets washed ashore. As the temperature is around or below zero, the ice does not melt. Instead, the constant working of the Atlantic waves on the ice turns them into oddly shaped, sometimes delicate works of art. I stayed at the beach to soak in and enjoy the scene of blocks of ice being battered by the sea, and the odd view of a black beach completely full of ice. The scene left me in awe.
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