Í berjamó

Að vera í berjamó - being berrypicking - is what many Icelanders do from the end of August till the beginning of September. No surprise, great parts of the island seem simply to consist of blueberries and crow berries! There are actually two kinds of blueberries in Iceland, the European Blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillis) and the so-called Northern Bilberry (Vaccinium uligonosum). The second one is more common (it is literally everywhere) and it was the one Gauti and I were after today.

 I had been sick for two days and it was the first time I went outside after lying in bed and on the sofa for two days. It was beautiful. It had been cold those two days and the leaves of the birch and willows are turning yellow fastly and the mountain slopes become red and brown from red blueberry and dwarf birch leaves.

Litte red birch

Vivid red leaves of a dwarf birch tree (a tree which gets only about 30 cm long)

Birch trees becoming yellow

The sun was shining and White Wagtails, Wrens, and Redwings were jumping around. But then the Raven came and took one of the White Wagtails, so now it is one less.

We went "í berjamó" close to a little pine and spruce forest and picked within short time enough blueberries to fill a little lunch box (and to eat some handfulls).

Icelandic bluberries in the box and around the box.

The litte forest was also a tiny fungi paradise and I took a picture of a little Cystoderma family:

Little, a bit damaged Cystoderma family.

So autumn has arrived and this day is actually just one calm sunny day between two snowstorms ... (The weather website is posting storm warnings like every second day.) Crazy.