Icelandic tales – Friðheimar

I couldn’t get a direct translation of Friðheimar out of Google translate, but I played around with it and came up with Peaceful World. A good translation!

We saw beams of light projected from the ground into the mountain sides earlier and speculated on what was happening – a mine? utility company? After visiting Friðheimar, we knew what it was – greenhouses.

They grow lots of vegetables – mostly cucumbers, tomatoes, and herbs – in geothermally heated greenhouses. This one is well known because it also contains a restaurant. You can have tomato soup or another tomato-based dish after your visit to the greenhouse.

I think the photo below was an accident because it’s at such a weird angle. But I kept it in because of the word “Please.” It’s Vinsamlega in Icelandic, which I find very strange. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, my tongue anyway.

There are tracks running down the rows of tomatoes to make harvesting easier. Hard to believe, but they say 2000 pounds of tomatoes are sent out of this greenhouse complex every day!

A helpful attendant showed us the box of bumblebees that are brought in to pollinate the fruit.

We asked a lot of questions. Our waiter was well trained in greenhouse operations as well as in the food they served. He explained the tomatoes are grown in a pumice medium (contained in grow bags as shown below). The plants have to rest at night. The lights are on about 18 hours a day. Their life span is only about 9 months. Baby tomato plants are started in enough time to replace the adults so there are no gaps in production.

Our waiter told us to go ahead and garnish our meal with basil from the healthy plant on the table.

Friðheimar also kept some horses and sponsored equestrian events in the warmer months. We’d seen the Icelandic horses from afar in the fields so I was happy to be able to greet them up close and personal. Icelandic horses are genetically special. They have more gaits than the regular horse. I don’t know anything about horsemanship, but it was interesting reading about the special qualities of the Icelandic horse.