SAGA SHOP - Haust I Fall 2019

46 Icelandair Stopover Two years before stepping on the Moon, Neil Armstrong went salmon fishing in North Iceland. A picture of him, standing by the river, is on display at the Exploration Museum in Húsavík, but the image is so small that I didn’t recognize him at first and assumed it was a snapshot of leisure life in the 1960s. Smiling faintly as he holds a fishing rod, the 36-year- old Armstrong could pass for a local—until you consider the baseball cap and fancy aviator shades. And the four layers of clothing. Other prospective spacemen were in the country at the same time too, living in NASA training camps in Iceland’s interior. It was summer, and the constant daylight obscured their ultimate destination. In the middle of Iceland’s Highlands, NASA had found a parallel lunar landscape: no vegetation, no life, no colors, no landmarks. “They were pilots by trade, not geologists,” says Leonardo Piccione, Italian author of Il libro dei vulcani d’Islanda (“The book of Icelandic volcanoes”), which has a chapter IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE APOLLO ASTRONAUTS Like another planet? Nine of the 12 men who were first to set foot on the Moon trained for the mission in Iceland. Now NASA is preparing for Mars. BY EGILL BJARNASON. devoted to the much forgotten history of Iceland’s role in the Moon landing. “So the Iceland curriculum started with elem- entary definitions, explaining the basalt rocks and magma.” Nine of the 12 men who set foot on the Moon between 1969 and 1972 first came to Iceland as part of the Apollo geology field exercises to study the country’s geology, the idea being that it would help them understand the Moon’s geology when they visited. The exercises included the “Moon game”: The astronauts would pretend to be on the Moon and attempt to complete the most important field observa- tions, such as collecting samples. Lunar-Like Soccer Field The area where the astronauts trained is a boundless Icelandic desert, shaped by volcanic erup- tions and covered in different shades of lava. Named a UNESCO Top: During the Apollo geology field exercises in Iceland. The region where the astronauts trained became a UNESCO World Heritage Site this year. Photo by Kári Jónasson / Courtesy of the Exploration Museum. Above: American legend Neil Armstrong trained for the first Moon expedition in Iceland and unwound by fishing at North Iceland’s best salmon rivers. Photo by Sverrir Pálsson, courtesy of the Exploration Museum. n Askja n Húsavík (Continues on page 48.)