Acme - Norway was on a cruise to see the solar eclipse and the Aurora. Iceland was another cruise to see vulcanism, though unfortunately we couldn't land at Heimaey, and Surtsay had only one teeny tiney steam outlet up at the top while we went round it several times. And I've got to go back because the shore excursions didn't give us enough time to really enjoy the geysir and the hot pools and the geology in general. Or the history.

There was a lecturer on board. In the first hour he went from the formation of the island up to 1942. He managed to criticise the first Viking settlers (he did acknowledge the Irish got there first) for wanting to have a government with no king. That sounded like anarchy, says he - I don't think there were any Americans on board. Then he left out all the interesting saga period, the relationships with the Nordic monarchies and religious changes, and the way the Icelanders coped with events like Laki, because he wanted to tell us about the way the island was occupied by the Allies during WWII. In the second lecture, he did more about that, and I seem to have forgotten if he did about the cod and the 12 mile limit, because he finished by telling us he would describe Johanna Sigurdurssdottir and we could make up our own minds about her - which I took as code for him thinking she was a bad thing. I wasn't sure whether it was because she came up through the trades unions or because her second marriage was to another woman.

I could have done with more lectures about sagas and history and geology.

I wasn't doing anything particularly serious or educational, though the eclipse trip was teeming with astronomy teaching.