When Gunnar Gunnarsson looked out here, he saw Atlantis.
Dritvik
When you see Atlantis there, too, you will have arrived at his Ísland.
The Blue Line Between Sea and Sky
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Monthly Archives: March 2017
Elf Garden in Reykjavik
Here, the human church …
… and political mythologies…
… are built on older foundations.
Life is the breath of stone.
Urban Sprawl in Iceland
Seljaland Under Overcrowding Pressures
Falling to the Centre of the Earth
When I first saw Svartifoss, a waterfall in Skaftafell National Park, I fell in love. When I approached it in late fall four years later, I fell in love again. It was darker now, and somehow even more glorious.
What’s not to love! Just to the left of the fall, the earth reveals the fall’s real story, though:
It’s not the water that falls here, but anything that enters this space, even the earth.
Even me. Even you. That is powerful earth magic for sure.
The Mysterious Eye of the North Atlantic
No matter how you look at it, it’s higher than the land.
Iceland is a well.
It is a pool.
It is a stone thinking into thought. The thought has teeth. Some of the teeth are the land.
All are light.
Some of the waves are from beyond this earth.
To build a house here is to build it in the open universe.
It will take its toll.
In Advent, Gunnar Gunnarsson showed us how we can manage if we don’t do it alone.
Who’d want to?
Mysterious world!
The Dragons of Iceland
Kirkjubaer
Reykjavik
Fjarðará
Bíldudalur
Lagarfljot
Staðarskáli
Bíldudalur
Hverir (Reykjahlið)
In Iceland, Fences are Purely Decorative, But That’s Nice, Too
They seemed like a good idea. Musical instruments, perhaps.
But reindeer don’t play guitars.
So, like, of limited use, especially when a gate is “no gate.”
Or when the Siberian driftwood fenceposts keep drifting.
Music, that’s the thing.
Iceland: the song of the sea.
Entering Whirlpool
Imagine, becoming the volcano. You can, at Skutustaðir. You will have to become a different person, that’s all.
Imagine that a pond in a mud crater on an eye-land in the sea really is an eye in the land, that you look at it with your eye, and the sea is there, looking back. If you can’t, then stop by and talk about nature and beauty.
But if you can stay, then turn around.
Then turn around again.
If you’ve done it right you’ve left your old eyes behind.
You’re walking in the footsteps of the wind.
Believing in Elves is Weird
There are either elves or not. Belief in them is not the question. The one above is in the elf city at Goðafoss. Here is another part of town watching the falls.
The point is not about perfect human-like creatures living in another realm, but about what the earth looks like when you know it so intimately you identify with it before you do so with people, including yourself. The consequences of that are profound.
Icelandic Water
In Iceland, the land squeezes water from lava, sand and turf. It carries gravitational energy towards the centre of the earth, before it is deflected by stone.
Less well known is that its journey really passes through the sun. An amazing trick! And so the old Norse universe lives on. (Berserkjarhraun).
A Farm in Iceland 