Monthly Archives: September 2017

Icelandic Fencing Technology: the Spiritual Dimension

What are fences for?In some countries, fences are to separate herds from grain land, or to divide pasture land, for successive grazing over a season, or just to keep the stock off the road. In Iceland, it’s a bit different. It’s something people learned from the land and tried out.

Now to figure out what is being fenced in, or fenced out! Not these reindeer. They just walk over fences.

Not these horses.

No fence required! Not the people below…

That’s not a fence, just posts to keep the people from falling over into the grass. It’s a mystery!

Perhaps it’s the dead? Such as here at Kirkjubærjarklaustur?

Na. They can get out on the other side. I think it’s just a gesture, to show the mind its limits. This too:

So, like, a halter for the human will!

Teaching Art in Iceland

First a teacher’s kit for student artists, 5 years old. Note the empty chamber to right!

Then a bit of what they’re going to have to deal with as adults with the skills learned from those tools. Note how the empty chamber has almost completely won. Then a reinforcing lesson in applying foreign tools as training mechanisms.

And some of the cut-and-paste consequences.

And again, this time in downtown Reykjavik.

A closer view of early art education is shown below. Please compare it to the image above. Note how the colours are used to train young minds into cut-and-paste and construction techniques. The stuff is even called “construction paper.” Keep your eye on the black stuff. An adult helped with that!And, finally, an image of that black diamond above, when written out on the land.

In Iceland, children are herded, and in their herds they are free. 1100 years of herding culture drove this lesson home.

The Strangest Thing About Iceland

Well, maybe not the strangest, but pretty endearing nonetheless.

In a country with virtually no trees, and most of those looking like this …

… or this …

… it has the most robust wooden scaffolding imaginable.

It’s not that there isn’t metal scaffolding.

Even more amazing: when you cut up Icelandic trees, as the Green Party did in the election of 2013, they look like this:

(They didn’t win. It’s really too bad, with a platform like that!) Some things are just unhinged.

Melarett

And that’s that!

In a Country With Little Sun

In a country with little sun …

… holes are set in walls …

… but not to let in the light.

Sometimes the old word is best …

 

… window.

The wind’s eye.

It’s the same for the hole in your skull.

The skull’s eye.


It’s best not to let the wind into that one!

Just the sun!