Here is a social space in Reykjavik that’s not a park, a street, a building or a yard full of old rowan trees and mystery. It’s more mysterious yet. This is what the people of the north of the world call The Sea Room.

And on Snaefellsnes? Yes, there’s one there, too.

And in the far north, too.

Note that the Sea Room has few boundaries. It has a sense of being open, with a free flow out to the open ocean, which it is nonetheless separated from by a sense of space. Compare that to a lagoon in the East.

In comparison to Sea Room, a lagoon is bounded by land. And below. Na, that’s a river mouth in the south.

Nope, a Sea Room is special. You can live there, in a world within the world. So, let’s try it again… Sea Room?

Nope. River mouth. And below, what of it? Sea Room?

Nope, a river flow through a lagoon, with the open Atlantic trying to get in. Now, that’s fun. Ok, what about the view below at Dritvik?

Nope, that’s just the sea. You enter it when you leave the sea room. And below?

Nope, sad to say. That’s a field in Breiðafjörður. This is Iceland. it’s tricky. And below, in Skagafjörður?Yes! You got it! And below, at Buðir?
Atlantic again? Yup. And here’s Dritvik? Is that a Sea Room? No, it’s an ogre and her ogre whale pet in a bay at dusk, in the rain, looking out to sea. But here’s the thing, in Iceland men rowed way out there in little wooden boats and hauled in cod, far from land in storm. They made a room of the sea, a portable one, centred on their boat, just as their island is centred in the sea. That flexibility remains in the country.

It is known now as memory. 

Or is it?