Saubæjarkirkja

Inside a church are people. Outside of a church are dark cliffs. The church is maintained by the government, because it is on this distinction, this between space, however narrow, that it draws its legitimacy, in a long history of living under colonization. Gunnar Gunnarsson turned it on its head, in his book Svartfugl, or “The Black Birds,” meaning dark-souled people (including but not limited to priests) stealing the light from others, under the influence of a bleak landscape. The English translation is The Black Cliffs — the human oppression, and its intimate relationship with the land, has been wiped clean for an American audience. That relationship, though, is vital, as it represents exactly what one sees in the church above: a portal into the self. The result was a complex book, perhaps the best book of 1932:

So, a self and a book, and a whole lot more.