While driving on the north shore of the Lagarfljót east of Gunnar’s house, I was keeping an eye out for the Wyrm who lives there. At first, I was convinced that the river of cloud holding above the lake was Wyrm enough for me.
I presume that the Wyrm is projecting this magical eye into the sky above the lake. I guess I might be looking for dragons, but that’s not to say they aren’t keeping an eye out for me.
Your life can depend on a cairn.
To the east the road to the south goes around Strutsfoss (the falls in the distance) and over the glacier. To the west …
… the highway goes up over the glacier. The cairn marks this bridge:
You’ll be needing it.
Above the cliff in Akureyri, there’s a fine place to see the world, just a few kilometres below the Arctic Circle. Coming on these beauties on a July Evening is inspiring. In 1912, nine years after men began to plant trees in Iceland to reclaim their male Viking ancestors…
…the women of Akureyri started planting pretty things, bringing embroidery to life. Talk about writing on the land!
Don’t be fooled by the pounding of the surf. You don’t have to be a giant to approach the sea. You can be small, and quiet and even whisper. So much Icelandic cultural advertising approaches the world as a terrible, destructive force that wears people down, yet Iceland isn’t like that. In many ways, this approach is a marketing strategy, born in the romantic travel literature of 18th century England and the perennial problem of Icelanders feeling cut off from the world. These birds are scavenging on the shores of a powerful ocean, yes.
But to them, Icelanders the lot of them, the ocean is not destructive. This concept of “destructive” comes from human attempts to live here, despite all this energy, and failing almost as often as not. That is a human problem, though, which means you can approach the sea as a human without the limitation of fear. This is the sense of fate that Gunnar tried to tell the Germans about in 1936, that “life in the present” means “to act,” because all time is present. You can’t choose between past, present and future. You can integrate them, however, into action and be your fate. That doesn’t include romanticizing your isolation or fighting against it. Those are just cultural choices, for the most part from outside the country.
Reydarfjörður
The greatest wealth, Gunnar said, is poverty. It makes everything that has washed in from the sea a treasure.
For four hundred years an ogre threw travellers over the cliff trail between Bakkagerði and Njarðvík. It was awfully steep and in the fog, dark, rain, snow and whatever else the East Fjords undoubtedly threw at them. It was terrifying and very dangerous.
A bit of Christian-Norse magic took care of that, though. The rocks at the cross’s base are funereal stones, left by travellers. The road was fixed up in 2019.
In the summer? Blue, white and red.
In the winter, though, other colours take over:
Pink, grey, and baby blue, anyone? There could be, like, an annual flag-changing ceremony!
With signs like this, you’ll never get lost.
Wherever you go, you’ll still be in Iceland. However, if you want to get to the brightly lit West Fjords across the water, a right turn is the shorter way.
This one knows where it is going and goes there with conviction!
The light has to be right, as it is in December, to make out Gatklettur’s hidden friend. You can see it below.
Not the arch, but the Octopus it frames, with its Earth head. Note the Moon in orbit. Now, that’s pretty cool!
Here’s one in Njardvík. Just a young one in its grass stage, in a hoard of rusty iron, not of gold. You have to be a bigger dragon to get your own pile of gold.
