Here’s an Icelandic road at winter solstice. A powerful black thing, it is.
But don’t be fooled. The volcano, Snæfellsjökull, in the background, faint as it is, is the power here. She can harness the North Atlantic herself. It is a lesson that remains for us all to learn.
This house, hiding behind its collapsed turf buildings near Buðir talks of a country where a landscape view from your picture window is just not really very important.
Whats more, its an old harbour 2 kilometres from a lagoon and 2.5 from open salt water at the Buðakirkja. If you have been at Buðir in the winter winds, you will know why.
That sand is ground up scallop shells. At 70 miles per hour, it cuts into your face like sharp knives. You will have a hard time just standing up straight.
2. The other way.
Don’t forget.I
The lighthouse at the northernmost point of Iceland.
In nesting season, the path is closed. But the beach is worth a gander:
That’s art, that is.
Horses want out of fences.
Tourists want in to them.
Such beautiful symmetry!
After the end of the Christian age, the dead are a bit alone at Hellnar.
Truth is, the graveyard has become a pasture, blowing in the wind under the volcano.
And the hope and loss and grief of all the families that have lost men at sea, is a bit at sea, too.
Let us still honour them, and carry them.
Real slow. Brakes on.
It’s not the destination. It’s the journey.
~
Slettuvegur
Raufarhöfn
Intersection of Road 54 and 574.
When the wind comes up, it blows this column of water nearly horizontally. Note the trolls in the cliff near the fall’s base.
First, with their church.
Next, with their hay bales. Looks to me like they have been bundled up for harvest themselves.
Next, from their sanctuary.
So must 1100 years of Christian dead comfort themselves when their parishes, and faith, is lost among the living.
A Farm in Iceland 