Author Archives: Harold Rhenisch

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About Harold Rhenisch

www.haroldrhenisch.com

Entering Whirlpool

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Imagine, becoming the volcano. You can, at Skutustaðir. You will have to become a different person, that’s all.
Imagine that a pond in a mud crater on an eye-land in the sea really is an eye in the land, that you look at it with your eye, and the sea is there, looking back. If you can’t, then stop by and talk about nature and beauty.

But if you can stay, then turn around.

Then turn around again.

If you’ve done it right you’ve left your old eyes behind.

You’re walking in the footsteps of the wind.

Believing in Elves is Weird

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There are either elves or not. Belief in them is not the question.  The one above is in the elf city at Goðafoss. Here is another part of town watching the falls.

The point is not about perfect human-like creatures living in another realm, but about what the earth looks like when you know it so intimately you identify with it before you do so with  people, including yourself. The consequences of that are profound.

Iceland at War and Peace

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The Battle of Örlygsstaðir was fought in a sheepfold on August  21, 1238. A terrible business. It was fought here.

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It was a rout. It’s hard to defend yourself behind a three-foot-high loose stone wall. Little is left.p1190503

There’s a bench, for when the grimness of battle and waste overcomes you.

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But, look: sheep!p1190507-2

Battles come and go, but sheep remain.
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Forget the cruise missiles. Take the long view. Go with the sheep.

 

 

The Icelandic Enlightenment

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It is coming. Everything that has been explored in the past is new.p1190186

An Icelandic science is possible. Currently, it is called art, or Nature, or some other European concept. It is waiting for its moment.

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This isn’t Europe, though. This is the Garden. This is the moment.

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Its terms can be redefined from the land up, instead of being classified to fit into a foreign hierarchy. Courage is all.

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The world starts here, from here. As the world drifts into madness, sanity becomes more important than ever.

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Nothing is known. Nothing has been seen before. Beauty is our guide to the energies of the land, which are the energies of our minds.

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This is the primary human experience. Settlement of our bodies begins now.

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Let’s dare.

The Ghosts of the Irish in Iceland

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When the Norse and their female Irish slaves arrived in Iceland in 870, there was already a colony of Irish monks on the south coast, living in caves and living in splendid isolation with their God. There are accounts of them living in what became known much later as the monastery site of Kirkjubaerjarklaustur. There is just something about the place.  First, a look around in the summer sun. iceland-day-3-to-5-051 iceland-day-3-to-5-043 iceland-day-3-to-5-044

Here’s the “Church Floor”, basalt columns eroded by ancient waves.iceland-day-3-to-5-054 iceland-day-3-to-5-053

And the rumoured centre of Irish life.iceland-day-3-to-5-046

And now in the summer rain. Note the change of light!p1010115p1010068

Here’s the “Nun’s Falls”, from a much later catholicism.

p1010066p1010111And now some late Autumn (2016)  pics, with the sun barely making it above the sea.p1320200 p1320223 p1320198
A splendid place for meditation and prayer!
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Unwilling to share the purity of God with heathens, the monks left in their skin boats. Their ghosts remain. I wonder if the women were sad to see them go.