So, you’re an artist and you meet a blank canvas under the volcano. What are you going to put on it?
This?
Granted, there’s not much light at the winter solstice, but, hey, you probably did it in the summer, so would you paint this?
Maybe if the original owners had been able to spray paint their love on their walls, they wouldn’t have given up in the gloom and moved to Canada.
When the wind blows at hurricane force, it lifts the cloud from Snæfellsjökull. The glacier on the volcano’s peak captures the sun and beams it up to the clouds.
This is one of the central images from my new book: Landings: Poems from Iceland. It contains poems written on a trip across Iceland. Many were written in Grundarfjörður, after this glorious day trying to stay vertical in the lava fields.
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
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.
And the boats.
In Iceland, barn architecture, being as sturdy as a mountain…
…can serve all purposes. It’s the details that count. In this boat yard, for instance, it’s harbour between the devil (the road) and the deep blue sea (the shipping container.)
What jokesters those Icelanders are, when it comes to hard truths.
Build what you want. Bright colours help with depression.
Really, that’s it.
A Farm in Iceland 