Calling this landscape with its fire vent at Sjónípa volcanic diminishes it and makes its strangeness safe.
Wouldn’t it be better to write a guidebook to strangeness, and begin again?
A Land of Unwritten Stories
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Category Archives: Art
The Art of Cairns
When you are caught by a veið, or a plane of gaping energy, that can devour you without a trace…
… where everything (and soon you too) is thrown, or strewn, around without sense…
… it’s best to create memory, and sense, or you will be lost, literally. Cairns like the one below are the Parthenons of Iceland. Don’t touch.
And don’t make more! That would be like destroying Shakespeare.
Even if the highway-building crew starts it, please resist translating cairns, energy gathered from throws to make wide space close, into an image of yourself as witness. This isn’t magic or art. It’s architecture and language. The path to history through them should remain open. If not, why go to Iceland?
~
Images from between Hafragilsfoss and Dettifoss, as well as on Highway 85 to Vopnafjörður.
Having Fun keeping Warm with the Fairies in the Icelandic (Oh Not Really) Cold
Six years back, these ads for warm weather clothing were all the rage.
A melancholy bunch, but they appealed to visitors of European heritage.
Who just want to go where it is cold and to be warm there, or at least are willing to let their bodies remember all that.
Of course, the ads were made in New York.
But their appeal was solid.
Today, the ads are still about superhuman melancholy, about prowess in conditions that would slay most others, but with adventure. No longer is being bodily present in Iceland enough. You have to be an airplane.
And of course, at the same time still be a vulnerable waif, even with a bit of fear and disdain.
Ah, Iceland, still playing with fairy lore after all these years.
Imagine if the Icelanders just got up one day and redefined the human myth instead! I’m waiting for that day.
Perhaps new glasses first?
The Amazing Survival of Fishing Culture in Downtown Reyjkavik
Just think of her all day, staring out at that black gable, and dreaming of real life, with her fur hair and her golden elf scarf.
Tax free, too. With butterflies. Icelandic shopkeepers really know how to adapt fishing technology to the new international tourism schools!
The Hunt for the Best Art Gallery in Iceland
Is it goofing around with a culvert at Grandatorg?
Or lunch at the Kjarvalstaðir gallery?
Or goofing around with shop windows on Laugavegur?
Or just goofing around at Laugarnestangi as the sun comes up over Viðey?
Or a goofy farmer’s field on the way to Dettifoss?
Or a whole town goofing off at Kópasker?
Or an aluminum smelter buying allegiance with a pretty thing on Sæbraut?
Or doing more with less on Laugavegur because you need more with your less?
Or just goofing off with a little bit of security magic on Frakkastígur?
Or the painting amusing themselves at Kjarvalstaðir, because everyone has come to lunch with old friends, and the paintings are certainly old friends.
Or outdoing Mondrian in a sheep farm in the Fljótsdalur?
Or some weird kind of planting flowers to give children hope in front of some everybody-comes-to-Iceland-with-spray-cans-now-that-the-building-sites-have-been-abandoned-after-the-financial-meltdown, because what else?
Or politics? Is it an art gallery, too?
It’s the cigarette tin, right?
No, wait, it’s the riding stable signage in Akureyri!
No, wait! It’s spilled paint and a stick on a parking lot!
It never ends. Icelanders are a pretty serious looking bunch, even Björk, and they write about gruesome murders and stuff, and their novelists kill off all their heroes and heroines just because, but don’t believe it, because they’re always goofing off, with a straight face. Do you think the horses taught them about this, in those centuries of isolation?
Well, maybe not the straight face part.
When The Tide Meets the Snow
To those of you who loved my pics of a snowfall on the beach in Skagafjörður, well, here are some more. What glorious light!
Every wave is an artist!
More Icelandic Fences Gone Rogue!
Just up the valley from Gunnar’s house, on the ancient road to the South, yet another Icelandic fence demonstrates the Icelandic idea that a fence is a kind of net. You cast it when there is something to catch.
Sturluflöt, Villingadalur
Otherwise, it’s likely to be tangled up on the deck. Sometimes, I know, it’s hard to remember that the island is not a boat!
Icelandic Ghost Stories
As we can see here on Hverfisgata In Reykjavik, they’re all ghosts stories and the Icelanders are the ghosts within books their parents read, or they read when they were young themselves.
Charming.
As you can see, the relationships between technology, Icelanders, and time is haunting and complex. It’s a language in and of itself.
Who else do you know who lives so deeply within books that they have a transit system within them?
Reykjavik: always worth a read!
I Bet Your Tour Bus Doesn’t Take You Here
Old Reykjavik Gives a Norse Black Magic Curse to the New One at Sunrise
What Colour Should You Wear in Iceland?
It starts innocently enough. You’re grazing with your buddies, right.
Hey, it’s a reindeer thing. If the swans and geese want to graze along with you, what’s it to you, right? There’s grass for all. No, that’s what people might thing. Reindeer? Time to split.
Bye. It’s about colour matching, I think.
When you go to Iceland in the winter, wear white.
A Farm in Iceland 
