Iceland calls to many people in many different ways. Svartifoss called me.
It changed my life.
May it change yours.
My Personal Iceland
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Category Archives: Enlightenment
The Fully-Illustrated Rules of the Road for Driving Safely in Iceland
Icelandic road.
Icelandic dragon car.
Icelandic driving training school.
Icelandic traffic.
Icelandic police.
Icelandic Campground.
Icelandic winter road.
Icelandic winter car.
Icelandic winter car, summer pelt phase.
Icelandic drivers.
Wrong kind of car! Wrong kind of car!
Icelandic driving manual: the fine print.
Icelander with good road smarts.
Tourist with good road smarts.
Icelandic accident clean up crew on stand-by duty.
Be safe out there.
Jogging in Reykjavik
Better than a bicycle, any day! (At least in late April!)
What You Need Right Now Might Just Be an Icelandic Rock
After a long time between languages, it’s time to go down to the shore.
And pick up magic rocks and hold them in. your hand.
And put them down.
And leave them there to talk to the sun in their nonhuman tongues.
And walk back up through the library of the birch forest.
And the lair of dragons.
Give one last glance to the lake.
And go back to the skáldverk in silence.
And begin again.
The Four-Directional Icelandic Cross
Following the Old Norse prototypes that long ago divided Iceland into the quadrants of a compass (Still used by the Icelandic Government’s tourism promotion board to label the country as West, North, East and, South Iceland [and don’t you dare travel around the country in the other direction; it only works poorly]), the Icelandic Cross is not divided into two axes, the vertical Heaven axis and the horizontal Earth axis, meeting at the heart, or Christ, but into four quadrants, blending the living and the dead with the action of the mind. It’s why Lazarus is so popular as a figure on Icelandic altars (Christ raised him from the dead, maggots and all), and why the Valþfjófstaðurkirkja looks like this, drawing its graveyard deep into thought.
The pre-Christian rowan trees of the graveyard are welcome as well.
Icelandic Psychology
In Iceland, you look at the flow of life through a subconscious mind of ice from beyond the edge of the world, or …
…in Iceland, you look at the flow of the mind through a (melting and freezing) barrier of ice from beyond the edge of the world.
One could easily think about lesser things.
~
Bessasstaðaá
Iceland: the Painted Land
Time to crouch down among the ghosts of summer’s birds and become a ghost yourself.
And you’re still chasing the Northern Lights, because….?
One Big Icelandic Question
If “wild” reindeer, a non-native species in Iceland, have naturalized by colonizing farmer’s fields…
The Englightenment in Iceland
… does that means that farmers in Iceland are wild mammals, too? Maybe, eh. Maybe, indeed.
The Place to Go in Iceland, If You Dare
You can be of two minds, at once. They are not in conflict. A forest full of quick life to take you there, through the web of your thoughts?
Or a forest of slow, enduring life, the cliff of ghosts that awaits and towers above you, your body given face as memory?
At Botnstjörn, the windless pond sheltered by birches deep in Ásbyrgi, you can be both at once. They are not in conflict.
Surrender, and feel yourself lose all weight.
Preparation is All
Everything catches your eye. The world is not what we expect but what we answer when it calls to us. The two gestures are the same. Preparation is all, even if you don’t know the preparation you have done. When I first travelled to Iceland, we were given an itinerary and sent on our way, and, being curious and easily wowed, kept stopping the car and being late for dinner.
Now I understand that if we hadn’t wanted to be caught, and if we hadn’t been ready to be caught, we would have driven on, and made dinner. Because we stopped, I saw into the heart of the world, and have written two books and am deep into two other manuscripts. And still that lamb dinner calls!
A Farm in Iceland 