Longs ago, lava flowed off Snæfells Volcano. Then a glacier settled in and began to comb wind out of the sky and blow it across the land, just so. The result is dragons in the lee of the lava, where the snow, the very stuff of the glacier, collects along the sea.
Imagine what the mountain is doing to you!
A week ago, Snaefellsnesjökull shone for us out of the blue earth and the blue sea, in welcome.
We spent a week in her power.
Wondrous.
Today she said good-bye.
The gate is closed for now.
it’s hard.
The beach at Hellissandur showed her spirit this morning.
As you can see, it doesn’t take a lot of light, or, better, the light goes inward rather than out. So is it with the long, low angles of the sun on Christmas Day. Look at the water erupt from the sand and say its name in this light.
It is a day on which the whole Earth is alive. We found that around this mountain at Midsummer.
And now, this force is just as strong. What welcome energy!
What life! This time, it’s not just the Earth that is alive. Look at the sun going down over Melariff at 2:30 in the afternoon!
The view is from the 1100-year old Viking Farm at Saxhóll. A few minutes later, the sky revealed a dragon.
And just after that, many stories all at once, enough to meditate on for a year.
As the sun left and rain fell across it in the West, the energy lingered, not in the sky but in my self that was the sky.
And so we carry ourselves, just as the Earth, the Water and the Sky carry us. It is we who are spirits of Earth, Water and Sky.
Icelandic horses are very beautiful, especially in a winter gale. Icelanders will tell you that their ancestors brought them over from Norway by ship. Sure, guys.
Let me take you behind the curtains of that little deception. It might look easy to be an Icelandic horse…
… but like being an Icelander …
… it can be a little rough. Really tough on the hair, for one.
Not only that, but tense, like.
Makes a horse a little crazed, you might think.
Watch out for your ears.
Yeah, but that is all because horses didn’t come over on boats from Norway and continue on to create America out of a lump of clay…
…just as Icelanders aren’t vikings but the descendants of Norwegian farmers and their Irish slaves, who came here for the good hotdogs.
As for the horses, they live near waterfalls. It’s a thing.
Svodufoss
Note the horses being born above. You can just make them out below, too.
The paddock is nearby, where humans can keep an eye on the miracle.
Hólmskelsárfoss
Miracle? Yes. Here’s a foal just about to be born in the stream coming down from the falls.
Hólmskelsá
That’s how it works in a magical country. That the resulting horses look like the horses you might meet elsewhere, well…
… that’s part of the magic, too.
Now you know.
When the winds reach 125 kilometres per hour, I tell ya, the walls of a graveyard are welcome shelter.
The black church at Buðir still has the power to draw people to it, even though its town pretty much vanished long ago.
When you’re out there in the midwinter wind, it’s pretty clear, though, that the church is an expression of Budir, not Budir an expression of the church.
In other words, here under the volcano (cloaked in fog of its own making), in a lava field blown with dunes of stinging orange sand, the broken bits of old scallop shells, in a wind the volcano sends out to sea like a searchlight, there is power and light that exceed our understanding.
It is good to honour them.
It is good to remember that the living have been given their life by the dead. Even our words, even these words, are the work of ancestral voices meeting the world, often in winds so strong you don’t breathe the air, it breathes you. (I am not writing these words. My ancestors are. That kind of experience. To them, I am a mouth — a door.)
Gunnar wrote a book about some of this, called Vikikvaki, a story of the dead coming to life and dancing on New Year’s Eve.
He meant Iceland.
(The wind has passed now in the mid-day solstice light)
The dead meant life. They meant the wind. It is good to enter these forces. It is also vital to have shelter.
Gerðuberg (foreground), with Ytri-Rauðamelskulur in back.
Spirt takes many forms!
There are many Icelands. Reykjavik, for instance, shows its pop culture face below.
Akureyri is more mysterious.
It’s Akureyri for me! You?
Akureyri
Blessed Be!
Remember that summer light?
I think she misses the Akureyri Viking Store trolls, don’t you?
The surface is not Iceland.
It’s just weather.
A Farm in Iceland 