One could be forgiven for calling the place Atlantis.
As Gunnar (who was from the East) did.
The Hanging Gardens of East Iceland
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Category Archives: Land
Weightless After a Long Day in the Icelandic North East
In the cold high desert of Northern Iceland, the water that has fallen from the sky holds it to the last of the light.
You feel it flowing through your veins and lose all weight.
Darkness in Iceland Signifies Warmth and Shelter
You want to stick close to it. What you want to avoid is water and ice.
Southeast
Let the sheep risk that stuff. Such is the knowledge of a people whose origins are in “settlement” and not colonization — a people for whom “land” is a “landing”, a being lifted out of the sea. You don’t forget a thing like that. The darned thing keeps coming back.
North
Feeling Small in Iceland
Iceland teaches a sense of human scale…
Farm below Myrdalsjökull (Covered in Volcanic Ash)
… and human strength.
Winter Birdsong in East Iceland
Well, it’s freezing in Hallormstaðir, and the Lagarfljót isn’t, shall we say, a great place for swimming today, but while the weather stations are warning of heavy snow and ice ahead, let’s remember the ice of April, as it breaks on the shore with the music of a flock of 100,000 tiny birds. The ice is the birds, as it shatters and lifts, and refreezes and tilts and falls, and washes in on the waves, all written with the record of a year.
What wondrous runes telling of every moment the winter through.
It’s beginning now. If you go down to the lake, you might catch the first words, but do stay safe on those slick roads.
And if you can’t, well, there’s April, when the ice plays its recording, just once, in birdsong.
Icelandic Roads Have Always Been Tricky
Icelandic glaciers are black and breathe rock.
Icelandic culture was created by using them as highways.
Svinajökull
Well, not the snarliest, maybe. Still, watch where you build with imported road technology.
Skeiðarársandur
Be humble out there, eh.
Dusk Over Thor’s Shield
In November, when sunrise and sunset colours continue in unbroken unfolding light from dawn, near 10 a.m., and dusk near 2 or 3 p.m., it comes so quickly that you can see it open and close through the spectrum, as if you are inside a film, a really, really wide-angle 4-D film.
Here is a fraction of a second of its wonder over the volcano in early November, as I walked through flaming heather and pink snow at þingvellir. I shot the image with two much sky to illustrate how unsettling it can be. One feels at times that one can fall right off the Earth and drown in air.
Looking Out From the Waterfall into Day’s End
Walk lightly on your way home. (It might be best to avoid the road.)
Seljaland
Svartifoss: River of Blood
Perhaps it’s called Svartifoss (Black Falls) because it shows itself on a black basalt cliff.
Bad Light Helps One See Clearly Here
Perhaps it’s because the red autumn birches turn black with distance, and still the fall flashes.
Autumn Rain Really Brings Out the Light of This Land
In either case, it’s not the cliff that is named but the water.
It seems that when blackness falls it is visible. Of course, that means it’s not black at all…
… or that whiteness is also a blindness, beyond human life. We marvel. Life, it comes from nowhere, flashes with life, and then returns to mystery.
Svartifoss in Its Pool of Birch Blood
~
Svartifoss, Skaftafell National Park, South Iceland
Changing Iceland
Only nine years ago, Icelandic tourism was a simple thing: you drove around the country viewing the things Icelanders found interesting, and they served you coffee, put you up for the night, and cooked a lamb for you. An old bridge, for instance…
… or a waterfall.
… a troll at Dimmuborgir…
… and some smooching among the birches, the trees that helped to gain them a country.
Now, pain.
In the waste water from a power plant. You, dear visitor, are an industry now. Iceland shows your face in a mirror.
Yet in the small towns now, far from Reykjavik, people are tired of us all; they want us to go away. In Grindavik, an old woman even rammed me with her shopping cart in the grocery store. “Fair enough,” I thought. But I remember the generosity and gratitude that began this madness…
… and trust it will continue.
A Farm in Iceland 