The manly trolls of Gulfoss…
… and the worms (um, gold collecting dragons, you know the type) of Gulfoss…
… the Golden Falls … 
… look across to the female trolls across the gorge, which are riding a worm…
.. and if the worm has the head of a ram, well, this is Iceland, after all.
And the flag … this flag:
… flies between them.
So now you know, too.
So much of Iceland is a volcanic wilderness.
1000 years ago, the farms of Kaldada and Sandar were overwhelmed with lava. Glacial water finds its way between the old earth and the new.
Hraunfosser near Bjarnafoss
And even bog cotton. It is life that is the wonder.
Geysirs are fun for humans, but look at them, trekking up hill.
Making new humans is funner.
The question is: who has the right to erode Iceland? The Icelanders, by inviting rock stackers?
Or the rock stackers themselves? Iceland invites visitors to view nature.
Human nature is what the modern world can deliver instead.
Be careful what you wish for. Ethical dilemmas don’t go away by wishing so.
Forget white! Skeiðárjökull wears her ash well.
Before it melts…
… and goes to sea…
… and comes back.
Dyrholáey is a wonderful bird sanctuary, and you can drive up the cliff on something approximating a road and look out over the sea from the lighthouse stoop. Wondrous. But when it’s your first visit to Iceland, and you don’t know any better, you can also stop in the wrong place, with Italians and Germans dodging around you in their rented Yaris’s, and take an image of the lighthouse from the edge of the bird fields (there really is nowhere to stop, and walking on the grass and disturbing the birds is strictly forbidden), and see the Island (that is an island no more) plowing out to sea.
Being in the wrong place is best. You can find the unexpected end of the trail.
Or be plodding cold through the dawn fields, blowing on your fingers, dreaming of coffee, when suddenly it’s 20,000 years ago and you know, you just know, you can read the Earth like a book.
You can take a picture of a shop window that strikes you as incongruous, and years later realize that it’s not. It’s Iceland at heart. This is what comes of 1100 years of Irish women freezing in the cold.
Interchangeable, insulated tattoos. You just never know. That’s the thing. You walk down the street, and there it is: the Tower of Mordor!!!! With the nuclear clock at two minutes to midnight!!!
You can go to Kjarvalstaðir, the Art Gallery, to see Kjarval’s works…
… and realize that everyone else comes for the lunch! You can find a trail on the internet, then try to follow it through the, well, bog, but you get to know the mountain.
You just never know. Do it all wrong, I say, to do it right.
… I come for the cities.
Welcome to Vik, sprawling metropolis of 291 people on the floor of the sea. For Gunnar, this was a last remnant of Atlantis.
Welcome to the Vik suburbs! Well, urban sprawl, eh, but, still, the Atlantic drop straight off and smells only of iodine and salt, so that’s ok, then.
And the waves of the Sea of Atlantis splash up over the bones of the world.
I like it that it does that. I just wanted you to know that tonight. Whatever ladder you use…
… to climb out of the surf…
… and make land.
Bessastaðaá
That’s why you can see it. Sometimes you see the eye. Sometimes you see the moment of your seeing.
Breiðulækur
Sometimes you glimpse your eye deep within the mind of the world.
Bessastaðaá
For that, you have to go on a journey to the centre of the earth.
Gilsáfoss
And there you are.
All farming is hard.
Abandoned Farm, Borgarfjörður Eystri
Everywhere. Here’s a farm in Wales.
Hayfield, Y Fron, Wales
And a farm in Canada.
New Orchard, Vernon, Canada
And a farm in Iceland. This one is still working!
Sturluflöt, Iceland
I think the last is the most beautiful. Team? What do you think?
Hmmm. It’s hard to say if they agree or not. Closer?
Ah. The silent type.
What can I say. Sheep are creatures of habit!
Galgáklettur
Baaa.
In Canada, the trail running across the foot of this face would have been made by deer, but in Iceland it’s made by sheep.
In Canada, this would be called wild land. In Iceland, it’s a farm. It is an intimate social and political space that turns wildness into civil life. In Canada, that is done as either an industrial or an aesthetic experience, capitalized and individual. Here it is just common space. In other words, this stretch of the Bessastaðaá is a city.
A Farm in Iceland 