This essential Icelandic principle, seen at play here in the Vatnsdalshólar (the Uncountable Hills of the Valley of Water),will see you through good times and bad.
Some day, everything can be used again. Until then, it is the future. It’s good to have a thing like that tightly joined to the past. That’s the Icelandic way.
Here in the “uncountable hills” of Vatnsdal, sheep split the counting between them to try to finally arrive at a number.
Just another way to pass just another cloudy day.
Moon:
B&W Image
Kolgrafafjörður:
Colour Image: December 24, 12:30 pm
One notes the family resemblance!
100 years ago there was scarcely a tree here. Then Jónas Hallgrimmson wrote a poem asking Icelanders to throw off the chains of Danish domination and go back to their roots.
Syðra-Miðgil, Looking South towards the Jökullsá à Follum and Vigabjargsfoss. Dettifoss is further upstream, but without trees.
When you want something done, find a poet. Thanks, Jónas.
One special delight in Iceland is to watch water create living forms of darkness, written on rock.
Ásbyrgi, Where Water is One of the Huldúfolk
In the past, the water sculpted the rock. Now it sculpts us.
Other intersections of solar radiation and the Earth are equally beautiful. In late November, these colours change so rapidly that the change is physically observable. You are part of the turning of the Earth, and you can see it, way out there, where you are, in Space.
Iceland is a good place to get to know your place in the solar system.
While tourists are gazing in wonder at puffins…
…Icelanders are gazing in wonder at trees.
Bifröst: where Icelanders go to get away.
Because the light is so low in the winter, it is quite directional. When combined with light snow, it focusses the Earth most brilliantly.
A half hour north of Reykjavik, and you are already on a boat among the stars.
Tourism is an industry. Here are some industrial views of Kirkjufoss, the most-photographed mountain in Iceland.
Tour busses race past Kolgrafafjörður …
Why would you rush past such a dawn?
… to get you to it. If you go on December 24 (not in a tour bus. It will drive past), Kirkjufell might look like this at sundown:
Mind you, if you turn around, you might see other miracles:
Few do. There is no time. The 8 p.m. Aurora bus is waiting in Reykjavik, and it’s many hours and a world away. Besides, industrial images are soooooo seductive:
I don’t think this is quite how people in Grundarfjörður experience the mountain. This is certainly one way, though:
The Eastern Burbs
And this is another.
The forest walk from the campground in November.
Iceland is real.
The November view from town.
It takes time for a mountain to speak. You can’t force it.
Egil’s saga was set in Borg, one of the first points of settlement in Iceland 1100 years ago. Here is the view from Borg in November light these days, looking south towards Borgarnes (Borg’s Cape). 
This is 1100 years of history in one glimpse.
A Farm in Iceland 