As you can see from this view east from Ásbyrgi, the sun in Iceland manages to concentrate itself into little splashes of light here and there, on most days, anyway. That leaves much of it in stunning darkness.
The best thing to do is just to enjoy the darkness. When else are you going to really see it?
On top of the cliffs at the great dry waterfall of Ásbyrgi, high above the ocean, the tide leaves its pools. The water comes with the rain, and the pools aren’t filled with crabs and anemones, but bog cotton will do.
It’s always a thrill to come across life thriving in hostile places, including here, trod upon by so many human travellers trying to get to the cliff edge without slipping over in the muck. Perhaps the bog cotton is thinking the same thing!
If you’ve ever heard there are no forests in Iceland…
… then it’s time to go to Ásbyrgi.
Forests literally as far as you can see. Oh happy day!
If you’re looking to scry the future from a pool of rain in Iceland, you might want to be quick. The basalt breaks into natural chalices, but it’s also porous and soaks the rain up like a sponge.
If you’re going to be a prophet in Iceland, you need to be quick if you’re using rain, but if you’re using air, well, you have lots of time. Basalt also breaks off into patterns that our minds recognize as faces. These prophecies are prophecies of our moods, but are good for reading what we have noticed on the edge of perception but haven’t consciously formulated yet. The reading helps. This little chalice in Ásbyrgi holds a laughing sheep. It’s faint, but it’s there. It could be a donkey, though. That’s the thing. Prophecies of this kind are never exact! You discover them in the world, when they arrive.
In 1914, local boy Johannes Kjarval was starving. Ladies in town asked him to paint an altar for the Bakkagerðiskirkja, the Bakkagerthi Church. He’d spent his childhood herding sheep on the mountain and dreaming of elves, so he painted Christ giving the Sermon on the Mount on the Alfaborg, the elf city behind the church, with all the townsfolk listening, elves and humans.
It has yet to be consecrated by any bishop! But if you go to visit it today, you can see his Iceland still. The elves have been replaced by tourists in campers, and the church remains in darkness, as all good Icelandic interiors are, with 1,000 years of turf houses in their memory.
The Icelandic subconscious lives in a darkness warmed by human presence and looks out through small windows into the light, which is the Earth and not the sun. It’s simply the way it is.
I love black ravens, but I fell in love with this green one the minute it showed itself.
Think of Icelanders eking a living out of nearly bare soil in an inhospitable climate, and then think how much the world has profited by selling them useless things like fences. Think of how much land was eroded just to pay for this nonsense.
And then all those profits blown up in wars. Imagine what could have been.
It’s not about T-shirt weather.
Beaches don’t have to be for lying on. And a peninsula can be on dry land. Welcome to the North East.
While driving on the north shore of the Lagarfljót east of Gunnar’s house, I was keeping an eye out for the Wyrm who lives there. At first, I was convinced that the river of cloud holding above the lake was Wyrm enough for me.
I presume that the Wyrm is projecting this magical eye into the sky above the lake. I guess I might be looking for dragons, but that’s not to say they aren’t keeping an eye out for me.
Your life can depend on a cairn.
To the east the road to the south goes around Strutsfoss (the falls in the distance) and over the glacier. To the west …
… the highway goes up over the glacier. The cairn marks this bridge:
You’ll be needing it.
A Farm in Iceland 