Well, Thor has one eye shut.
So does the Beach Church! 
The other eye is the sea.
Strandarkirkja: the Church of Thor
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The End of a Whale in Arnarfjörður
Never romanticize Iceland.
Bildudalur Harbour
But if you do, it will wrench you back to your senses quickly enough.
The Edge of the World
Humans travel by the millions to Iceland every year, to stand at the edge of the Earth and look into the abyss.
The Last of the Glaciers Melts in the Jökulsárlón
Notice how it looks back without blinking.
Logging in Iceland
Old growth timber gets logged in Iceland.
And stacked up beside the road outside Hallormstaðir. Hawthorn City.
Count the rings. I count 23 years.
Back before the Millenia, in Old Iceland, this was a tourist place.
The tourists were Icelanders. In Modern Iceland, men brought in the heavy farm equipment.
And got at it.
When Gumnar lived at the end of the lake, just a few minutes away by car or the length of a saga by foot, there were no trees here at all. Modernity, it seems, is a return to the old world, with fun equipment along the way.
Not Post Modern But Post Herring
What do you do with all those industrial plastic fish bins after they have been used to empty out the sea?
Egilsstaðir
You make a beach, that’s what you do — into a lake that is now severely compromised by hydroelectric dam run-off, and then you sell it.
Something’s Fishy
I love Egilsstaðir, truly, precisely because it is not romantic.
What Iceland Can Teach About the 1970s
In the 1970s, A-Frame housing, cheap and easy to build, was all the rage in Canada. We were being very modern and Scandinavian back in those years, two things we’ve given up. We also soon grew tired of living at a slant and having half our floor space unusable (not to mention bonking our heads). I lived in a house like the one below for two years.
After that, we all gave it up and invented the 1980s, which was all about rectangular solids painted to look like California, with Tudor trim. In Egilsstaðir, however, the 1970s are still alive and well, because, well, it’s Scandinavia and, also, they couldn’t afford to throw anything away. And it’s still modern! A lesson for us all.
Happy Ruins
Ruins in other countries don’t look…
…well, so alive!
But, that’s what building with the earth will do for you!
Lagarfljót.
Spirit Birds of the Lagarfljót
If you wander out of Gunnar’s house to the bottom of the lake, a pleasant 20 minute walk in the right light, you will see birds taking wing above the Hallormstadaskogur, the great National Forest of Iceland.
In any other light, they’d be the outlines of cliffs breaking out into the April sun, but on a day like this, they’re birds, for sure.
Woodworking in Iceland
Forests are a new thing in Iceland, and must all be planted by hand, just as this group of Siberian larch at Gunnar’s birthplace above the Jokulsá.
And no-one’s quite sure what to do with them. At the moment, they are chopped up into that staple of all harbour cities, shipping palettes, and then reassembled in familiar forms from there. It’s a little wobbly, but all shipping palette construction is.
But there’s definitely a keen-ness in the air. All the tools of the trade are readily available for working out the kinks at home or in the woods.
You did spot Thor’s battle axe there on the wall, right?
Hiding and Display in Reykjavik
When the art is not particularly good, just frame it with the street.
Reykjavik
And vice versa!
Because in Reykjavik inside is outside and outside is inside.
A Farm in Iceland 