No ultra modern farming here in the East Fjords, eh.
Njardvik
That’s a traditional Siberian driftwood fence, it is. Sometimes, tradition and thrift are worth much more than capital investment.
Sometimes an Icelander just wants to show off his modernism and hide it at the same time.
Melðavellir
Man, the thought of having a wall of basalt and a cinder cone in my backyard, I tell you, nothing could be better.
.
If you don’t drive too quickly and get off Highway 1, you’ll find it. It’s a poor, poor farm, but, as Gunnar said, poverty is wealth, because everything the land gives comes straight from faith, as a gift, and gifts are not to be laughed away.
Turf house, new house, church, old house ruins, old house tun, old farm church ruins, trolls on the hill, first generation national trees, new subsidized tree planting, government subsidized drained and fertilized field, flagpole, power line between Akureyri and Skagafjörður, and rhubarb blooming.
The whole kit and kaboodle!
A simple farm in the East, far from everything?
No, at the centre. This was the heart of some of Icelands greatest modern poems. Reykjavik is the wasteland here. What caught my eye was the oddness of this sewing machine and this bone, honoured on this picnic table.
What held me was this poem by Krystján Einarsson. Just say it out loud. The sound is enough.
Know that when you drive away, you are leaving the heart for the hands, and you’ll have to come back.
