Breiðafjörður
Sometimes the major tourist attractions are even on the road!
Icelandic Roadside Attractions
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Tag Archives: farming
Property Ownership Rules in Iceland
It’s not about fences, see.
That was a fun idea, very modern, very worldly, but, you know, weird. Better to let sleeping fences lie and go out on the sheep trails.
Everything is a sheep trail. That’s because sheep own Iceland.
Right, as for fences. The same goes for gates. Best to leave weird foreign stuff like that open, so that what wants to go through can go through.
You never know.
Oh, wait, yes you do.
Ancient and Modern Trolls in Iceland
Here’s an ancient troll in Dimmuborgir, keeping an eye on those flighty humans.
And a modern one in Víðimýri, doing the same good work.
Thanks guys, for the hand.
Farming the Hard Way
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.
Any Season is Sheep Rutting Season
What can I say. Sheep are creatures of habit!
Galgáklettur
Baaa.
Sheep in the City
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.
The Christian Magic that Invented Iceland
An Old Story Telling its Knot on the Road West of Sælingsdal
Over eleven hundred years, men can cut down all the trees, keep their horses for memory, erode the soil with sheep, battle frost heaves, put in a jeep track, buy a German tractor and some good American haying equipment, and strew nitrogen fertilizer around to stay alive, but the Cross that a woman ordered hammered into a stone to hold back the elves who lived inside it remains, and you will likely think of it as a children’s story. Still, your tractor can’t do a thing with it, nor your sheep, nor your beautiful horses.
A Pair of Icelandic Horses Waiting for the Grass to Grow
Such suspense!
The one on the right is just fooling. No grass yet.
In Iceland You Are Never Alone
What, you wanted human company?
Highway 76 On a Good Day
A farm among energies older than the gods, will that do? No? Well, there’s a road, so you’re good, right?
Meeting the Earth Head On
As the frailty of the fence below shows, the Icelandic way of meeting the Earth is either foolish or heroic, or both.
Grótfjall from the Dunes
The Earth is huge, and humans are small, and yet they stand up against each other, body to body. It is hardly an equal relationship… or is it? The fence stands in witness.
A Farm in Iceland 