Tag Archives: Ice

Icelandic Austerity is Beautiful

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Time and again, Gunnar wrote that poverty is the greatest wealth. Here’s an example from his childhood fjord. Here, every farm i needed a source of fresh water. The smaller the farm, the more precarious the source. Here’s the water source of a small croft near Bringubakki.

Look how the water flows with life within the remains of winter’s cold, just as the life flows through the family that brings it into their house. This small, austere pleasure of this correspondence is a great richness.

Winter Birdsong in East Iceland

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Well, it’s freezing in Hallormstaðir, and the Lagarfljót isn’t, shall we say, a great place for swimming today, but while the weather stations are warning of heavy snow and ice ahead, let’s remember the ice of April, as it breaks on the shore with the music of a flock of 100,000 tiny birds. The ice is the birds, as it shatters and lifts, and refreezes and tilts and falls, and washes in on the waves, all written with the record of a year.

What wondrous runes telling of every moment the winter through.

It’s beginning now. If you go down to the lake, you might catch the first words, but do stay safe on those slick roads.

And if you can’t, well, there’s April, when the ice plays its recording, just once, in birdsong.

 

Sinkholing: A Photographic Adventure in Iceland

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Sure, you can go spelunking in a cave and see a few columns of stone, but nothing beats a bit of sinkholing in April.

There are mysterious worlds just under the ice.

They only last few a few weeks.

Like viewing fall leaves or spring plum blossoms, really.

Just as beautiful, too.

Aw shucks, it’s May. You’re too late!

But the magic will come again next year!