Only on the Buðarhaun lava field. Only on Midsummer Night’s Eve.
Don’t look too closely. Walk quickly on. Be careful not to trip.
A View into Fairyland
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Tag Archives: Iceland
Baby Troll
Another example of how everything comes alive at Midsummer. Note as well, the Old Norse tradition of lifting up the Earth’s skin, making an oath, and setting the skin down to seal it, as told so well in Gunnar’s Sworn Brothers.
From the German Book Club Edition of 1933. Note the Arch.
You can read a detailed post about the book here: https://afarminiceland.com/tag/the-sworn-brothers/
Snæfellsjökull Two Ways
Here is the great lone volcano and glacier, looking North from Londrangar. In this shot, it has a cloak of lava and moss spread at its feet.
Here it is a few minutes later, with human alteration: a farm!
It’s a stunning spirit, any way you look at it.
When the Cows Come Home
And the boats.
In Iceland, barn architecture, being as sturdy as a mountain…
…can serve all purposes. It’s the details that count. In this boat yard, for instance, it’s harbour between the devil (the road) and the deep blue sea (the shipping container.)
What jokesters those Icelanders are, when it comes to hard truths.
Icelandic Building Code
Build what you want. Bright colours help with depression.
Really, that’s it.
The Two Ways of the Icelandic Thrush
First, you sit on a troll’s head at Midsummer, when even the stones come alive. If that sounds fantastical, you should really go to Iceland at Midsummer. You’ll see. In this way of the thrush, you get to hang out with a troll. Nice.
The other way of the thrush is to be the living thought of the troll, not in words or ideas, but in thrush. Nice, too!
Remember, trolls aren’t animate beings from fairytale, but places where rocks are made into home and mind through attachment. It could be you. It could be the thrush. It could be the thrush leading you into the Earth, where you find yourself.
24 Hour Surveillance, Iceland Style
And, since this is the 21st Century, it’s silicon technology, of course.
And carbon free!
The Elves’ Horses Are On the Battlefield Still
We climbed Orrustuhóll, or Battle Hill, west of the convent and east of the Black Falls…
… and there in the lush green full of spirits ….
…in the midst of a harsh lava field …
… we found the elves’ horses.
This is another hiking site in Iceland that was popular in the Golden Age of the 1950s, one of the ones that made a trip on the new Ring Road a trip through national pride. Now there is room for one car to park off the road. A million tourists a year (well, maybe not this year or last) drive past, just as the elves would like it. I am honoured to have been invited and let in.
Icelandic Slime
It’s not like other slime. Here in Canada, slime on rocks is, you know, gross. In Iceland, where it doesn’t rise from pollution, it’s like a green sun glowing from the edges of the Earth and the sea at once.
Glow on, slime, glow on!
Eider Farming
A warm feather quilt comes from a relationship between an Eider farmer and the Eider ducks. Each neck is marked and protected.
Fishers offshore are, perhaps, not so protected.
Harvest is not always a killing. It can be the taking of surplus feathers after nesting, in return for protection from foxes.
These are simple and complex things. To learn them, go to the far North. It is a tenuous economy, but a proud one, which is more than can be said of most.
A Farm in Iceland 