Picnic time is just around the corner!
This is mid-March. Bring hot chocolate. You might think twice about sending a letter, too.
What to Pack for a Spring Picnic in Iceland
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Tag Archives: Iceland
Hofstadakirkja in the Springtime
So, you’re in the North of Iceland and you get that old feeling …
… this is sacred space!
Well, it’s time to go to church. Here.
Here:
Here:
But, wait. It’s not that simple. Look at those drifts! You’ll throw a hoof. And then what? Drifts for you all March long, or forever. Brrr.
Best be careful. Scout things out.
OK, even the fences are drifts. Makes sense, right? They’re driftwood. Those Russians, eh! Well even the road is a drift.
But it looks easier than the ditch!
Take the road.
You have time for the welcoming committee, right?
The pregnant welcoming committee.
You do feel welcome, right?
Very welcome?
Good. Don’t forget to say hi to your fellow worshippers. We don’t just worship in space here, but also in time.
Really, they’re the same thing.
Plus drifts.
And old turf house ruins.
You do, um, feel welcome, right?
Ah, the basement and community hall are drifted in. Best go upstairs.
Don’t worry, you can get in through the graveyard. This is Iceland. The dead aren’t dead, and you’ll join them soon enough. Might as well get on a first name basis now.
They have flowers, so that’s nice.
Hey, it was cold, so I wasn’t feeling all that vertical myself! Well, it sure looks nice in there. Let’s go in!
Watch your step! Ah, here we go.
And we are in!
Lovely altar.
The plastic is to keep off intruders from the dark place. The horses send them as a joke.
Ha ha ha.
Pulpit’s very nice, too.
Also Mary Queen of Heaven and her Son.
Not your typical Lutheran pair? Well, this is Iceland.
The house rules you already know, right?
And the reason the mountains sent you here? Even a bit of foundation shifting to get the nice new basement underneath for the whole community to gather hasn’t shaken him off the wall.
A bit of nationalism to sit on, ha ha ha.
Or a bit of glory from the continent.
Art. Painted on a bit of driftwood by the looks of it.
Old friends.
Feasts.
It’s all about the feasting.
Well, and prayer.
And hope. This is Iceland. Be practical, and have a backup plan.
God is always listening.
And there is always music from Heaven.
Up we go to the choir loft!
Here.
Things have a different perspective from these dizzy heights.
Somehow, you are less alone.
More intimate.
More reverent.
More beautiful.
More at home.
I mean
Yeah.
Back you go!
To the world.
Remember to come back next time you’re in the North.
It lifts a soul up.
It does.
So remember…
…life isn’t a full stop. And it isn’t the road to Akureyri.
It’s who you meet.
And where you’re going.
Together.
Off Road Travel in Iceland
Thinking of a road trip? A great idea. The only thing about roads is that they don’t go where you want to go. They have their own minds. Don’t be fooled!
Sometimes they go where you want, but you can only walk. A path would be better.
Hofstaðir Kirkja
Sometimes, no road will get you where you want to go.
Sometimes where you want to go is not on this earth.
Sometimes even walking is out of the question.
Let’s face it, you need a better body. For that, Iceland has a solution.
The grass hump wading horses of Hofstaðir!
They know the way. Look at them avoiding that road! That’s the way.
Water Paths in Iceland
There are vertical paths.
There are horizontal ones.
In a gale, they can be both at once.
We see these falls as paths because we are pathfinders. See the path to the right in the image below? Can’t resist?
Of course not. That is the human spiritual trace. The sheep is an elaboration, and exquisite for that. These creatures are not paths but warmth, hearth and home. Their other form is this:
That is a sheep and a human family, spiritualized as one, in time. This is the water path that makes it possible:
It is one with them, because of human path-finding. That is the spiritual path at the edge of the known world.
Forever on Guard for Iceland
While we’ve been chatting, the ogress of Dritvik has been keeping guard to the west. 
Day in and day out, in darkness and light, with a cormorant on her head, or not, she has been guarding against the formlessness that comes in off the sea. With her troll whale companion. Never heard of a troll whale? Go to Dritvik.
Together, they watch out, for us.
This is vitally important work. I give thanks.
The Elves Next Door
Yes, that’s a house between the white one and the grey one, eh.
Casseroles for the neighbours are optional in Hellissandur.
Philosophers Going Nowhere in Dritvik
A big raindrop.
When you can’t move for water, watch better.
Icelandic Philosophy
When it rains long enough, Icelandic sheep can’t move.
The sweater weighs a ton. Bearing up to that encourages moments of philosophy.
If You Talk to Ravens
They will do tricks for you. If you talk to them. That’s because you’ll startle them and they’ll do acrobats mid-air to try to understand your bad accent.
Don’t worry. They’ll repeat what they think you said so you can get it right. You’re up to this. Don’t worry. They’ll always have the first word…and the last. But you’re good with humility, right? Sure you are!
Of Dwarves and Men
Dwarf city in the West Fjords…
Frost spirits at the Glacial Lagoon, in the South …
A buried elf city in þingvellir.
The patterning is consistent. This is flocking, the rubbing of loose knots of fabric out of a woven cloth. Sheep, birds and cheese follow the same energy to come together in groups, and clots, as does, yes, blood. Yes, you’re looking at blood, not the red stuff in your veins so much as something more general, part of an old conception of spirit that predates Iceland by untold millennia and is remembered there as a living world.
The principle is universal. Where today’s civilization, the civilization of “nature” sees one form of energy, the old one is scarcely hidden, a kind of edge effect…
… a kind of way of seeing transformation rather than durability.
We call that life.
A Farm in Iceland 