It’s always a good day for a little tour through the sun.
Beam.
Iceland, the Great Yellow Land in the Grey Sea
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Tag Archives: nature photography
A Winter Troll Coming Down from the Mountains
Here’s one of the Trolls of Harnarfjall, on its annual pilgrimage to feed on the sea.
Slathering at the mouth in a field of old bones, as trolls will. There’s a whole herd of then where the foot of this fell turns into the flat of the sea. You can find them on cold days this time of year. In the summer they’ve gone to ground in the hills.
Mighty Good Fishing in Iceland
Two codfish go to sea.
Definitely time for a visit to Jökullsárlón!
Three Ways to Enter the Icelandic Forest
1. Through a parking lot.
Reykjavik.
2. Through a farmer’s imagination.
Breiðaðalur
3. With wit.
Barnafoss
In Iceland, be witty!
In Iceland, You Can’t Escape Gravity
They call gravity a fell here, or a fall. Often both at the same time.
You can’t escaping falls. The experience of gravity below is an example of what is called a hike. Anything less than this is called a walk. Don’t confuse the two.
Below is a walk. Walks are wet. But gravity is a compensation! It’s good to keep your eye on it. Practice makes perfect.
In Reykjavik, gravity is still at work. I mean, the pot-smoking graffiti artists of Rome and New York and …? … aren’t issued ladders at customs. As a result, they walk from ground level.
Icelandic workers are better equipped to defy gravity.
They’ve been hiking, see. They know about falls. They’re everywhere. You can even fall off a road into the sea here.
Better get in some practice at balance. Off you go!
The Mother of Reykjavik
I like to think of this monolith in Reykjavik’s old harbour, near the Viðey Ferry and the industrial docks, as the mother of the city. Look at the sand she has drawn out of the sea’s currents and sheltered here…
… sand perfect for Ingólfur’s long boat in 870. In a country in which most beaches are stretches of surf or keel-ripping rock, that is no small thing. Here is the mother of the city. And look at her, isn’t she gorgeous? Wouldn’t you put into shore for her?
Not Elves Exactly
Hey, welcome to Alfaborg, the mystical city of the elves in Borgarfjörðar Estri. The Borg in the west, was the city of men. Here, completely across the country, live the elves, in their own Borg.
East
Except, until the twelfth century, there were no álfar, or elves. That was an idea imported from France, which was laid on folk experience of all the varied people who came to Iceland and made up its founding lines. This would have been home to the bergbúar, the rock dwellers. 
East
Not dwarves, exactly. That is a different folk lineage, into which several lines were folded over time, under the effects of European modernization and a half millenium of the consolidation of folk tale into unified stories onto which national narratives could be written. What became known as elves, in a process of consolidation, also originally held the landvættir, or nature spirits. They lived on the land itself. So, this is likely a home of rock dwellers.
East
This too, most likely.
East
And this. 
East
And here?
South
Why, landvættir. And here. 
West
And here, a mixed population, perhaps. No doubt, a host of others who tagged along in the heads of people in the long boats. 
West
No doubt, a lot from Ireland. Experiences of what was later solidified, in the same nationalizing process, as nature. 
North
Luckily, there is more to history than the history of nationalism, and more to living on earth than the consolidation of diverse encounters and traditions with abstraction and consolidation.
North
We are still bodies on earth.
North
We are still the earth dreaming.
Falling in Iceland
Fall.
Rockfall.
Svartifoss
Waterfall.
Svartifoss
Icefall.
Screefall.
Buðaklettur
The sense of the ancient word “fall” is preserved in English today in the expression “falling away,” and the word “fell,” denoting a primitive evil. It denotes the state of entering what is not there, of suddenly having no earth holding you up, which the planet does, kindly enough.
It holds you up in all sorts of different ways. And then it lets you go.
Succulent Iceland
Succulents, which combat heat stress by a form of photosynthesis which allows them to store solar energy in a chemical form during the day, with their water-losing pores closed, and complete photosynthesis in the night, with their pores open, seem to be thriving in Iceland, which is not known for its heat. Luck at them here (bright green), in a colony of mosses and Icelandic purslane: a little tidal pool at the base of the wall of the Hengifossá Canyon.
I suspect that greenhouses of snow cover, left empty by the effects of the wildly-varying height of the stream nearby, play a role here, but, really, I just think there’s room for extensive study here. I’d say it’s not just lichens that live in community in this climate, but all kinds of creatures, which do better together than apart.
After all, we are talking about an island which is an edge ecosystem: warmed by the Gulf Stream while cooled by winds from the north. Anything is possible here! The whole country is a hot house!
The Earth Gives Birth
Iceland is a “settlement” culture, not a “colonial” culture. This orientation continues today. There are times the Earth reminds the human body of its own birth.
Skriðuklaustur
At those moments, the human mind and body unite to give birth to a new self at one with the earth. That is settlement. It’s like taming a horse.
A Farm in Iceland 