When the god Oðin plucked out an eye to receive all the wisdom in the world, he received two ravens: Thought and Memory.
Here they are in Kerlingardalur, thinking and remembering. What else is consciousness?
Skaftafellsjökull
Well, yes, ice, but that comes from beyond the world. That is unconsciousness. That is what you need thought and memory for, lest they have you.
That’s the way of the black road.
Let me demonstrate how poetry is an indigenous form of thought.
Land…
Land’s river …
Land’s liver …
Sky’s blood…
Sun.
You can only speak this language if you are at home on Earth.
Chances are you do, and are.
Iceland entered modernity with a group of artists who did nothing more or less than express their pre-modern selves in modern forms.
Sker and Stampur (?), off Dyrhólaey
Ásmundur Sveinsson’s “Music of the Ocean, Magnifier”
Icelanders did it themselves, with nothing but their rock in the ocean, in other words with everything that they had. Inspiring.
And I mean everything.
You are at sea.
Glaciers are beautiful, as you can see.
Skaftafellsjökull
The human body extends itself into them, and is magnified, just as the sun is. Without them, we are small. With them, we are powerful…
Skeiðarárjökull
…with a power we must give over to them. Then they draw us to themselves.
Sólheimájökull
Gladly.
The sun goes up and down, we’ve had a sandwich or two, storms have come in and out, but the Ogre of Dritvik is still out there. She never stops waiting.
This energy that has been frozen in stone has more than human endurance, even though it is human observation that gives it bodily life. Here are the bits of her that time has worn away:
That is pure Ogre, that is. It squeaks under your feet, calling out its name: “Pebble.” You can pick it up in your hand. Suddenly you are holding stillness. The whole energy of the volcano that made this coast is in your hand. Will you throw it out to sea? Will you hold it? Will you set it down? In this moment of stillness you become the world. The question all of us who have touched her ask is: What then?
It’s a good thing we’re not alone in the rain as we try to figure it out, because that might, ultimately, be the answer.
Don’t be alone in the rain.
What are we waiting for?
Don’t look behind you.
You’re not here to enter nature.
Or are you?
It’s your call.
For almost four hundred years, hundreds of men camped at Dritvik, on the extreme west coast of Iceland, for the spring fishery, and set out in tiny wooden boats into the open North Atlantic. On a ferocious, rough coast, this troll sat in the sea and made a safe harbour. For hundreds of years he looked out to them at sea and when the men came home they came in on the beams of his gaze.
He is still watching, still making the harbour, still waiting, and whatever is out there on the Atlantic is still coming in — just not men, and fish. He’s not alone. Trolls rarely are. They are herdsmen, after all. Turn around slowly. You are being watched.
You don’t need an expensive camera in Iceland. The sun is so low to the horizon that the atmosphere becomes your lens.
What you need to do is to place yourself in its way.
And in its focal field.
Forget the telephoto lens and the filters and your bag of tech. You don’t have time for that.
And don’t be mesmerized by your journey.
The sun and the earth and the air and space between them is your journey. 
The mountains focus this light too.
So do you.
What else did you think you were on this earth for?
Ah, the Northern Lights.
Well, it doesn’t matter. Iceland will focus you with its lens. 
Just wait.
Be ready at any moment. This is not your journey.
This is the planet’s dance with the sun.
You are this planet dancing.
This half-frozen waterfall just above tideline, with its troll and its troll sheep, is not on any tour route and, like most of the beautiful places in Iceland, is not on any map.
The really beautiful stuff you have to find on your own. When you do, after that effort, you’re not likely to tell anyone where it is, and it wouldn’t matter if you did, because the moment would be past. This is called respect.
A Farm in Iceland 