Njarðvík
So often in Iceland, words fail us.
Sometimes You Just Need to Look Out to Sea
Leave a reply
Tag Archives: Ocean
The Naustá Enters the Greenland Sea So Sneakily
It’s a mysterious little river in North East Iceland, appearing and disappearing, like it’s playing tag.
And then it’s gone.
Wait, there’s an encore:
Look at that: tiny river, huge falls. Now, that’s a great trick!
The Best Way to Approach the Sea
Sideways, so sly?
Or head on, so bold?
With a house for company?
With a fence for (ha ha) protection?
Or with a sandbar to still that water down until it turns to swans?
In snow?
In the midnight sun?
From halfway down a ridiculous cliff called, for some reason, a road?
From the land of the dead at the bottom of the cliff?
Among muck-raking sheep?
From the city?
From a place on no map?
From a boat?
From a coal mine?
With a lighthouse?
Through a gate while tipping over in the wind (a common affliction)?
On a lazy evening when horses come to visit and refuse to eat your apples because they’ve never encountered such a strange thing before?
At the end of the road?
Without a road at all?
When the sea turns to silver?
When silver turns to the sea?
When the sky rains gold?
Over the mouth of a river?
Or when the sea flows into a river’s mouth and speaks of deep mystery?
These are the mysteries of people who live after the landing that makes firm ground out of waves that, wouldn’t you know, is not so firm after all. Yeah, best, maybe to just wade out with the trolls.
Waiting for whatever comes!
A Mini Guide to Sea Room and Lagoon
Here is a social space in Reykjavik that’s not a park, a street, a building or a yard full of old rowan trees and mystery. It’s more mysterious yet. This is what the people of the north of the world call The Sea Room.
And on Snaefellsnes? Yes, there’s one there, too.
And in the far north, too.
Note that the Sea Room has few boundaries. It has a sense of being open, with a free flow out to the open ocean, which it is nonetheless separated from by a sense of space. Compare that to a lagoon in the East. 
In comparison to Sea Room, a lagoon is bounded by land. And below. Na, that’s a river mouth in the south.
Nope, a Sea Room is special. You can live there, in a world within the world. So, let’s try it again… Sea Room?
Nope. River mouth. And below, what of it? Sea Room?
Nope, a river flow through a lagoon, with the open Atlantic trying to get in. Now, that’s fun. Ok, what about the view below at Dritvik?
Nope, that’s just the sea. You enter it when you leave the sea room. And below?
Nope, sad to say. That’s a field in Breiðafjörður. This is Iceland. it’s tricky. And below, in Skagafjörður?
Yes! You got it! And below, at Buðir?
Atlantic again? Yup. And here’s Dritvik? Is that a Sea Room? No, it’s an ogre and her ogre whale pet in a bay at dusk, in the rain, looking out to sea. But here’s the thing, in Iceland men rowed way out there in little wooden boats and hauled in cod, far from land in storm. They made a room of the sea, a portable one, centred on their boat, just as their island is centred in the sea. That flexibility remains in the country.
It is known now as memory. 
