The sheep are shy. They left where I am standing to make this shot and were at the top of the ridge on the right, and beyond, in ten minutes.
Stapavik
Imagine rounding them up in the winter. Pretty crazy!
As this rowan in the birch forest at Ásbyrgi shows, it’s about the darkness, and how that is woven with light.
See?
Ewe With Her Lambs, Buðir, Midsummer’s Night 2019
Baaaaa-aaaa.
Bah.ðarb
Yes, that’s a clothes dryer vent at our guesthouse in Borg í Njardvik. These are very lovely, brave sheep, with high IQs. Best to visit them yourself!
Vellir Farm, Rauðanes
Vatnsdalarhólar
The hills are famous as being too many to count. The forests, well, that is another matter. And the sheep, whew. They were out the other day, waiting to be taken to the high country. Sheep everywhere!
Gunnar Gunnarson’s dream was to transform his novels about Icelandic country people into a farm employing Icelandic country people, and run it like a novel. Unfortunately, Gunnar got the idea from living for thirty years in Denmark, where he picked up this well-meaning but colonial idea. The contemporary. and up-dated version of the best of Gunnar’s idea of translating a book into life is the Icelandic love of building a forest and then holidaying within it, to return to an Iceland renewed from the degradations and desperations of its poverty, back to the beautiful, forested land in the mid-Atlantic. In other words, Gunnar was on the right track, except he forget to plant the trees!
In Iceland, solstice is a time for sheep, mammalian…
… trolishl…
… or elvish…
… to put on their finery …
…and party.
You, too, I hope.
You can keep warm with a good woven sheep.
As for sheep, they knit landscapes like this, in Breiðafjörður, one stitch at a time.
Nice banding work!
Nice banding work!
Suðurdalur
A labour of love.
It requires some skill with clambering and counting stitches.
Valpjofstaður
But sheep, ah, sheep…
… they seek out tears in the knitting.
Sheep are tricksters. You can find them there.
Ásmundarstataðá
In this way, you can stay warm dressed in the cold land.
Grund, November
Here’s a turf house window in Iceland. You’ll still find a few here and there. Wonder where the idea came from?
Wonder no longer.
Of course, that’s old architecture. The new stuff is, like, modern and all. Or maybe not. Here are some apartments in Reykjavik, and the elf stone in front of them, where no developer was allowed to build, because it was already occupied, and you don’t want to mess with magical rocks. Where did that idea come from?
From Snæfellsnes, that’s what. All that’s happened is that people finally got the upper hand and build houses taller than the magical rocks.
That’s simple enough, but what about finer architectural features, such as the red windows below on Laugavegur in Reykjavik. Tough one, eh?
Not at all. We just need to go to the Fljotsdalur in the East and all is revealed.
See, two red panels. Nice. Fine, but what about the really tough ones, like the Harpa concert hall?
Pshaw, nothing to it. I guess you didn’t go quite far enough out on Snæfellsnes. Here you go.
And the Harpa:
See? You can be in and out at the same time. That’s the ticket. Now, about the modern brutalism that graces the city…
… well, not modern at all. You can see its model at Ásbyrgi, in the far North.
Oh, one more time. This time, note the air conditioner…
Nice, eh. Where, oh where, does that come from? Again, the far North.
Well, just imagine the building as a flat rather than a height and you’ll see it. It is a crazy island, but if you hang around it long enough it will come into focus.
Book Laundry in Reykjavik
(Other countries launder money, but Icelanders have learned their lessons about messing with crazy stuff like that.)
A real Icelandic ranging camera looks like this:
It’s not bothered by wind, not a bit.
A Farm in Iceland 