You’ll find it under Snaefellsjökull, the mountain.
Klofningsrett
Land too tough to live from, yet life too tough to leave.
The volcano was an island-volcano off the coast, before a completely separate volcanic event raised a ridge of volcanoes out to meet it and then past it into the Atlantic. It watched them come.
It watched humans come, too. Some go there now to watch it. Others go to be watched by it. It measures the distance between those two points of view.
Lóndrangar looks out over the Atlantic at mid-day, in the dim light when the darkness shines as brightly as the sun. It is a time for going inside things, for going in the deep intimacy of a human bodily connection with the Earth. Everything is hushed, and the world is full of memories and future plans.
It is those you walk through, and they look like heather and rock and snow and they feel like wind and cold, and yet you are warm. You are a fire, cupped in a sheltered spot. You make yourself. When summer comes, you walk out into what you have made, and the fire is everywhere. It is now, too, but you must walk very softly. You are inside the sleep of the world.
I mentioned the dragons of Rauðhóll a few days back. Here’s another.
This one is hunting elf sheep. The bright, emerald-green patch in the dragon’s mouth is the sheep’s fleece, and another elf sheep forms its eye. It is, in other words, possible to be attacked by a dragon, and survive. You might, however, be held in its thrall for a few thousand years.
On Midsummer Eve Day, we climbed Rauðhóll (Red Hill.) I was enchanted by all the dragons still coming to live in this new tephra cone. Here’s the first one that caught my eye. Many dozens followed. I was surrounded!
I was fascinated by how each leg or wing of the dragon was a dragon of its own. That’s some very deep, persistent dragon-ness! It’s a beautiful volcanic site, too.