After the end of the Christian age, the dead are a bit alone at Hellnar.
Truth is, the graveyard has become a pasture, blowing in the wind under the volcano.
And the hope and loss and grief of all the families that have lost men at sea, is a bit at sea, too.
Let us still honour them, and carry them.
First, with their church.
Next, with their hay bales. Looks to me like they have been bundled up for harvest themselves.
Next, from their sanctuary.
So must 1100 years of Christian dead comfort themselves when their parishes, and faith, is lost among the living.
I miss the mountain. What can I say.
We had visited the falls two days before, but when we stepped outside at sunrise on the day after Christmas (11:30 a.m.) and saw the light, we quickly changed our plans. Luckily, the falls were only ten minutes away and the hunch was right. The mountain claims you, that’s what I can say.
Midsummer Night at Buðir, Looking Northwest to Snæfellsjökull
Whether you’re coming or going, it’s still the centre.
At the edge of night in December, at mid-afternoon, Snæfellsjökull reveals one of the depths of the interaction between Earth and the Sun: light is not the illumination that humans “see” but a glow set up within objects, with differing intensities. Some of these intensities are what humans call “dark.” Well, by that standard, it’s all dark.
Snæfellsjökull from Ingjaldshóllkirkja
Everything in the image above is receiving the same radiation from the sun, but all are speaking it differently. Here you can see how they are sorted out by the human eye, and how the mountain glows with no more intensity and no less mystery than the dark foreground lava hills. Mountains have an inside. You can see that here, at the point at which the light and dark meet.
When the wind hits 33 metres per second at the Buðahraun, the only shelter is down among the dunes, but even there you have to put your back to it to make an image, as the sand driven into the snow hits you like a blast from a shotgun. It’s better to take that in the back.
So it is on December 21, the shortest day of the year, but far, far from the least powerful. Here (above) it is around noon, looking North. And 6 months earlier, on the longest day, around 10 pm…
That’s Snæfellsjökull, the volcano and glacier that makes all this magic here out in the middle of the Atlantic. That was our year: two trips through these spiritual lavas. I expected the contrast to be between light and darkness, but it wasn’t that. There was no contrast. There was just power, stronger than the seasons.
Beautiful Arnarstapi!
Volcano:
Volcano with cows: 
Volcano with church:
Just another quiet, ordinary day on Snæfellsnes.
The glacier…
Snæfellsjökull
… makes its own weather…
Stapafell
… in its own shape, just faster.
Snæfell
And then wraps itself in it. So does the land give voice to the sea.
So many travellers spend a week, or less, driving around Iceland to see everything, in the pattern of a modern “grand tour.” A more-authentic Icelandic experience would be to sit down with a mountain and learn …
… it’s not just sitting there.
What a mysterious mountain.
And so full with light.
Light and cloud together.
That’s what the glacier is made of up there, mixed with rock and fire. Oh, and lower down?
Add life. Pouring to the sea and climbing to the sky.
It will be hard to leave this mountain tomorrow.
But þor’s Shield awaits!
It sheds water like burnished silver. Salmon, who are burnished silver, too, leave the sea to follow its path.
A Farm in Iceland 