The cliff at Ásbyrgi, in the far northeast, is full of ravens, trolls and elves. They’ve been camping out there (if you have eyes to see them) from the beginning of the world. If you don’t have such eyes, they are lovely lava flows cut by a paraglacial flood, with a birch, willow and rowan forest worth a trip across Iceland or around the world.
Or, you can just go to Reykjavik.
Now, that’s love for the land! Well done!
Gunnar Gunnarsson’s published a fascinating ghost story called Vikivaki in 1932. Iceland is still writing them. Take a look…
Ghosts, Öxarárfoss, Iceland
What’s a ghost? Why, something that’s neither dead nor alive and which brings a message from deep within your story.
As for people, they’re writing something else. Here’s what visitors to Iceland write upon the body of the land when they visit:
Troll People, Þingvellir
They just have to leave a record of themselves, it seems, using whatever is at hand.
For people who live within a landscape, language comes from the land, the water, the light and the air. Here’s a piece of just such a language from Iceland:
Language Beginning, Öxarárfoss, Iceland
Forget about cuneiform and Linear B and language starting with bird tracks in sand. There is another way. Forget about writing for purely human audience and deferring the environmental costs of turning from the earth until the future. That future is now.
Language Beginning as Art, Öxarárfoss, Iceland
Compare that to the lines in this stained glass window from the church in Reykholt, West Iceland:
Mary, The Christ Child, and Three Angels
Reykholt
Iceland is a country in which Christianity is uniquely bound to the soil. Unsurprisingly, Gunnar’s ghosts are a surprisingly devout bunch, called forth in a moment of nationalist zeal. This is one lesson I’m going to happily take home to Canada in 6 weeks. Sometimes the hidden people of a country can be the people themselves.
Next: I will explore these ideas further by discussing an Icelandic artist who paints with ice.
A Farm in Iceland 