Out on the hraun, you are living in the open universe. The Earth’s shadow was amazing, that we left, not towards the golden light shining from across Breidafjördur, but into the shadow, deeper and deeper. It was like swimming in the sky.
The beach at Hellissandur showed her spirit this morning.
As you can see, it doesn’t take a lot of light, or, better, the light goes inward rather than out. So is it with the long, low angles of the sun on Christmas Day. Look at the water erupt from the sand and say its name in this light.
It is a day on which the whole Earth is alive. We found that around this mountain at Midsummer.
And now, this force is just as strong. What welcome energy!
What life! This time, it’s not just the Earth that is alive. Look at the sun going down over Melariff at 2:30 in the afternoon!
The view is from the 1100-year old Viking Farm at Saxhóll. A few minutes later, the sky revealed a dragon.
And just after that, many stories all at once, enough to meditate on for a year.
As the sun left and rain fell across it in the West, the energy lingered, not in the sky but in my self that was the sky.
And so we carry ourselves, just as the Earth, the Water and the Sky carry us. It is we who are spirits of Earth, Water and Sky.
Sure, the sunset looking north to Djúpivogur at midnight, mid-July, as the perennial day of solstice starts to fade, are most splendid…
… but the real story here is the black land. It’s what gives the sky its light. It is here that you see it for the first time.
Behind the clouds. Of light, air, water and dust.
Skagafjörður
At 11 p.m. in August.
At midnight, you look West and forget churches altogether.
Borgarnes
The world is bigger at dusk, the farther away it is.
It is good, I think, to go to bed when one is as small as a stone.
~
Skagafjörður
As the sun sets over the Skagafjörður and the peninsular pillar of Þorðarhöfði, the waves bring it onto the black sand beach of Gardssanður with a promise of dawn.
And not just of dawn but of eternity. Maybe it’s not definable otherwise, but it sure is here: Eilíifð, roughly translated as “eternity,” better as the “living on”, in the sense of survivors (such as settlers in Iceland, in the midst of such a sea.) Such is the haunting pleasure of islands.
(Beauty can also be a bridge.)
Skagafjörður from Hofstaðir, looking North
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
ð
A Farm in Iceland 