Not only is there a canyon of gentle waterfalls in a musical pattern, but they are inhabited, which is always a bonus.
After close to 20,000 kilometres in Iceland, this is one of the most compelling of all places, and what an inspiration.
It is good to remember that a waterfall, such as the great Dynjandi, is just a fall. That’s to say, it’s a space where the lifting and holding energy of solid ground becomes its opposite, the energy called a fjall. A fall here is not a verb. It is a space, which creates the verb. To get a handle on this energy, its good to stand at the top of a waterfall, and feel oneself falling with it. The earth falls from beneath one’s feet with vertigo.
Now you are in Iceland. It does for you what it doesn’t do for water: it catches you and holds you. It is that moment when the keel of a boat rises and stops swaying in the sea, the landing when it is held. Don’t fight it. It only becomes your story when you don’t fight it.
It used to be possible to walk up to these falls near Kirkjubærjarklaustur, but it has been closed off due to disrespect, especially illegal camping. You can still spot its trolls from a distance, though, if you have a good eye. Do pay your respects with a nod, at least, and for Troll’s sakes, respect those farms and their stock. The place should be a UNESCO site.
Imagine going up to this troll, through all these stone bones and heads, and collecting water for the farmhouse at its foot. It was here that I learned that trolls keep humans because humans keep sheep and trolls really like sheep. A humbling and always slightly uncertain relationship.
It’s one of the things about the height of summer in Iceland: everything comes alive. Lichens give elvish faces to every rock, water moves more mysteriously, and the faces that peer from nearly every rock are more intense. You should have no difficulty spotting many faces in the rocks round this little waterfall on the Stapavík Trail.
Thing is, some of them are more intense than others and hit somewhere very deep inside one’s spirit.
See that yet? maybe? Maybe not? Let’s look again, then:
The elves are never far.
It’s a mysterious little river in North East Iceland, appearing and disappearing, like it’s playing tag.
And then it’s gone.
Wait, there’s an encore:
Look at that: tiny river, huge falls. Now, that’s a great trick!
Here’s the deal. For over 1,000 years, that’s 40 generations or so, maybe more, or about 2.5% of the human experience on Earth,when you wanted a drink of water for 8 months of the year, this is where you got it: from within ice.
Out the Back Door of a Lost Croft on Stekkur
And ice was a power of negation from outside of the world. You had, in other words, to reach into the enemy, right outside of the human world, to survive. And you sent your kids out to get this water. From there. And they did it. And this was called independence; for almost all Icelanders, if you wanted children you had to accept a bargain of absolute poverty like this. There is no moral to this story. Still, when we look at Inspired by Iceland’s images of the country:
Well, just remember you’re looking at 40 generations of Icelandic children approaching the Frost Giants and stealing life. The theft goes on.
While getting boots and gloves and hat ready to go over the lip of the hill last December 24 and visit Sheep’s Falls, one of my favourite waterfalls, many tourists stopped as well: the first stop, it seems, two or three hard hours of driving from Reykjavik. Time and again, they took a few pictures over the Berserkerjahraun to the rising sun, and then posed for each others’ cameras and drove on. It was intimate and sweet.
Still, they had Kirkjufoss to get to before the rising sun was no longer behind the mountain, and they didn’t need me telling them it would be worth it to walk for ten minutes down through the drifts, because they might not have come to Iceland to see the pale, pale winter sun and to learn its nature. They had places to be getting along to, with better cameras and the hope for brighter light, and promises had been made to them, and promises, we know, should be kept.
Just imagine how many times a day any and every traveller in Iceland, myself included, encounters people who know where they are and what is worth seeing and say nothing, because that’s the way of the land itself. As Paul Theroux pointed out half a century ago while travelling by train through South America, it’s North Americans (myself included) who point to stuff.
Icelandic horses are very beautiful, especially in a winter gale. Icelanders will tell you that their ancestors brought them over from Norway by ship. Sure, guys.
Let me take you behind the curtains of that little deception. It might look easy to be an Icelandic horse…
… but like being an Icelander …
… it can be a little rough. Really tough on the hair, for one.
Not only that, but tense, like.
Makes a horse a little crazed, you might think.
Watch out for your ears.
Yeah, but that is all because horses didn’t come over on boats from Norway and continue on to create America out of a lump of clay…
…just as Icelanders aren’t vikings but the descendants of Norwegian farmers and their Irish slaves, who came here for the good hotdogs.
As for the horses, they live near waterfalls. It’s a thing.
Svodufoss
Note the horses being born above. You can just make them out below, too.
The paddock is nearby, where humans can keep an eye on the miracle.
Hólmskelsárfoss
Miracle? Yes. Here’s a foal just about to be born in the stream coming down from the falls.
Hólmskelsá
That’s how it works in a magical country. That the resulting horses look like the horses you might meet elsewhere, well…
… that’s part of the magic, too.
Now you know.
If you peer into the cleft of the Westdalsá, where waterfalls stream into a cauldron from three directions, you will find him, bathing.
To get there, head out to the dwarf stone, get lost, head back to Seydisfjordur, and take a jaunt into the hills on a whim. This will be your reward. Wear sturdy boots!
Which is the most beautiful, an unnamed fall in the summer at Neskaupstaðir?
Or famous Litlafoss below Hengifoss in April?
What a tough choice!
