When your sheep are starving, you will feed them old twine, your family Bible, the shirt off your back, anything, because without sheep there is nothing. Of course, most Icelanders are no longer intimate with sheep. For them, they hay thing has been updated, all modern and tip top. In Reykjavik, anything, anything, even an old couch or an old barbecue made out of paving bricks, is a window.
Hverfisgata
But, of course, that’s the beauty of it.
In some countries, you fill your gardens with plants and flowers. In Reykjavik, they often look like this:
You fill them with the world.
Your house is Iceland, looking out to sea. Crazy beautiful!
Windows are set in walls to let the light in.
Not everyone wants the light.
The windows of Iceland are for neither looking in nor looking out, but for display of earthly objects in the light of the sun, which makes them sacred: talismans, spells, and prayers. It is an exquisite and complex art form, quite separate from the 1960s New York art that saturates the Harbour Gallery (and which is also beautiful.) In their windows, the people speak; in their galleries, they create a window for the world, based on this style.
Tomorrow, let’s go for a gallery tour.
It is a form of poetry. This is the oh-so-secret, oh-so-public favoured art form of Iceland. Here’s a sample anthology.
A Farm in Iceland 