Fog

An house now inhabited by geese on the northern shore of Seyðisfjörður

We've been away traveling quite a bit, and just got back into 101 from Seyðisfjörður, an absolute gem of a town with stunning waterfalls and craggy, intrepid mountains everywhere you look. We tented again and this time enjoyed warm, sunny and windless skies, which was welcomed after the dreary stuff we've had to accept in the capital region this summer (to be fair, of course, we are in the North Atlantic, just under the Arctic Circle, and this place is called Iceland...why do the locals always complain about the weather?)

On the day I took this shot, though, a thick fog settled into the valley and dropped rain, which meant a good opportunity to don our rain boots and go adventuring along the north side of the fjörður (fjord.) It's an especially quiet and eerie place, populated only by animals (as far as we could see) who seemed to literally own the land. The horses that came up to greet us seemed to be scrutinizing us for the whole herd, eventually giving us a green light to move along. Sheep were especially lazy about getting off of the road, and there was even a bit of trouble with a gaggle of calico-styled geese determined not to let us pass.

This house in particular was home to a peculiar pair of geese, chocolate brown in color with white throats (you can see one on the right-hand side of the photo.) I saw them from the road and couldn't figure out what kind of bird they were...too dark to be geese, but too big to be ducks. I fancied that maybe I'd discovered long-lost living members of the extinct Dodo bird, or Great Auk, family, and that Iceland could now be redeemed for having killed off the last of that grand, harmless species. I got out of the car, and once again got the feeling that I should have called ahead to announce my intended visit: the birds seemed non-plussed with me, and even a bit irritated at my trespass on to their property. But up close I saw that they were definitely geese, and that they seemed to guard over a family of the classic-grey variety. I asked to take a few photos, then politely said my goodbyes and moved along...

Hidden

Sorry to burst any bubbles out there in the big world, but as amazing a read as this article is, there haven't been any British anthropologists rescued after a 7-year disappearance into the elven realms. As you can see in the picture above, it is fairly easy to become one with the moss and lava if you're dressed right (can you find the human in the photo?) but there are very few modern reports of Hidden People interactions that we know of.

Unfortunately, it's just easy to permanently damage millennia-old groundcover, seriously twist an ankle, or even slip into a hidden crevice when out in Icelandic nature. I witnessed my former brother-in-law literally vanish while walking a lava field up at Mývatn. He had his baby in a front-facing backpack which made it all the scarier. We'd decided to stop for lunch and walk a few hundred yards from the road to a nice spot over there when poof! he was gone, having stepped on a layer of moss that looked solid enough but just wasn't. Thankfully the fissure was just about as deep as he was tall, and it was wide enough so little Helena didn't get scraped or banged up. We helped him out again, all very shaken and humbled by the experience.

So go gently through nature while you're here. Leave a rock on a cairn along your path to honor the local norn or spirit, pick up random trash you see along the way, and step softly and with care. Stop at some beautiful place and speak words of gratitude for our living island, and maybe, just maybe, the elven realms will open up for you, if only for a moment in time...

Crossing

GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Sesselja Björnsdóttir

I saw this photo on Sesselja's son Ari's Facebook wall (Ari is an excellent electronica musician - I've got a bunch of his music on my Soundcloud favorites list under Lotus Robot) and immediately connected with it. I felt there was something powerful about the bridge, and assumed it was just the overall symbolism that bridges hold in literature and such.*

But then Sesselja wrote to me that "this is the bridge over the river Ytri Emstruá, when you are hiking Laugavegurinn [video]. Because of the bridge people can hike this track." So this bridge is more than just an easier way to get across a small ravine: it's actually what makes this famous Icelandic hiking trail possible. I like that.

* "The important thing here is the symbolism: the bridge, and the enchanted world it brings to the poet’s mind. The very nature of a bridge dictates its symbolic use. It is a structure that joins two otherwise separate pieces of land, yet at the same time enhances their separateness. One can travel across it, from one land mass to another, but while on it the traveller is neither in one place nor the other. " From The Perilous Bridge, by Alby Stone.

Solstice

In Iceland it is also possible to find three-legged ginger cats hanging out by seaside football fields at midnight on the Summer Solstice. And young men dreaming of lands far, far away...

Shoes

GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Leifur Þór Þorvaldsson*

Leifur writes: In a secret location on the in the middle of nowhere, these shoes have been lying for decades undisturbed. One can only imagine how it came about that they ended up there.

Leifur, who describes himself as an Icelandic theater maker, graduated with a BA in Theory and Practice from the theatre department of the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2009. His graduation work, Endurrómun, was staged at Borgaleikhúsið, The Reykjavík City Theatre, last January and was then nominated for a Gríman, the Icelandic answer to the Tony Award. He is now working in the development stages of a new project currently set for production next year. This photo is a sweet example of his obvious visual talents.

During research on the Icelandic theater scene years ago, I discovered that it is amazingly robust for such a small nation. Though there are always grumblings (and rightly so) about reduced funding for the arts, and though the large national and city theaters have a serious corner on the market (here is a statement on that fact by the Association of Independent Theatres in Iceland) theater, as a direct progeny of the storytelling and rímur culture that kept the Icelandic national identity intact during the very difficult middle ages, is alive and strong.

For a bit of extra reading about Icelandic theater, here is a piece on Icelandic theater I wrote for the Reykjavík Grapevine in 2004 (which was, unfortunately, poorly edited and titled before it went to print. Sigh.)

*the letter 'Þ' in Leifur's middle and last names is pronounced 'Th,' so the English spelling of his name is Leifur Thor Thorvaldsson.

Sunset

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