Stapafell

This chalet near the seaside town of Hellnar just below Snæfellsjökull nicely mirrors the near-perfect natural pyramid of Stapafell Mountain, which in my eyes is an often-overlooked magical companion to the gorgeous glacier above it. Bárður, the guardian half-ogre/half human of the region, calls this special place his home.

Wondering how one recognizes an ogre? Here's a read about our Bárður in English by Ármann Jakobsson, a renowned local writer and professor of Icelandic (and the brother of our outgoing Minister of Education, Science and Culture, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who is off on maternity leave.)

Note: the chalet has a yin yang symbol over it's door, but I have no idea who owns it....very curious.

Snæfellsjökull

Even with a little digital compact, the Snæfellsjökull glacier* and it's volcanic mountain are easy to glorify. Blessed in many minds as a source of energetic and spiritual power, as well as being the start point for a journey to the center of the earth according to Jules Verne's fiction, this mountain is very special indeed.

*This link takes you to a very nice, informative PDF of the Snæfellsjökull National Park

World's Greatest Dad

This movie came out in Aug'09. I had it in my ext hard drive for so long but only watched it today. Great movie and nice soundtracks.

Farm

Very happy children frolic on slick hay bales at a farm in Mosfellsdalur, a verdant valley that connects Mosfellsbær, just outside of Reykjavik, with the ever-popular Þingvellir,* where the Eurasian and North American continental plates endlessly diverge.

For the more literary-minded, Mosfellsdalur is the seat of Halldór Laxness territory and one of the original settlement sites in Iceland from as early as 874, as cited by the Landnámabók, or The Book of Settlement. For the archaeologists among us, here's a nice paper from UCLA on Viking-age excavations in the area.

But none of those fancy things mattered today. The kids just played, fed the new-born lambs, held tiny bunnies and puppies and kittens, petted tolerant horses and a very grandmotherly hen, ate hot dogs and cookies and got as dirty-muddy as they wanted to. Despite even the rain, it was a perfect day.

*Thingvellir

Bullseye

Astrology at its best!

Ash

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GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Ben Hall

Ben writes: There is nothing worse than building your hopes up on a planned event so that it's almost impossible to stop blinking with excitement, only to have your plans shattered by a most untimely eruption of a 'nearby' volcano. Mother Nature obviously does not care about my plans to go back home to Scotland for my favourite festival... So when I heard that she had blasted some of her angry dust high into the air and forced Keflavik airport to close, it made sense to try driving as close as possible to Grimsvötn to give it the proverbial 'finger'. Naturally, ironically, the volcano won that challenge as well, but we did get as far as Vik, and before beginning the trip back to Reykjavik we took in the beauty of Reynisfjara beach. To see the black sand and the amazing rock formations with the thick ash cloud of the volcano blocking out the sun was something I will not forget in a hurry... Which is pretty much what I think of Iceland on a whole. Totally unforgettable.


When not dashing out to enjoy the follies of nature and capture gorgeous photos in the process, Ben (who also created a brilliant electro track for our volcano: play loud ; ) works as a Quality Assurance Tester at Iceland's innovative and award-winning CCP Games.


(Here's a very cool video of our eruption with music by sigur rós : )  

Heave

You don't get do-overs in life. You just have to move forward..