This place; it is amazing. No adjectives can do it the justice that it deserves. A young slice of earth geographically, it feels ancient. Perhaps all the more because it is so young, it carries a remembrance of what earth must have looked like millennia ago. I imagine dinosaurs crossing the dark ashen grounds, the mountains beyond capped with white, clouds striping the sky above.
A rugged earth stretched ahead of us, dipping and sweeping below the horizon that seemed to go on for eternity. My mind roamed, looking for words to describe it. What equivalent is there? The landscape feels fit for a fairy tale, the perfect setting for an other-wordly film or fantasy.
The summer sun sets here at eleven. That gives us ample time to explore the beautiful surrounds. We started slowly. The day had broken long before, and it seemed unnatural to get up later, with the sun so high already. It played peek-a-boo with the clouds all day, jumping out from behind the fluffy whiteness and dappling us in its warmth, then dissapearing again. We enjoyed the light when it was there, but the cloudyness nonetheless added a certain drama. Only at evelen a.m. did we eventually begin our drive. By then some had already made an exploratory walk to the small waterfall that feeds the river running alongside our camp. It is idyl.
High up in the mountains, we drove alongside massive glaciers, the white of their snow emphasised by brown streaks that framed the volumptiousness of it all. The mountains, of course, black as soot, as ash, spewed across the landscape from the bowls of the earth, from volcanoes’ ruptured centuries ago, or just a few years. You remember the ash cloud that covered Europe in 2011? It was from a volcano right here in Iceland. We drove through the area yesterday, on our way to our camp. The farming community is still active, with the only semblence of a natural disaster the fresh museum irriged in honour of Mother Earth’s vengeful volcanic strength.
Some places we were the only people, others we were part of a crowd. The dissapointment of Iceland is that so many others have found its charm. They flock in tour busses, as if to see the leaning tour of Pisa, or the Eiffel, no account for how their vehicles could have dared the dark and difficult roads. What they do not know, however, is that the true beauty of this place is when the sun dips low. The magic lies in those places, far from hot springs and gazers, where there is no other soul except your own, where the land you stand on is high up and the air around you is in cloud. That is the world we claimed for ourselves tonight.
NINA IN EUROPE 