Island, part tveir (uh, two)

I could go on for a long time about the virtues of Iceland as a travel destination, a place to live, a photo-subject, a place to eat puffins and whales and putrified shark.  Instead I think I'll just go on for a moderate length of time about all those things and more and punctuate my points with photographs.


There are glaciers in Iceland.  A glacier not only looks awesome (in the original sense of the word AND in the "Valley Girl" sense) but it seems like a living, breathing thing.  It makes noise.  It moves.  It has a presence.  Walking around them and even on them provides many of those "My puny little life has no meaning." moments, like watching a whale swimming, or staring into the Grand Canyon that I kinda like and some others find scary and depressing.

Skalafell maybe?  A glacier definitely.

If it wasn't for global warming climate change this sucker would be comin' for ya!  Instead it's in full retreat.  D'oh!  


I find all of this beautiful.  I dig the desolation, the majesty and indifference of nature, the universally picturesque. It is endlessly compelling.  Some more examples:

Somewhere north of Reykjavik

Julia told us when we left Reykjavik we'd stop every two minutes to take a picture of the "most beautiful thing we've seen in the last two minutes" and she was right.  This was one of those moments.  If Reykjavik had a skyline we could've still seen it from here.  There are loads of farms in Iceland.  They fall into one of three categories: inhabited, abandoned, inhabited but look abandoned.  I'm not sure which that one qualifies for.

I like to shoot buildings, especially simple ones.  Iceland had me covered.

West of Saudarkrokur, on the road to Drangy.

The suburbs of Mjoifjordur (pop. 37)

The road into Mjoifjordur was an epic journey all to itself, one that left Tracy making her peace with the universe assured of our impending doom.  I wasn't ready to die either but rolling our little Toyota down an impossibly steep ravine in the wilds of Iceland wouldn't be the worst way to go.  Imagine the story our families could tell!  We obviously made it.  Our reward was one of the more photographed sights in Iceland.

Abandoned herring boat, Mjoifjordur.

Ain't that pretty?  My Icelandic-Grail was the Norwegian whaling station that lay on the southern shore of this fjord.  Inaccessible by our 2wd econobox and 7 clicks from the head of the fjord we couldn't easily pull it off so we didn't.  It sticks in my craw but it also gives me an excuse to return.

One last glacier picture.  Next post will be on urban Iceland, truly a contradiction.