The Land of Ice and Fire

Week Two of My Artist Residency

Day 7: After spending some time researching, we decided to go for a drive. One of the wonderful things about Iceland at this time of year, is that there is light until very late. Dusk happens around midnight, so you often find yourself thinking it must be 8:00 PM or thereabouts when in fact it’s more like 11:00 PM! It also means you can head out in the afternoon and come home late and not worry about getting lost in the dark.

This time we headed east towards a local waterfall, of which there are a great many in this country. It was lovely to watch the changing scenery as we drove toward another mountain range. All of the mountains are either triangle shaped or have the top cut off to a flat surface. This is typical of volcanic mountains. The valleys in-between are covered with grasses that have grown in lumpy tufts, making the ground very uneven. A local explained to me that these bumps are actually created by frost in winter. At the moment they are beige, but I am told that they will turn green as the weather gets warmer and that this will happen surprisingly fast. I will let you know when I see it.

Day 8: A quiet Sunday. I spent the day mostly in the library where I usually work. After doing some research into Elves for the past few days I put my mind to thinking about what story I could tell including them. I wanted to include a bunch of ideas so I did a mind map. The main idea that struck me connecting with my sight-seeing of the island with the reason that the people believe in elves has to do with the idea that they exist to help people with their relationship to the landscape. And what a landscape it is! Everywhere you look you feel dwarfed by mountains and sky. Pictures just don’t do it justice. I think the reason is that there is so much all around, mountains, sea, sky, valleys, that you feel small against it and surrounded on all sides. I would have to do a panoramic photo to give a real sense of it, and then put you in a room with photos all around so you could get the feeling.

Anyway, back to elves… they are supposed to be folk who live in another dimension which is connected to this one via rock formations, or the formations are their homes, I’m not totally clear on which. You can see many odd shaped bulges here and there on the flat valley floor. The actual surface isn’t really flat, only flat in a grand sense of not being high up. As I mentioned, the grasses create a bumpy surface, and imagine on top of that the land is dotted with outcroppings of odd dark shapes of rocks. People would wonder why those rocks were there. Obviously, we know they are the leftovers of some long ago eruption of volcanic origin, most of the island is touched by this phenomenon, but in older times they would have seemed like shapes of strange creatures and made people afraid, especially after dark.

Day 9: I had the chance to talk to a local today. Olli works in the library a few days a week. He looks like he’s probably retirement aged, and has some of that relaxed air of a person who works for enjoyment rather than necessity (or maybe it’s just an Icelandic attitude). He shared a number of interesting stories about elves, most of which were local, and I really liked one of them, so I think I’ll dedicate some time to putting that one down in words. It’s about how the locals built a pier from rock they blasted from a local hill, and how an elf sent dreams to one of the workers warning him not to blast the hill up anymore. When the dreams were ignored, of course, bad things happened, in this case, the collapse of the local herring fishery. I am currently reading up on the herring fishery history for background. I hope Olli likes my version which I will show him when I am done.

Time is going by both fast and slow. The days crawl on with one bad weather moment upon another, but overall, I’m about one third finished with my stay and haven’t really written anything much yet. I mustn’t be too hard on myself, though. Writing is usually like that for me, with the early time taken up with thinking and reading and researching, and the later time with a blur of creative output that flows forth from my churning brain once it has digested the information I have input. I can feel that I still have a bit more research to do before I can switch to the output phase, but it should be coming soon. I find, also, that writing this blog keeps my ‘instrument’ tuned, so that I feel as if I am creating even when I am only recording my ideas and observations.

Day 10: As predicted, I sat down to write today, having only formulated my opening paragraph concept, and out came a whole story. I still have some work to do to make it strong, but the bones are all there. I took a complicated mix of information and ideas and somehow managed, without actually doing any concrete thinking, to turn it into an organized story. A key point in my method is that even though I knew where my story lacked something, I simply think of it as something I will add, not as something that is flawed. This critical mentality will kill the artistic soul, slowly turning the effort to create into a laborious process alike to wading through mud. I refuse to work that hard. I believe that my subconsious can do the heaving lifting. The key seems to be that I have to have done just enough research to build a story from.

Day 11: It was time again to get out of town. The weather has been very cold and super windy, resulting in us wanting to either stay at home or drive everywhere instead of walking. It snowed horizontally. The wind is so strong I have to hold onto doors when I open them so they don’t slam shut on my hand or leg, or face. So if anyone ever tells you that its nice in May in Iceland, take it with a large grain of salt. I certainly haven’t seen anything approaching nice. Tolerable, perhaps, but terms are relative.

We drove towards the west this time, edging around the coast and up another peninsula. The temperature must be warmer here, for the fields were often green. Our first stop was a rock in the ocean with a hole through it. We could see Skagaströnd across the bay in the distance as a row of pointed peaks covered with cloud layers.

Next, we stopped to see some horses. They are everywhere in this region, and are always a bit curious when we try to take their pictures. This time we made a friend. He liked when we scratched his head and pushed another horse aside so he got all of the attention.

There was some sort of corral which appeared to be a sorting pen. I’m not sure if it was for horses or sheep, or possibly even for both, but it was kind of a pretty thing on its own.

On our way back, we caught a beautiful shot of a ridge of mountains with a pond in front, reflecting back. The light was special, as it often is, with some sun peeking through and making the snow shine. I love how the snow brings out some much texture in the mountains. All around, I’d say that Iceland is frequently about textures.

Day 12: Today the artists at NES artists residency presented themselves and the projects they were working on. I was most interested in everyone’s process, since this is part of what I am reflecting on while I am here for myself. It seems to be quite common to spend time gathering information, images and various forms of content and then to try and figure out how to best put them into a form for consumption that best expresses what they concluded about their research and introspection on a topic. Process is a difficult thing. Sometimes you collect so much interesting content you struggle to put it into a coherent order or to find the thread that unifies a bunch of diverse things that you find interesting.

In my case, I came partly to study folklore and to get a feel for the culture, but I am also influence by the environment. My treks out into the wilds have produced some wonderful images and the experience of having the vastness of the mountains all around me on every side which does something to me. It makes me feel both large and small at the same time. Part of a great and powerful grand scheme of nature, and also an insignificant individual, dwarfed by my surroundings. I bring this feeling back to the library with me and it finds an outlet in my writing.