Fleeting Wor(l)ds

I finally land to the Northern of my life I have ever been. Exhausted. It is a beautiful but cold day that looks like a sunny winter in Toulouse, like an Irish spring and I’m now two hours behind France. I cross desert fields, lined with Reykjanes Peninsula asleep or not volcanoes, leading me from the airport to Reykjavik. Landscapes are already beautifully desolated.
I get to the small capital, I trample Klambratún park, soon covered with ice even if translucent sun rises today; I would almost feel like I haven’t left Ireland, red-haired faces I pass by remind me so much of my emerald isle. Indeed, Vikings distilled their flamboyance into these two Atlantic islands’ heart. After a last breath on my past writings, I come back to my present journey. I am now, I am here.
I start my first walk in the end of the afternoon throughout streets that sound like French, tightened in wooden houses’ walls, I am not prepared for the huge window opened on Esja Mountain raising in the other side of the bay. Reykjavik falls into volcanoes and oceans, Reykjavik like any other city that must be contained in a natural environment bigger than the city itself, rocks my world. Dizzy with this black highness, I get tricked by the sleepless sun and unroll my steps in the midst of countless statues, at the discretion of colored houses running towards the Pole. At 10.50 pm, sun eventually meets the horizon, my broken body didn’t get the expected signal to sink into sleep and I fall later than I wished.

When I get to a new place, especially if I travel on my own, my first step is always to go to the Museum of History so I can understand what brings the local and current people to be who and where they are. I like to go back in time so I am able to get better the lands I am standing on and I am about to hike. Thus, gently blown by Tjörnin pond’s winds that lead me to the museum, I start my first morning by three hours wandering across this young country beginnings, even later than Irish ones, beginnings that will inspire my “Once upon a time…” This land of ice related to Europe by geographical laws is actually an universal land carrying the origins of the one and only continent that we used to be, this land of ice didn’t discover humanity before the end of the first millennium after Jesus’birth. From there, I run with timeline in the midst of different invasions, from Vikings to Norwegians, ending with Danish.
I get lost once again in rainbows streets, with a stop at Ásgríms Jónsson’s where he tells me Icelandic Elves and Trolls’ lives, where he draws Guðrun’s adventures: this reckless young girl resisted to ghosts’s glowing eyes, escaping a terrible death. After those old days tales and my present days promenades, I relax my adventurous body in Nauthólsvík sea view hot pool. Not that pretty the sea view though…
Then, I experience my first Icelandic hitchhiking to reach Jon, my generous host of Keflavik. Jon visited Europe hitchhiking in the 1970’s and give me a google map visit of Iceland, spreading some clever advice for my upcoming wanderings. My eastern road-trip has been canceled, Western Wind is calling for me again and I don’t really know how to plan my Icelandic adventure. Lucky me, Jon lends me camping gears, gives me some itineraries and become my wanderings caring elf. Jon also adds to my history, Pangaea’s crack, 1783 volcano that changed our world, each iced corner geological mysteries.
Mesmerized by his real or invented tales, I go to sleep way too late once again… It’s 11.30 pm, sun looks like twilight and dawn in the same time, sky never turns dark during Icelandic Summer nights. This blue-never-dark night suits me since i am so sacred of shadow, especially when I know I will have to camp soon.

I leave early so I am sure to get to my meeting point for the day in time, departure line of the multiple surrounding and huge waterfalls. I enjoy my second hitchhiked ride with a cold driver almost scary that looks like a Norse God, hidden behind his black sunglasses, trapped in his frozen palace, but actually opens his caring and warm heart along our short shared journey.
I finally reach the Free Church of Reykjavik, ready to let Mister Waterfall decide of my day in his homeland. He introduces me and three other girls to volcanoes that sharp black fields and blue ocean. I try to read through our first lonely and red waterfall running toward a stone house, the famous painter’s elves’ safe haven. I count every of my first steps in this landscape, strange remembrance of Scottish Highlands, even higher. I feel so tiny as I am gazing at Whales Fjord in the haze, named after fishermen still coming here to collect the huge vanishing fish’s oil. I cross the river on the top of Glymur, without almost falling. My Spanish companion won’t be as lucky… I breathe the different shades of water, the different shades of stony deserts. It is still early but days are timeless with a sunless sky, our four wheels replace my two legs, mountains runs towards their hard lava fields in my window, lakes that look like seas sometimes take me by surprise. My déjà-vu feeling gets stronger and stronger, I am still quietly stunned though.
We barely stop at the Viking baptisms hot spring, ideal if I was on my own. Thankfully, my feet get their own memory… I can feel the nice and sweet fatigue of a hiking day as we admire the crack between America and the lonely Icelandic micro-plaque in between our two continents. And we head back to the big city for an unexpected night in Reykjavik thanks to one my hiking companion’s generosity, an amber night happily ending this beautiful day of Spanish and Polish encounter.
This amber night also closes another 3rd of August, relieved and peaceful to make Ben Ledi smile; after all, even soulmates have independent fates that need to part one day.

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Streets intertwine
Sometimes blue sometimes red
on a black background
always
when it is not winter white
Streets jump from one shore to another
drawing a civilisation’s
lines
drawing the isle of ice’s
quiet heart
Slowly pounding
Blown by certain winds
as cold as a glacier’s heart
Happily
pounding
in endless summer days
afraid of the upcoming winter morning
That looks like
Night
Straightly winding in Volcanoes’
Black heart
Green though
Humbly bravely
Breathing
as the pond moves with hard
duck’s song
as the pound cries
invisible
before its particules slow down
simmered by thousands of snowflakes
Flamboyant life is fleeting
when North wind blows
its last winter
But sometimes blue sometimes red streets
Thinly wooden from one cottage to another
save slow hearts
absent hearts
from short freezing mornings

Flatey Island, 6/08/2019

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Justine T.Annezo — Reykjavik, August 1-3 2019 – GTM+0