… it is in Iceland !
I finally leave Reykjavik area this morning, to go further, to meet new scenery, to apparently see an Icelandic concentrate in one peninsula. I leave early and happy, sun pierces through translucent cloudy Keflavik Bay, Reykjavik swims into a coton ocean in the distance. I leave thumb up, waiting for my fleeting carriage. I experience three rides, one lost his rosary, the other plays the cold driver, the last longs for her world tours by boat. I spend the longest twenty minutes of my life, except maybe those on Castlebar quay, watching for my second car, in the middle of nowhere, Blue Lagoon’s steam in my back. I get to Reykjavik, late and yet in advance, to reach my fourth vehicle and my new travelling buddies for the day.
We go North both of Iceland and the world. We go through the sea tunnel and I am finally and absolutely amazed by this peninsula. First, on the road, where volcanoes raise higher and higher, ocher, green, pink, white, lost in blue ocean; sharp landforms always softened by moss and on which clouds draw new stories.
I watch Ytri Tunga seals dancing with seaweeds and the smelly swell, mistaken with the rocks. I observe the worlds’ long partition, huge pieces of land pierced by rivers; then I reach, Fionn McCummal on the Giant’s Causeway’s other end. Irish writers were wrong, Fionn didn’t want to challenge the Scottish Giant but the Icelandic Trolls*! I walk along the wilder cliffs, loud of thousands of seagulls that add their colors to the island’s range. I can see some pavements, less regular and clean than in Ireland, in between arks dug by frozen ocean salt.
I let endless Icelandic colored steeples running, lonely, around green volcanoes, blown by salty winds. And after, I gaze at new lava flows, older or newer – I couldn’t know, I am not geologist – furiously throwing themselves towards the sea, violently stopped in their course when they hit the wave and now raise, like an old stone castle’s ruins, on the sharp sea’s edge. Then I follow other hard ashes rivers, softer nearby the water, sometimes red, sometimes mossy, not as sharp but eroded on the black shores, tragically broken in a lake’s water. And in between lie stones sculptures, some rusty iron pieces, survivors of an old shipwreck. The black sea along my steps already looks like a sunset when it is not even 6 pm and our day star slowly vanishes everyday.
And we are back on the road, for good this time, in order to drop me to my settlement for the night, to my departure for tomorrow. I pass by Ben Bulben’s brother** on my way, I just finished my 360° tour around Snæfellsnes Glacier, topped of immortal white, that gave its name to the peninsula. I admired more and more eternal mounts, haloed with their cloudy diamonds. I blended peaks to blend colors. I had a glimpse of my after tomorrow fjords in the distance, in order to reach Stykkisholmur and build my first Icelandic tent sheltered by ocher and windy mountains. The sun eventually looks like twilight, so do the night, and I go backwards, I take time to write what moved my Icelandic beginning.
I strangely feel quiet and cold in front this beautiful country even if landscapes stun me. Icelandic trolls might be a bit less powerful than my Irish leprechauns… Yet, there is something so incredible in here, incredible in the most literal meaning of the term, incredible like something you can’t believe and you are not sure to belong to. Incredible that people live here, stay here and don’t feel like they are survivors even though they have been since the beginning of time. Incredible that this landscape covered in snow more than half of the year, living against and with elements in their roughest shape, suddenly put its Northern lights on its summer volcanoes. It is like somebody drew every detail of every rock, that he throw his blazing colors to create this desolate but absolutely stunning landscape.
* Fionn Mac Cumhal, Irish legends giant want to challenge another Scottish giant, therefore he builds a stony path on the sea towards Scotland, but when he sees how tall his opponent is, he runs away and destroys the causeway on his way back. Some enter’s remains at Bushmills.
** Very weird shaped mountain nearby Sligo.
Justine T.Annezo — August 5th 2019, Stykkisholmur – GTM+0
Fleeting Wor(l)ds 