Goodbye dear SIM friends...

Coffee with Noe (Chicago) and Ann (Sweden), last day in Reykjavik.

There are many wonders in a cow's head...

The month at SIM ties up with an exhibition of our work and an opening. The time has gone by so quickly, and though I am looking forward to new friends and new work at Baer, it is hard to say goodbye to the wonderful people here and the place that has been home for a little while. I know a month has passed for sure by the way there's a twilight now around 10:00 p.m.... I took a last walk by the water today, now packing to shift into Reykjavik tomorrow. Coffee with friends, a haircut, and dinner with my new Baer friends before heading north on sunday morning.

Kristjana, Residency Director, and Clemmons, artist

Last day at Korpulfsstadir

Visit to the Living Art Museum

Today Ingunn Fjola, manager of the museum, showed us behind the scenes and some artist's books from the collection. The museum has a fascinating history, started by artists and artist members in the 1970's. The collection began with each artist member donating 1 work each year (either their own or another artist's), and the museum is still largely run by volunteers, with only 2 staff members.

An altered book from the current "Literacy" show

On the road home

Dyrholaey

Headed “home” to Korpulfsstadir the next day, my head awhirl with what I have seen, with a lunch break at the cliffs at Dyrholaey and turf cottages at Skogar. The wind whipped up fiercely on the stretch of road back into Reykjavik, so we arrived home tired and dusty. 

turf cottages at Skogar

Now back in the studio trying to use my last week here to best advantage before heading out Sunday morning for a month at Baer Art Center in Hofsos (North Iceland). I am going to especially miss my new friends Ann, Noe, and Suzanne, and the other SIM artists, and my lovely home away from home… This month has been a collage, with expeditions, days in Reykjavik, and days in the studio. Now I am looking forward to more focus on studio and writing every day (with one more driving trip up north, of course!). Baer artists begin to arrive this week in Reykjavik, and we will meet for dinner before journeying north.

In the studio at SIM

South coast and glaciers, part 2

Oops, in my last post I said that Eyjafjallajökull was under Mýrdalsjökull. Wrong, it sits by itself—getting my “jökulls” mixed up…

We just had not had enough glaciers the first day, so early the next morning we went back to Skaftafell Park for a look at Skaftafellsjökull, also a tongue of the giant Vatnajökull. The surface is very gray as well (perhaps from this May’s Grimsvotn eruption?), with deep cuts and crevasses in blue. Glacial melt and quicksand at the base kept us at a distance in spite of jumping rock to rock across the stream.

Noe showing his lunch (baby carrots) in front of Skaftafellsjökul 

Onward to the glacial lagoons, and some blue ice! Fjallsárlón is the smaller one (and just the notion of small is absurd here!). The guidebook describes it as “Jökulsárlón for loners”—hardly! Lots of folks there, but not as busy as Jökulsárlón, the big hitter just down the road where all the tour buses go. At both of them you look across a lagoon filled with floating icebergs in blue and white, with the glacier face behind them and a backdrop of 2 major glacier tongues spilling out of the mountains. It is so extraordinary a sight that it does not look real, my mind unable to quite believe what it sees. 

Fjallsárlón (the "small" one)

Fjallsárlón

Jökulsárlón

At Jökulsárlón, I took a crazy amphibious vehicle out into the lagoon with all the other tourists. They say the ice is 1,000 years old here.

Jökulsárlón

Jökulsárlón

As if the day was not surreal already, this was our dinner spot, a restaurant/museum combo that looks like a giant bookshelf. Somebody’s trying to mess with my head on this scale thing!

OW!

Somewhere on the Ring Road between Vik and Kirkbaejarklauster an oncoming car tossed a rock at us. Ow, ow, ow! Thank god for “gravel insurance”, for which I paid extra—turns out it was a good investment. Most of the really interesting sites are down rough gravel roads, and some main roads turn suddenly to gravel as well, so the possibility of flying rocks is always there, but I didn’t expect it on the Ring Road.

Yeeooow! South Coast and Glaciers, Part 1

Well, it was a totally amazing trip... fabulous weather and the most stupendous landscape I have ever seen. We headed back towards Vik, stopping at Mýrdalsjökul, the glacier that sits on top of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that erupted last year, and Katla, the one that caused the flood that stopped our trip a couple of weeks ago. All was quiet this time, and we drove back in on a rough dirt road to the base of the glacier. We were able to go up onto the ice a little way. Neither words nor photos come anywhere near describing the experience! The surface is gritty and gray, and your mind plays tricks with you—stone or ice, near or far—the scale and enormity of the ice is indescribable.

Standing in front of Mýrdalsjökul

On top of the ice

Looking into a glacial caldron

ice surface

From there we went through Vik and over the temporary bridge on to Kirkjubæjarklaustur. The land changes at every turn, passing through black sand, lava fields, meadows of lupine and angelica, remote farms and an occasional cluster of houses or a farm. Vast stretches are nothing but desert and gravel left by previous jökulhlaups that rush out from under the glaciers and sweep everything down to the sea. Arriving at Skaftafell National Park, our minds still reeling from our first glacier experience, we went on to another, Svínafellsjökull. It's a tongue of the giant glacier Vatnajökull, the world's largest glacier outside the Arctic areas, and just unimaginably huge.

Svínafellsjökull

At the end of the day, a tiny house...

Tiny car, tiny house, big world...

South coast redux...

Heading out tomorrow for a second try at the south coast... After the flood they were ferrying cars across on trucks, and tourists in buses, until one of the buses got stuck in the river and dropped some poor tourists in the water (brrr, glacial temps!). This is not the one, but you get the idea. Now the temporary bridge is done and I'm going to give it another try. Buses fording rivers is pretty common here, the best way to traverse the famous "F" roads other than in a jeep (see some funny examples on YouTube).

I feel like I have spent at least a week of my life booking and rebooking travel arrangements—sort through places on the web, inquire about availability, check prices, number of beds, private bath/shared bath/hostel/guesthouse/farmstay/linens/breakfast, wait for email replies—OY! Here's hoping for good weather and no volcanic eruptions! And hopefully there will be pictures of glaciers and icebergs to come...

Things I see on my walks...

giant orange lasagna noodle-ish plankton...

seaweed hair...

???...

Art... oh, and yes, sunsets...

Museum opening, Reykjavik style

In town for the opening of Literacy at the Living Art Museum, I discovered that they collect artist's books, so I will return to look at the collection next week. (That "NY" on the front of the building is for "NÝLISTASAFNIÐ", not New York...)

Reykjavik day

A lovely day in Reykjavik, visiting museums and the stunning new Harpa concert hall... then an evening of artists' talks at SIM and a stunning full moon on the way home.

Harpa

Moonrise over shopping center

Road pix...

Lunch on the deck in Hellnar

Bumps in the road...

Well, after spending the night in Vik, we started out in the morning only to come immediately to a roadblock. During the night there was seismic activity in Katla, the nearest volcano. It lies under the Mýrdalsjökull glacier, and when there is heating under the ice it sometimes causes a jökullhlaup, a torrent of water, rocks and chunks of ice that flood down to the sea. On its way, this one took out a bridge and a piece of the Ring Road, the only road through the region that is open to regular cars, and the route we were going to take. So... though VERY disappointed not to get to Skaftafell National Park or the glacial lagoon, at least we were on the west side of the flood and not under an erupting volcano.

Little car, big mountain, and my excellent traveling companions, returning from the south coast

On the road -- Icelandic horse and bicycle on the mountain pass

We returned to Reykjavik with some beautiful stops along the way, regrouped, and went north instead, to Snæfellsnes peninsula for 2 days. It is truly spectacular, and at times so bizarre a landscape that it feels like a different planet. My favorite spot was the Berserkjahraun, miles of undulating lava covered with thick gray moss. It seems that every turn in the road here brings something extraordinary, and all sense of scale is turned on its head. Snæfellsnes is said to be a magical place, home to trolls and ghosts, as well as more spiritual beings. And Snæfellsjökull glacier was Jules Verne’s entry portal for “Journey to the Center of the Earth”.

Berserkjahraun

Snæfellsjökull glacier and church

Icelandic backyard

This morning we squeezed in a visit to Þingvellir National Park, where you can walk under the edge of the North American continental plate as it shifts across Iceland.

Plate edge at Þingvellir National Park 

Lava fissure, Þingvellir National Park 

Back to civilization today -- time to do laundry and return to the studio!