Nooks and Crannies
I’m just back home after my first visit to Iceland and what I miss most is the big, wide open. After ten days split between Hotel Natura on the city airport, facing Esjan from KEX hostel and then floating in a hot tub at Hraunsnef in Borgarfjörður, I can see no horizon from my British windows. I used to appreciate a little green between the houses in my village but now it seems cluttered out there.
Yet I think I miss Iceland’s small spaces of seclusion and security even more. Yesterday, in town, I was remembering the shallow cuts that Jón Gauti Jónsson of Mountain Tours and I carefully made with our boots to climb up and down Baula on the first day of summer. After our hike, which was my first experience of snow climbing, he mentioned ravens but all I’d seen up the steep slopes were those marks in snow that kept me from noticing the mountain-face plummeting hundreds of metres away below us. For me, descending that snowy mountain was just like rollerblading, the same shift of body weight and focus on one thin edge of boot with each step. Mind-clearing magic!
Last night, at home and back to my novel writing, I pined for another bowl of lobster bisque from Sea Baron in Reykjavík Harbour and the unanticipated great company of some geothermal equipment salesmen I met while dining there. Trawling along the base of the soup bowl, I would always discover delicious chunks of lobster. Such a treat!
I had come to Iceland as an Artists International Development Fund award winner to research for my novel-in-progress, called Polishing Harpa, which has its own project Facebook page. Within ten days, I managed to attend the fabulous Iceland Writers Retreat plus seven musical performances at Harpa, including six progressive orchestral/band sessions during Tectonics Festival and a jazz night.
Aequora Performing at Harpa Tectonics Festival
As ever, it is always the details that grab me most: a starfish seen lounging on a slip of black sand by Harpa’s base, footprints on basalt, shimmers like fishscales on glass from reflection pools out front and so much more. What a place!
Quirky furniture at the headquarters of awesome Ice-SAR, bird and flower encyclopaedias at Natura, the man at his desk amidst his lifetime collection of used books and the care he took to help me find exactly the right one to buy for a present, a double bass player who I realised was blind only as he left the stage after performing, a sun halo, double rainbow, wisp of northern lights, quiver of geothermal heat in pipelines by a borehole, the fish or crustacea that are moulded onto every krona coin, a farm lamb’s daily escape and rescue and the beautiful way Icelanders laugh and listen as they converse.
Around the world I have met many people who have not yet learnt or have forgotten how to listen. But in Icelanders, I notice discernment and open-mindedness.
To all who helped me, thank you so much for a great Icelandic welcome and such generous knowledge-sharing. Thank you to those who kindly, without any prior notice, answered a knock on their door and let me see and photograph their view from home, like the view from my character’s flat!
If we stop reading, I am afraid we will lose our imagination, a speaker at Reykjavík City Hall told the writers retreat participants. Likewise, he mentioned our responsibility to write intriguing stories that will captivate readers. So this is what I now hope to achieve. I am, no doubt, as are many others, tantalised by Iceland.
A detail of Harpa Concert Hall
Here is the adorable lamb who was determined to escape from his or her enclosure every day : )
其他有意思的博客
冰岛最浪漫的角落
对于很多人,遥远的冰岛有着世界尽头的神秘,有着区别于巴黎、马尔代夫、自成一体的浪漫。没有埃菲尔铁塔和蒂凡尼,没有热带沙滩,而是在冰川、火山、苔藓地的背景下蜜月旅拍、婚拍,甚至举办一场冰岛婚礼。来冰岛旅行,多是要跨千山万水、飞跃大洋大陆,很有一点“万水千山陪你走过”的史诗感。难怪很多人说,光是冰岛二字,就足够浪漫了。 冰岛虽然不大,但是地貌极其丰富,不同的自然景观自然有不同的气质。这一篇,就挑阅读更多从极光观测到摄影-到底该不该来冰岛看极光
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我在冬夏秋均到访过米湖,看过米湖的不同面。一直以来,米湖到底值不值得去是很多游客争论的问题。有些人觉得这里是来冰岛旅行的必去目的地,有些人则说米湖“太丑了”,连照片都不想多拍几张。那米湖到底值不值得来呢?到底怎么玩呢? 米湖的风景 北部的米湖,因地理位置相距首都雷克雅未克略远,很多来冰岛的短途游客选择放弃,其实米湖应该是和黄金圈、南岸沿线至冰湖齐名的冰岛景色,这里冷热相融,可谓最冰岛,尤其阅读更多
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