08.06.2015
The droplets of water tumbling from the gutters of our rooftop are as large as fresh water pearls. Strings of rain smack against the windows, thick as the guano that we saw yesterday smearing the cliffs of Latraberg. The Fjord is completely misted over though I can see across to the other side, the fierce gusts of wind that have been stirring the treetops ceaselessly since last night continue unabated. The dear little starling that has its home in the birch trees behind out school building looks noticeably disconsolate. It has fluffed up its feathers but it is still as wet and soggy as a drenched pup. Everything that can move is moving: the swings in the playground outside, the normally calm fjord waters, the buoys marking the peripheries of the fish farms and lobster pots. There is a storm in Talknafjordur today.
The nattering of rain against the window, its endless rapping and the swelling whooshes of wind stirring up the cloud-filled fjord even further, caused such a racket that almost none of us could sleep last night. And it’s summer! Imagine, almost mid-June, yet apart from the light — ever-present as it is — we could be in Iceland’s deepest, darkest winter. This storm somehow feels more severe than the storms that you experience on land or even in the mountains, positioned as we are on the tip of the most westerly bit of land in Europe. This feels more like a storm at sea. We are the first land the elements have encountered in their mad dash across the Atlantic since Canada. The air has become ocean, it has become cloud, logic is disturbed, the elements are confused.
I am pretty sure that Guthni, our taciturn host, will not return in an hour to pick us up. Almost no man or woman, except perhaps the hardiest of fishermen could be expected to work in such conditions. Few could – but I’m sure that Guthni, even given his ripe sixty years of age, would be able to.
Yet storms have some advantages, or even many. This morning for example, I wasn’t sure if we would make it out or if Guthni would really expect us to continue with the coastal trash collection we began last week, given the severe storm and twenty mile per hour winds. Yet he picked us up and I could see from the set expression on his face that we were going back to the coast. Imagine picking your way along an exposed coastline at such a moment! I prepared myself for a grim three hour endurance exercise. Yet, luckily the coastal fringe of the fjord being at sea level, is slightly sheltered by the hummocky, moss-blanketed heathland just above it. Furthermore, the lashings of rain and rabid seas had polished each stone, pebble, shell and sea-frond with water. They were vivid as chewing pastilles. Everything was bright and jewel-like on the beach, and the cells of the proverbially-named Oyster Plant looked especially lush.
In fact, it’s funny what thoughts occur to you when you are set to mundane tasks such as rubbish picking. I began to make a mental inventory of the miscellaneous articles that I found on the sand. Some were predictable: a few beer cans and plastic bags, others were clearly the deposits of Talknafjordur’s as yet extant local fishing industry – polystyrene crates and fragments of foam from ancient, tar-blacked boat fenders. But most of the ‘rubbish’ was actually highly picturesque — a landscape artist’s dream of stray bits of driftwood, jettisoned fishing cords,ropes hooped into multi-coloured wreckage balls and large fossilised strands of peculiar looking seaweed. Not to mention the ship-wrecked cars caught up in magnificent shoreline sea-tangles. Peeping out between large chunks of rock I spotted titanium chassis,carburettors and other engine paraphernalia. Some parts of this metal skeleton were scenically rusted, others gleamed as luridly as a steel-topped bar in a fancy club.
Sea debris. The things that wash up on oceans. In Iceland that means the alluvial deposits of waste that might have travelled across from America or been washed up on the gulf stream. It reminds me that the inhabitants from this part of the world used to make their living from this sea treasure and muck – selling timbers and columns of driftwood to farmers from other parts of Iceland for a small fortune. They have always been short of wood in Iceland – well at least for the past few centuries. Hawkers, scavengers. Like birds.
833 words a day 