Here are a few pics from the evening.

Over the next few days I set out on various routes achievable from the capital in a single day. The weather forecast for pretty much the whole week was showing as constant rain, but as they say in Iceland, if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes. Indeed, I was blessed by mostly fine weather for much of my time on the road, and occasionally by air so clear that I could see mountains several kilometres away without a hint of haze.

The aforementioned Reykjanes peninsula (or Reykjanesskagi to give it its full name in Icelandic) has recently seen the completion of a fully surfaced road stretching along its southern extent, from Grindavík in the west to the ferry port at Þórklashöfn in the east. I headed towards the latter town from Reykjavík on a route that passes through the high altitude Hellisheiði pass. It’s not uncommon for the weather in the pass to be very different from that in the city, and so it proved as the light drizzle in Reykjavík gave way to a snow-covered landscape with ice on the road and cloud everywhere. The descent towards Hveragerði is a steep, winding road where you have to be exceptionally careful not to lose grip, especially when it is slippery. Driving down this route gives one a clear indication of just how dangerous driving in Iceland can be if you are not careful, and this is on one of the best roads there is.

Þórlakshöfn is one of two terminals for the ferry service to the Westman Islands. The other, Landeyjahöfn, is further east, and recently took over as the primary terminal as it allows for a much shorter crossing. Þórlakshöfn however remains active as a backup for when ferries are unable to take the shorter route. The community of villages and farms nearby gather at Strandarkirkja, a small wooden church, typical of rural Iceland, built right on the coast. It is separated from the beach, where the bitterly cold sea meets harsh volcanic rocks and black sand, by a wall of rocks which was still covered in a dusting of rain-washed snow.

Strandarkirkja, a small church near Þórklákshöfn in southwest Iceland

I walked over some slippery steps, supporting myself with the aid of the freezing-cold metal chain handrail, to explore the textures on the beach, as the tide was quite low. Seaweed, basalt, black sand and shallow water channels provided variety and interest. Back by the church, a statue by Gunnfriður Jónsdóttir called Landsýn (Land in Sight) looks out over the ocean, and there was a line of snow up the figure’s back indicating just how strong the wind had been recently.

The slippery path over the sea defences at Strandarkirkja

Lava textures on the beach at Strandarkirkja

Black sand on the beach at Strandarkirkja

A crack in the lava on the beach at Strandarkirkja

Landsýn (“Land in Sight”), a statue by Strandarkirkja

Further west lies the sleepy fishing town of Grindavík, where the Grindavík Ice Company provides crates of ice for the local fishermen. I’m used to seeing ice out in the wild in Iceland, but the stacks of ice-filled containers outside the company’s bright red warehouse was a less familiar sight! On the way to Grindavík the road passes some extremely odd shaped volcanic structures, one of which looks like an octopus emerging from an roiling ocean that has been frozen into solid lava.

Rocktopus!

If you continue further still, the road heads to a hot spring area called Gunnuhver, where a ghost called Gunna is said to have caused much perturbation until being tricked into falling into a hot spring. The cold weather meant that the steam from the hot springs, with its now familiar (to me) eggy/Marmitey smell, overwhelmed the whole area, leaving the bubbling mud and boiling water invisible. However the wooden walkways through the area disappeared into the steam in a wonderfully gothic way.

The wooden path at Gunnuhver disappearing into the steam

Turning north, back towards the international airport at Keflavik, one crosses the fault line that lies between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Those ever resourceful Icelanders have built a ‘bridge between the continents’ at one point, where you can stand above the ever-widening crack as the two plates move apart by a few centimetres every year. The gap is filled with black sand and not, as some might expect, boiling lava, which means you can walk beneath the bridge as well as over it.

The bridge between continents — North America on the left, Eurasia on the right

As I headed back towards Reykjavík, I took a detour past Kleifarvatn, a lake which in 2000 began to drain away slowly, after a fissure was opened up by an earthquake in the area. Even now it’s possible to see how far it has receded as there are vast black sandy areas between the edge of the lake and the rocks by the road. Interestingly shaped chunks of ice had formed at the edge of the lake, and tyre marks left by some no-doubt bonkers 4x4 contraption had part-filled with snow, making shapes that in places resembled writing in some foreign script.

Ice shapes on the edge of Kleifarvatn

Snow and tyre tracks at Kleifarvatn

Back in Reykjavík, I visited Perlan (The Pearl) to grab a shot of one of my favourite views of the city. Heavy bands of cloud overhead ensured there would be no aurora viewing tonight, but they did help to provide some impressive light over the bay.

View of Reyjkavík from Perlan. The large church is Hallgrímskirkja, Hallgrímur’s church, whose design was influenced by the basalt columns common throughout Iceland.

Late sun over the bay at Reykjavík, seen from Perlan

After some food, and once it was completely dark outside, I headed down to Harpa, the concert hall by the harbour, to photograph the light show created by individual strips of light contained within each cell of its pseudogeological façade. You can watch a video of the display here.

Reykjavík’s amazing dynamically lit concert hall and opera house, Harpa.

The green and red lights dancing across the façade were reminiscent of the aurora

The display went on all night, as far as I could tell.

Modern Iceland has a population barely exceeding 300,000 people. The vast majority of Icelanders (over 200,000) live in Reykajvík and the surrounding conurbation, which consists of Mosfellsbær to the north, and Kópavogur, Garðabær and Hafnarfjörður to the south. The next largest town is Akureyri, in the north of the country, which has a population of around 18,000, with the rest of Iceland’s population distributed throughout towns, villages, hamlets and farms scattered around the coastline. The interior, also known as Hálendið (the highland), is utterly uninhabitable, and impassable by all but the most rugged 4x4. In winter, the four routes through the middle of Iceland are closed to traffic completely.

The extremely low population density means that road maintenance, which is funded by taxpayers, is prioritised towards the more populous regions, and it is not uncommon to be driving towards a remote lake, waterfall or settlement and find the road surface suddenly deteriorate into a pitted gravel surface (heralded by the warning ‘Malbik Endar’). Recent years have seen a huge rise in tourist visitors to Iceland, however, and many of the more popular destinations are now serviced by fully surfaced roads.

Despite its low population, Iceland has a booming music scene, which reaches far beyond the much feted Björk and Sigur Rós. Something in the education system, possibly combined with the island’s isolation, means many people use music as a form of self-expression, and the parochial nature of even the capital means musicians don’t need to look far to find like-minded individuals with whom they can form bands. Another consequence of the lack of people means that many bands share members, and it’s not uncommon to see the same musician appear with two or even three separate bands at various times.

The annual Iceland Airwaves festival, held in venues across Reykjavík in the late autumn, has in recent years grown exponentially into one of the world’s foremost musical events. Acting as a showpiece for primarily new and up-and-coming artists (from home and abroad), it is a great way to acquaint oneself with the local musical talent, as well as discover some newer bands on the verge of greatness (Florence and the Machine and Elbow are two bands who rose to international recognition on the back of Airwaves appearances). Some idiosyncratic choices at the 2011 event (namely Sinéad O’Connor and Yoko Ono) made many people question the festival’s commitment to new music, but the general feeling from people who attended was that it was possibly the best thing they’d been to, ever.

Iceland Airwaves — the highlight of the Icelandic musical calendar

Arrival

Winter in Iceland is an unusual time of year for people used to less polar latitudes. It’s common knowledge that through the winter solstice you get very little daylight at all. Even in late February the sun rises above the horizon for just 9 hours, and given that Iceland is further to the west than the UK, yet still uses GMT, the ‘day’ is shifted so that you get more daylight after midday than before. This also gives rise to a more regular ‘midnight sun’ during the summer months that would otherwise not occur, a sly marketing trick, I think!

Iceland’s main international airport sits at the western tip of the Reykjanes peninsula, near the town of Keflavík, and is named after Leifur Eiríksson, the man credited by many with discovering the Americas (though he named them Vinland). First time visitors, who have been informed by their departure airport that their flight is to Reykjavík, are usually in for a surprise as there is a half-hour journey by road through the barren lava fields of Reykjanes before they finally reach the capital.

I had met a young couple on the plane who, despite being well-travelled, had not visited Iceland before. I envied them their first visit to Iceland, an experience that can never be repeated. Instead, I picked up my rental car and drove myself to the capital, where I was meeting Inga, who had very kindly arranged my accommodation for the week in the 4-star Radisson 1919 hotel right in the middle of town.

Once settled in, I helped myself to one of the town’s, and possibly the world’s, best hotdogs. ‘Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur’ literally means ‘Town’s best hotdogs’ and is aptly named. If you ask for ‘eina með öllu’ (‘one with everything’) you get a bun with onions, ketchup, mustard and remoulade sauce smothered over a perfect hotdog sausage. As traditional Icelandic food goes, it’s not quite up there with dried fish or fermented shark, but if it’s good enough for President Bill Clinton, it’s good enough for me. (In fact, Slick Willie only wanted mustard on his, so if you ask for ‘the Clinton’, that’s what you get!)

Hot dog from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur — considered one of the best in the world!

As the sky darkened I decided to head for Setljarnarnes, the northwesterly point on the small peninsula on which Reykjavík sits, to see what the aurora was up to. When I arrived, there was a pale green arc in the northern sky, but little movement. I sat in the car for a few minutes to wait, and suddenly, I saw a portion of the arc start to brighten and move. It wasn’t long before the aurora started to put on a real show.

A Brazilian man who was there too seemed very agitated by the whole thing. He asked me if that was the aurora, and when I confirmed that it was, seemed to be overcome with emotion, thanking me passionately, as though I had personally laid on the aurora for him. He saw that I was taking photographs and ask if I’d help him do the same, but when he fetched his camera from the car, I had to inform him that his compact point-and-shoot wouldn’t be capable of the long exposures necessary. He seemed decidedly crestfallen by the news, but brightened up quickly enough when his attention returned to the celestial light show.

With aurora pictures sorted, what was I to do for the rest of the week? I had been hoping to capture some more photos with perhaps one of Iceland’s famous waterfalls in the foreground, but I knew I’d be at the mercy of the elements, and had probably been extremely fortunate just to capture what I had tonight.

The Aurora Borealis

Sadly, on closer inspection, the picture above is still slightly out of focus, something I only discovered once I uploaded the images onto my laptop back at the hotel. So I was going to have to try again at some point if I was to get the headline-grabbing images that I wanted.

Continue to Part III.

I always find it hard to articulate why it is that I keep returning to Iceland. I’ve been to some amazing places in my time; the Lake District, New York City, Barcelona, the Cayman Islands, but none of them has quite the same effect on me that Iceland does. I’ve seen the same in other people, so I know it’s not just me — as a rational, scientific thinker I hesitate to use spiritual metaphors, but this volcanic north Atlantic island does seem to have something about it that bewitches people, meaning that every time you go, you just want to return even more.

The Mýrdalsjökull glacier, seen from the cliffs at Dyrhólaey

What doesn’t help is that the locals are some of the loveliest people I’ve ever encountered, and having made friends with several of them on Twitter, and met them in real life in my last few visits, I now have what feel like family ties pulling me back each time.

In February 2012 I travelled to Iceland for the eighth time, third time within the space of two years. The aim was two-fold; to go on my own and hence be free to get up at ungodly hours and stay up until ungodly hours, and to try to capture the aurora on camera, something I had singularly failed to do in all my previous visits.

My previous visit, in which I was photographing the Iceland Airwaves festival in 2011, was actually only the first time I ever got to witness the aurora first hand. I was walking on the harbour front in Reykjavík with Tim and James, my two colleagues from The 405 who were covering the festival with me, when we saw what looked like a cloud move in an unexpected way. We knew straight away what it was, and the three of us spent the next ten minutes staring into the northern sky with our mouths wide open as solar particles bombarded the upper atmosphere, ionising oxygen atoms, which glowed like green and pink cosmic curtains gently blowing in the solar wind.

So from that moment I determined that the next time I went to Iceland I’d do my best to capture this spectacular phenomenon on camera.

A brief introduction

Iceland is one of the most recent additions to the Earth’s geology. It was formed around 20 million years ago by volcanic eruptions at the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, known as the mid-atlantic ridge. As a result of its relatively young age, it consists almost entirely of volcanic rock, and signs of the huge gash in the earth’s crust are everywhere, in particular at Þingvellir National Park, (‘Thingvellir’), site of the world’s oldest democratically elected parliament.

Þingvellir national park, where the Icelandic parliament (Alþingi) was founded. Now based in Reykjavík, the Alþingi is over 1,000 years old.

For many millennia Iceland was covered by glaciers, leaving behind magnificent fjords as the ice retreated. Nowhere are these more in evidence than in the far north west, where the Western Fjords sit like antlers on some strange mythical beast swimming in the north atlantic ocean. Remnants of the ice age remain in the shape of Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull (the water glacier), and several smaller cousins, including the infamous Eyjafjallajökull, named after the mountain range that overlooks the Westman Islands to the south (eyja = islands, fjalla = mountains).

Eyjafjallajökull glacier, as seen on the scale model of Iceland in Reykjavík City Hall.

Iceland was first named by the viking explorer Flóki Vilgerðason, who took the nickname Hrafna-Flóki (Raven-Flóki). He suffered a very cold winter at Barðaströnd in the Western Fjords, and as the drift ice floated up the fjords he named the land Ísland (literally, land of ice). The name stuck, and even to this day gives the impression of a much harsher environment than actually exists on a land benefitting from the warming effect of the Gulf Stream.

The Norwegian Ingólfur Arnarson is widely considered to be the first person to have settled on Iceland for good. The story goes that he threw two pillars into the sea as he approached the island, and followed the coast until he found them on the northern edge of the south-western peninsula now known as Reykjanes. He named the area Reykjavík, which means bay of smoke, after the steam rising from the land due to geothermal activity which can still be spotted in places throughout Iceland today.

Read Part II here.

This year the festival runs from 12th-16th October, with around 250 artists playing at 10 venues and numerous off-venue events, often until around 4:00 in the morning. Needless to say we are all exploding with excitement at the prospect, and will do our best to bring you reviews and photographs of some of the best new bands from Iceland and beyond, as well as special coverage of one of Björk’s Biophilia performances in the city’s brand new opera house, Harpa.

Stay tuned for sneaky peeks at some of the photographs, and keep an eye on the 405 for previews, artist interviews and live reviews throughout the festival.

I can sense it -
Something important
Is about to happen

If asked, I would find it impossible to name a favourite album, as the answer changes based on my mood, the weather, and the time of day. But there’s no doubt in my mind as to the most important album, one which has arguably shaped the very person I am today.

In the summer holiday of 1993, during the heyday of ITV’s music video show ‘The Chart Show’, my attention was caught by an unusual sight. A young Icelandic singer was fretting about the odd things humans do, whilst walking through a bizarre fake forest with assorted puppet animals. And what a voice! I was fascinated, and in those days, when MP3 downloads were but a twinkle in the virtual eye of a nascent internet, I had to satisfy my curiosity in the only way possible, by purchasing a CD of Björk’s ‘Debut’ when it was released.

The album was a first for me in several ways. Trivially, it was my first CD, but more importantly, it planted in me the seed of my obsession with Iceland and Icelandic music. Here was this girl from a strange land that to most people only existed as a blob on school geography maps, and whose capital city had an exotic name, coming out with some of the most compelling and original music I had heard for years. Until that time my choices of listening had (to my eternal shame) sailed with the winds of popular taste; Sting, Annie Lennox, Mike Oldfield, to name but a few; and it took this album to make me realise there was so much more out there.

In 1999, 6 years after Björk screeched and wailed her way into our lives (well, those of us who were unfamiliar with The Sugarcubes), I travelled to Iceland for the first time, with my partner and our 6-month-old son, and I was bewitched. I returned to Iceland as often as time—and my wallet—would allow. Confronted by scenes such as this, how could I help but rediscover my love of photography?

Gullfoss, the Golden Falls

Twitter, the microblogging service, and object of the derision of many of the less forward-thinking members of the traditional press, also had a major part to play in the imminent completion of an 18 year long personal cycle. A set of black and white images from Iceland’s western fjords region, which I took in May 2009, was extremely well received, and shared by several people, both within and outside Iceland, making it my most popular gallery of photographs to date. By maintaining links with the people who had publicised my images, I gained a small but growing network of friends who shared a passion for, or lived in, Iceland.

The resultant increased profile of my work brought me to the attention of Counterfeit magazine, a music website based in Sheffield, who were looking for some photographs of a London-based, Sheffield-born rapper called The Ruby Kid for an interview they were publishing. After completing the shoot I started asking around to see if there were any other websites like Counterfeit, but more local to me, for whom I could do similar work. The amazing networking power of the Internet brought me to The 405, where I was given the opportunity to gain free entry (via photo passes) to endless gigs in London to shoot for reviews or photo-only ‘In Pictures’ features.

It wasn’t long before I realised that we could do something particularly special at The 405 (that’s not to belittle the great work it was already doing), so I suggested trying for passes to the annual Iceland Airwaves festival in October, with a view to publishing a feature focusing on the festival as a whole. The editorial team were all in favour of the idea and, once again through Twitter’s network, I was put in touch with the press officer for the festival, who agreed to issue three passes to us. Only a week or so later, it was announced that there would be two special performances during the festival at Reykjavík’s recently completed opera house, Harpa, by none other than the one person who is still Iceland’s most famous export: Björk Guðmundsdóttir.

And so I find myself on the brink of an adventure that will bring together the holy trinity of music, photography and the magical island of Iceland, and I can trace it all back to one single, circular piece of foil and plastic, imprinted with the DNA of my life as it is today.