Hey guys!
Today I will be sharing my final post (for now!) in this little series of translations of my friend Sofia's marvelous articles about our time in Iceland. This last one will be about the Westfjords, the region of the country in which our program took place.
Enjoy!
Vestfirðir, the Icelandic Westfjords: Discovering Iceland's most remote region through movies and photos
When looking at a map of Iceland, one immediately notices an ample and jagged peninsula expanding outwards towards the ocean to the northwest: this is the most remote region of the most remote country in Europe: the Vestfirðir, or Westfjords. Less than two percent of the island's population resides in this mountainous corner more than four hundred kilometers from Reykjavik. In fact, only seven thousand people live in these quiet valleys sandwiched between the mountains and the sea. The lack of work and the politics of the population's centralization in the capital area have emptied the little fishing villages of their inhabitants in the course of a century, leaving entire areas uninhabited, like the Hornstrandir Peninsula (now an immense nature reserve).
The region of the Westfjords is largely unrepresented in classic postcard images of Iceland. Firstly, there are no volcanoes. This region is, geologically speaking, the most ancient in Iceland, therefore its volcanic activity is almost zero. Therefore there are no beaches with black sand here, nor are there numerous sources of thermal water as in the rest of the country. Moreover, the region's main glacier, little Drangajökull, is of dimensions far too modest to compare to the immense icecap of Vatnajökull on the southern coast.
But above all, one of the biggest differences between the Vestfirðir and the rest of the country is the scarcity of tourists, few of which venture beyond Þjóðvegur 1, the Ring Road. Therefore reaching the Westfjords means finding oneself in a new dimension, where time passes slower and summer days are even longer and brighter.
A third of all Iceland's coastline belongs to the Vestfirðir. Trivially, this means that to cross them, one must patiently tolerate the infinite curves that wind through the mountains. (Almost) no bridges connect the opposite shores of the fjords, and automobiles are forced to slowly follow the sinuous and jagged lines seen on the map. The largest inhabited area, Ísafjörður, is a little village of 3,500 people, which after kilometers of isolated farms almost looks like a metropolis to visitors' eyes. Among its houses are the nation's most ancient wooden habitations. Built in the 1750s as warehouses and commercial hubs by Danish merchants, they have now been converted into museums. The idea that architecture constructed halfway through the eighteenth century can be considered 'ancient' is enough to make one smile; it is necessary to keep in mind that it was certainly not easy to construct buildings resistant to the wind and cold without suitable construction materials (wood, in fact, was imported from the continent).
Few mediums are as ideal for understanding the spirit of this reality so far from the bars of Reykjavik and the thermal baths of the south as cinema. In spite of their remoteness and their depopulation (or maybe exactly for this reason), the Westfjords have been the subject of numerous films of the last twenty years. Each of them has a different tone; some more sarcastic, some more tragic, telling of the difficulties of life on the edge of the world. The winter isolation, the complex human rapports, the alienation of an everyday life that is always the same.
Börn náttúrunnar (Children of Nature, candidate for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1991) poetically narrates an elderly couple's escape from a rest home in the capital, as they search for their youth and their home villages already abandoned to the wind and the waves. París norðursins (Paris of the North, 2014) ironically describes the everyday life of a schoolteacher in a little fishing village. Nói albínói (2003), set in the white winter of the north, tells of solitude and the difficulties of adolescence. Þrestir (Sparrows, 2015, which won the Lessinia Gold Prize at the Lessinia Festival of 2016) mercilessly denounces the alcohol and drug problems unfortunately common in the little fjord communities.
They're difficult stories to listen to, because they're about places where it's difficult to live. However, whoever has traveled in the Vestfirðir can surely recognize the comic irony of their inhabitants, their respect in relations with others, and their sincere hospitality. Whoever has traveled in those valleys, scaling mountain peaks by the sea or walking through quiet villages in the evening will remember them with nostalgia, and recommend north-bound travelers to dedicate a bit of time to discovering a seemingly lost world: a world of unpaved roads and low clouds, little wooden churches and flocks of sheep invading the roadway. A world where, maybe, the real essence of that mysterious and fascinating place called Iceland still lurks.
Thank you all for reading.
Be back soon!
Today I will be sharing my final post (for now!) in this little series of translations of my friend Sofia's marvelous articles about our time in Iceland. This last one will be about the Westfjords, the region of the country in which our program took place.
Enjoy!
Vestfirðir, the Icelandic Westfjords: Discovering Iceland's most remote region through movies and photos
When looking at a map of Iceland, one immediately notices an ample and jagged peninsula expanding outwards towards the ocean to the northwest: this is the most remote region of the most remote country in Europe: the Vestfirðir, or Westfjords. Less than two percent of the island's population resides in this mountainous corner more than four hundred kilometers from Reykjavik. In fact, only seven thousand people live in these quiet valleys sandwiched between the mountains and the sea. The lack of work and the politics of the population's centralization in the capital area have emptied the little fishing villages of their inhabitants in the course of a century, leaving entire areas uninhabited, like the Hornstrandir Peninsula (now an immense nature reserve).
The region of the Westfjords is largely unrepresented in classic postcard images of Iceland. Firstly, there are no volcanoes. This region is, geologically speaking, the most ancient in Iceland, therefore its volcanic activity is almost zero. Therefore there are no beaches with black sand here, nor are there numerous sources of thermal water as in the rest of the country. Moreover, the region's main glacier, little Drangajökull, is of dimensions far too modest to compare to the immense icecap of Vatnajökull on the southern coast.
But above all, one of the biggest differences between the Vestfirðir and the rest of the country is the scarcity of tourists, few of which venture beyond Þjóðvegur 1, the Ring Road. Therefore reaching the Westfjords means finding oneself in a new dimension, where time passes slower and summer days are even longer and brighter.
A third of all Iceland's coastline belongs to the Vestfirðir. Trivially, this means that to cross them, one must patiently tolerate the infinite curves that wind through the mountains. (Almost) no bridges connect the opposite shores of the fjords, and automobiles are forced to slowly follow the sinuous and jagged lines seen on the map. The largest inhabited area, Ísafjörður, is a little village of 3,500 people, which after kilometers of isolated farms almost looks like a metropolis to visitors' eyes. Among its houses are the nation's most ancient wooden habitations. Built in the 1750s as warehouses and commercial hubs by Danish merchants, they have now been converted into museums. The idea that architecture constructed halfway through the eighteenth century can be considered 'ancient' is enough to make one smile; it is necessary to keep in mind that it was certainly not easy to construct buildings resistant to the wind and cold without suitable construction materials (wood, in fact, was imported from the continent).
Few mediums are as ideal for understanding the spirit of this reality so far from the bars of Reykjavik and the thermal baths of the south as cinema. In spite of their remoteness and their depopulation (or maybe exactly for this reason), the Westfjords have been the subject of numerous films of the last twenty years. Each of them has a different tone; some more sarcastic, some more tragic, telling of the difficulties of life on the edge of the world. The winter isolation, the complex human rapports, the alienation of an everyday life that is always the same.
Börn náttúrunnar (Children of Nature, candidate for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1991) poetically narrates an elderly couple's escape from a rest home in the capital, as they search for their youth and their home villages already abandoned to the wind and the waves. París norðursins (Paris of the North, 2014) ironically describes the everyday life of a schoolteacher in a little fishing village. Nói albínói (2003), set in the white winter of the north, tells of solitude and the difficulties of adolescence. Þrestir (Sparrows, 2015, which won the Lessinia Gold Prize at the Lessinia Festival of 2016) mercilessly denounces the alcohol and drug problems unfortunately common in the little fjord communities.
They're difficult stories to listen to, because they're about places where it's difficult to live. However, whoever has traveled in the Vestfirðir can surely recognize the comic irony of their inhabitants, their respect in relations with others, and their sincere hospitality. Whoever has traveled in those valleys, scaling mountain peaks by the sea or walking through quiet villages in the evening will remember them with nostalgia, and recommend north-bound travelers to dedicate a bit of time to discovering a seemingly lost world: a world of unpaved roads and low clouds, little wooden churches and flocks of sheep invading the roadway. A world where, maybe, the real essence of that mysterious and fascinating place called Iceland still lurks.
Thank you all for reading.
Be back soon!
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| A map of the Westfjords. |
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| Where the Westfjords are located in Iceland. |
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