beach break

Luckily it cannot press it on my face like in the tent. Clouds in different colors hang in the sky. The weather forecast claims later to be less wind and more sunshine. So I spend the morning with learning Icelandic words and take my dirty clothes to laundry.

Close to here is Héraðssandur, a long beach with black sand. I get ready for a big sand storm but surprisingly there is not much wind by the sea. Well, relatively “by the sea”. The car stays about five kilometers from the beach from where I have to walk through diverse landscape. Sand dunes, ponds. Colorful shrub mixed with bird footprints and excrement. Lone hillocks covered with grass. Sea foams wildly. Somewhere inland is sun all the time. After a few hours of wandering around I drive back to Bakkagerði.

I go to look at the Kjarval’s altar painting in the church. Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval was Icelandic artist after whom a part of Reykjavik Art Museum is named and who spent his summer around here. He has painted the sermon of the mount with local landscape in the background. Under it is a quote from the Bible that has always bothered me: sælir eru fátækir í anda því að þeirra er himnaríki (blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven). Like in what way poor in spirit? Stupid, ignorant, free from the Holy Spirit? And for this theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not that when they are poor in spirit then they get the kingdom of heaven. I sit for a while but don’t get any smarter.

Instead I go and eat fish soup in a café that has Kjarval’s portraits of local people hanging on the walls.

The laundry has lost a sock that is later found after a thorough investigation.