The swimmer of Jökulsárlón and other stories.
The tide is mounting. Sea water rushes in the glacial lagoon, sending the bergs crashing against each other, gigantic ice cubes clinking into Godzilla's whisky tumbler. I'm all alone, this morning, in this corner of Iceland.
Fog swirls around me, mixed with wind and an incessant, pervasive rain. The air is filled with the distant roar of an angry sea. Something, for an instance, appears in the surging tidal wave that is rushing inland. Something small, round, grey and wet. I catch a glimpse of two brown eyes and the snout of a Labrador dog, but - blink - and it's gone.
I stop dead in my tracks, suspended midstride in the chilly Icelandic air, suddenly forgetful of the wind and rain, ignoring the cinematic lures of Diamond Beach. Fine volcanic sand and resplendent ice crystals can wait: I'm now on a mission, on a quest to find the elusive Swimmer of Jökulsárlón lagoon.
Nothing happens. Fog banks drift closer and then scurry away, rain patters on my jacket. Geese cackle to one another and a small bird puts up an impromptu serenade, evidently moved to piety by my sight. Another biped on a senseless quest, he must be thinking.
Then, a hiss. It's the briefest of sounds and I almost miss it, drowned out by the clinking of the bergs, the popping of air bubbles suddenly released from their icy embrace, the squawking of birds and the background grumble of the sea. It's as if somebody unscrewed the cap off a bottle of sparkling water.
Right beneath my feet.
There she is. The grey seal is foraging on the lagoon bottom, paddling around the icebergs with the same curiosity and playfulness of a dog in the park. I'm struck by a sense of familiarity, as if I were watching my brother's dogs frolicking in an Alpine lake. Then the seal dives down in the light-blue waters and, for a long minute, I fear she's gone.
Then she returns, this time with a colleague.
It's almost as if she had to bring a friend to witness the encounter with that odd fellow on the foreshore, dressed in green and black overalls. Can you believe that? I can almost hear them asking one another. We stare at each other for a while, them floating in the water and me standing on the bank; then, inspection over, off they go in the labyrinth of ice.
Clouds lift slowly from Vestrahorn and, by the time I'm back from Brunnhorn, the skies have cleared up and the firmament is finally blue.
Still, the fog isn't ready to give up yet. Water vapour lingers on the black beach, tossed everywhere by the terse winds. The foreshore looks like the stage of a Pink Floyd concert or a Dalí painting. Concepts like distance or perspective lose meaning and mirages start appearing on the black beach.
Or maybe they're real.
In this world of shadows and swirling vapours it's easy to get lost, especially if you're not tall enough to see above it all. And so it happens that a flock of snow geese might be blissfully unaware of humans approaching.
And the humans are coming from both sides.
Eventually the penny drops, but there's no panic in the flock as they waddle a little bit further uphill: afterall, beachgoers are known for being a relaxed bunch.
There's a spot for that iconic Vestrahorn photo. The one on Icelandair's In-Flight Entertainment system and countless other posters, book covers, magazine front pages. A place where everything - the towering peaks, the black dunes, the crescent of sand and the sea - are in delicate balance. Here.
Vestrahorn is still crowned by a rag of clouds like a miniature Annapurna. But there's also something else; at first I think it's dust in my viewfinder, God knows it's filthy in there, but no. It's not dirt.
A flight of geese cruise under the peak like a string of black pearls. They cruise in beautiful formation across the wide plain like they've done for thousands of kilometres before, heading West towards Höfn. But then, obeying something I can't quite fathom, they change course. Could it be…?
And yes, it is. The geese tack right and point directly out to sea. And to the parcel of land where the erstwhile NATO radar, the lighthouse and me are all standing.
