Had to use one guyline here, on account of the high wind. Still a pretty good site!
It was an indirect problem: To open my airway, I have to sleep on my side. But to do that without my ribs hurting, I need a body pillow. So on bike tours I take all my laundry and stuff it into the sack my sleeping bag is usually kept in, and put that against my chest. Last night I didn’t stuff in enough laundry and I was too lazy and cold to go digging around for more. I was also too lazy to locate my jaw insert, which was an even dumber mistake.
All night I kept rearranging my pillow to try and open my airway enough that it would stay open when my body went completely limp from entering REM sleep… And instead, I kept choking and waking myself up. Classic sleep apnea. What a stupid lesson to keep learning!
Well, the cars starting up and slamming doors only about ten feet away didn’t help, and the headlights of the late arrivals bothered my eyes until I deployed my sleep mask, so it really was a group effort to make me tired in the morning. But the sleep apnea was most of the problem.
I rinsed my face in the restaurant bathroom. It lacked a mirror which was probably a blessing for my self-esteem, since I always look ghastly when I’m underslept. Then I shuffled over to the cafe side of the building, bought snacks, and set up the laptop to get more work done.
I also took some time to plan my route ahead. If I rode every day, I could get to Seyðisfjörður and the ferry boat in less than a week. I didn’t need to lock my schedule down because there were plenty of campsites ahead on the route I could just roll into. Assuming I could buy a ticket for the boat to leave the next day, I’d have about four weeks to explore the Faroe Islands and Denmark, as well as Norway and Sweden, before my visa hit the 90-day limit and I was forced to fly out. It would be nice to have more time.
I decided to apply for a “work-stay” extension, like I’d been pondering in Reykjavik. The final document I needed was a letter of permission from my boss, so I put together a draft of that. There was a place to submit all the paperwork in Egilsstaðir, the county seat of Norður-Múlasýsla, one day out from the ferry terminal. If I still wanted to apply, that would be the place. No need to bother my boss about a letter until then.
Several hours passed in a montage of code, email, and design documents. The snacks disappeared. On the wall I noticed a panoramic photo of the mountains I passed coming in, and realized rather late that I was in one of the most photographed areas of the country. The range includes a mountain called Vestrahorn. Tourists use that name for the whole range.
You know your cafe is in a beautiful place when you can look at the photographs adorning the walls and find the cafe itself at the base of the mountain.
You know your cafe is in a beautiful place when you can look at the photographs adorning the walls and find the cafe itself at the base of the mountain.
There were a lot of photo shoots and films taken here. I guess that helped to explain the presence of the Viking movie set.
I wrapped up my work and exchanged the laptop for some warmer clothes, then went strolling around on the beach.
I get the impression that most of this is leftover material from back when the viking movie set was constructed.
By the time I spotted the movie set, it was pretty late in the day, and the cloud cover made the light weaker than usual, providing a sense of actual “evening”, which is rare for Iceland. Still plenty of visibility though.
Pretty majestic spot for a settlement. Well chosen, location scout!
Pretty majestic spot for a settlement. Well chosen, location scout!
I was strolling across the blasted heath, towards a place built for the purpose of staging a drama about the crafty and warlike Vikings. Suddenly I had a weird idea: How about I complement this by listening to an audio production of … MacBeth?
I had a copy of it on my phone, and started it up. Thunder rolled, and the Weyward Sisters gathered around me and began to whisper about battles, and betrayal, and blood.
Hard to tell how accurate any of this is. What would a building of this shape be for?
Hard to tell how accurate any of this is. What would a building of this shape be for?
The movie set had been built and abandoned years ago, but retained a presence in tourist culture. Eventually it came to the attention of another movie company, and now there are plans afoot to retrofit the buildings for use in another Viking epic. Like Hobbiton in New Zealand, this place may find a second life, and then a third life as a more permanent attraction.
I wonder how many raiders were spotted from these gates? (Answer: Zero.)
I can imagine an actor being crammed in there with the bars shut, screaming about an imminent invasion. "Wait 'till my brother Hrölf finds out I'm here!"
The main longhouse building of the set.
I can imagine a small herd of animals crammed in here.
I wonder if this semi-enclosed side hallway is part of the traditional layout?
Set designers and engineers must have been crawling through these windows constantly.
At this point, not a pleasant place for a bed and nightstand.
Absurdly shallow stairs must have made daily life here a bit treacherous.
Evening darkened very, very slowly as I went poking around the abandoned, half-modern half-ancient structures, listening to a 400-year-old play delivered by exceptional actors, with eerie sound effects and music.
Yep, there's a house in there.
It would take some serious cleanup to make this building livable again.
I wonder what they were using this giant curtain to conceal?
The walls of the roundhouse looked very unstable, but the door was surrounded by delightful carvings and I was very tempted to try pushing it open.
As I stared at the door, Scene 3 of Act 2 began in my headphones. A drunken porter woke up to the sound of furious knocking on a giant door, and began shouting as he made his way through the castle to answer it. To my disbelief and then delight, I recognized the porter as David Tennant. I was only familiar with his work in Dr Who.
What fun! I had my folding chair and footstool with me, which I’d been carrying in a sack along with a few remaining bits of food from the cafe. I assembled the chair in front of the lodge, put my feet up, and listened to MacBeth slowly go insane.
Me
Good afternoon! I’m listening to an audio production of MacBeth, and just heard the phrase “one fell swoop.” Is this play the origin of that phrase?
Mom
Shakespeare often used images from nature. “One fell swoop” sounds like the sudden, obliterating attack of a bird of prey.
Me
Very dramatic!
Mom
… I just looked it up. Yep, he was the originator. He refers to a kite – a hunting bird – and to his family as chickens.
Me
Ah hah! That definition of “kite” makes this passage clearer to me:
(Macbeth is seeing a ghost) “If charnel houses and our graves must send those that we bury back, our monuments shall be the maws of kites.”
I thought he was referring to kites like the ones we fly on a string. Some sort of metaphor like, our monuments will be empty of bodies, so the wind will whistle through them like it whistles through a box kite.
But now I see it could be something else: Our monuments will accumulate bodies only to vomit them up again like birds feeding their young.
Mom
Kites not only eat live things, they eat carrion too.
Me
Oh dear. So the metaphor is, with the dead walking, birds will pick them clean, so we might as well declare the birds themselves to be grave markers…
Mom
Yeah, i think so.
Me
How delightfully gruesome! … It’s … Murder most fowl!
When the play concluded I went back to music, picking some nice electronic stuff by Biosphere. Then I wandered over to the fence at the edge of the movie set and took a few pictures with the fancy camera, trying to capture the strange light I was seeing.
Three superimposed 30 second shots from the iPhone. Not bad considering it was quite dark out.
When I pulled them off the camera later, the photos were pretty good.
With bits of Shakespearean dialogue floating through my mind, I picked my way back across the swampy grass to the seashore, and then along to the road that led me back to camp. At one point I put a foot wrong and got a wet shoe, which I left outside my tent flap.
The scenery, the music, the Scottish Play, the blustery wind and the glowing sky, had all combined to make one amazing day that I would remember for a long time.
