Sheep in the fold

Last Friday we went away for the weekend to get peace and quiet, to read and to sleep. We set off too late of course, after work on Friday, met with a friend in Akranes en route and I tried her yummy chicken and rice soup.

By the time we were heading into the country, leaving Borganes and its two greasy burger joints behind it was really really dark. I was surprised. Not so long ago it was almost 24 hours of daylight.. then I sat with a friend in a hot tub at 2am and watched the faint brush of the northern lights in the dusky sky .. and then suddenly it is dark at 8pm. Okay, maybe it was more like 10. Anyway, this must mean I´ve spent too long inside and I feel like despite a glorious summer with wonder continental weather I have let the summer slip by.

Hestfjall in Borgarfjörður, picture taken by Halldór Eiríksson

I am glad now though of the change in season. It all happened on Friday with the darkness. We drove and drove, skipped the turning for the fisherman´s huts, passed the summer houses and between the cliffs, round the bend and down the hill .. then passed the big rock by the road (sure home of elves), goat rock and up the hill through a flock of sheep all eyes gleaming evilly in the headlights, up the hill and into the darkness away from all the lights. We began to wonder if we missed the cottage that we were told we couldn´t miss.

Then, two small lights appeared in the distance and the narrowest road bridge I´ve ever come across with a two tonne limit.. how heavy is the car? Less than one ton surely but when you add in the rucksacks, the tins of beans, bottle of whisky and us.. I chickened out and reversed in to the path of a van (but not quite) racing up the hill, so feeling like stupid tourists we thought we´d ask directions. Well, not a lot of help .. in that there was pretty much nothing further on in terms of warm cosy cottages.. but I am still wondering what a guy travelling alone with a suitcase in the middle of the night was doing driving into the wilderness. Óli assures me that the suitcase was too small for a body. Is the habit of exiling people to the hills still in existence here?

Well, we turned back.. passed the dark lake we´d missed on the way up, passed goat rock, the elf house rock, the freaky-eyed sheep, the cliffs, the summer houses and back to the main road. So we´d missed it again. We turned back. This continued for some time.

Once found the cottage was unmissable, inviting even in darkness and cold and a most thoroughly welcome shelter from the wind that was gathering. And it blew, and it blew and it blew all night, through the morning, the afternoon, the evening and the next night .. and when we drew the curtains on the next morning there was snow on the mountains and a bite to the air and winter was there. Perhaps the man with the suitcase was somehow responsible.

The farmers on horseback spotted the weather change before us and went to get the sheep (maybe the suitcase man was delivering whisky to farmers rounding sheep up in the hills?) and as we left they brought at least 300 sheep, white, black, muddy and fluffy, small and scruffy down the hills, along the road, passed the narrow bridge (not more than 2 tonnes of sheep at once), along the shore of the dark lake, alongside goat rock and all around the elf house, up the hill, passed the summer houses, through the cliffs and into the fields of home.

On Sunday night we settled back in to our little flat in town and thought of the party being had to celebrate the round up in the country and we shared a whisky in celebration of the start of winter and the coming of the snow.