Finding familiar faces on the edge of the Arctic Circle…
The north coast of Iceland tickles the Arctic Circle, but remains just shy of the golden bearing 66o33’N. The only Icelandic land within the Arctic Circle is on Grimsey, a low, rocky islet twenty nautical miles from the mainland. Arctic Circle tourism is currency here, you can take a daily flight from Iceland’s second city Akureyri to the airstrip on Grimsey, and walk, run, jump or cartwheel across the magic, invisible line. The circle is, at present, marked with a large monument, a stone sphere known as ‘Orbis et Globus’. However, due to Polar Drift, the natural shift of the Earth’s magnetic field, the Arctic Circle is moving. Historically, the North Magnetic Pole has been known to shift anywhere between 5m-60m per year, yet it has picked up speed recently, and by 2047 it is estimated the Arctic Circle will leave the island of Grimsey entirely and slink off to the sea, heading north toward Siberia. When this happens, there is a plan to push Orbis et Globus off the northern tip of Grimsey and into the water – and then what? the brave or the wetsuited can swim out perhaps, maybe some enterprising soul will construct a jetty to allow visitors to cross the Arctic Circle in Iceland on foot for a few more seasons, or will a small, ex-fishing vessel be commandeered for a boat trip to cross the line, for a photo op and a certificate. Maybe, and more likely, it will become an irrelevance, and Grimsey’s fleeting,ly modern century micro tourist industry will sink beneath the waves along with its stone ball.
The coastline of northern Iceland is spiked with fjords, edged with coal-black sea cliffs and flat-topped mountains cut with the occasional patch of year-round ice, or spattered with fresh snow, even in high summer. From the sea it is a dark, solemn coast, even when the sun breaks the clouds and glints off the ice on a calm temperate day, it still does not feel welcoming. Although in that clear morning light the colours of the rock, the web of volcanic browns, reds and yellows are lit up as rainbow streaks within the ochre hills, and when the sky is heavy again with storm clouds or flat and overcast the land retakes its sinister pose. The sea, grey as a whale’s back, although rich beyond measure appears empty of life, except for the Northern fulmars Fulmarus glacialis who care little for the land, and wander anywhere there is a breeze, skimming and darting through hurricanes with a flick of their wingtips.
Inside the fjords the swell calms, the wind drops, and green streaks appear on the hillsides. Habitation, a few red roofed farms, dot the lower slopes of colossal hills, and pea green fields lie in thin strips, the hay cut done, the fresh grass gleaming. At the end of the fjords are the settlements, the life sustaining bubbles keeping civilisation tethered and guy-roped to the ground. Here are cars driving on tarmacked roads, shops selling anything and everything, takeaway coffee, phone signals, advertising, headache tablets.
On the north-west coast, on the southern side of the large fjord-like bay of Breiðafjörður is Grundarfjörður, a settlement and small embayment in the shadow of the absurdist sugar-loaf pyramid of Kirkjufell, the Church Mountain. Out in the bay are a few skerries, rocks exposed even at high tide, islets and reefs, home to a small armada of wading birds, Brunnich’s guillemot Uria lomvia, Redshank Tringa totanus, Gadwall, Anas strepera, Velvet scoter Melanitta fusca, Common eider Somateria mollissima, and Brent goose Branta bernicla, flotillas moving against the tide, rafts at ease, or ranked up on the rocks, the occasional call of the Redshank breaking the silence. The sea is fronted by a coastline of muddy stream estuaries, grazing land, and pale shell and grey lava beaches. On the landward side is a wall of hills topped with glacial ice, and a moorland of dwarf shrub cut through with waterfalls. This is Low Arctic tundra, a mosaic of grasses, sedge, rush, and exposed rock, rippled with waves of woody shrubs growing in step with the fluctuating water and nutrients below their feet. Nothing is much more than a foot or two high, mainly dwarf willows and birches, Salix herbacea and Betula nana, forming knee high woodlands sheltering the low flying insects and small birds that make a living on the hillside. Juniper Juniperus communis drapes itself over a lump of basalt, tentacle branches hugging the face like an octopus in slow motion.
In late summer, or it could be argued early autumn – the lines are blurred this far north – there are still a few flowering species and just as it would be in Britain these are now mainly from the Asteraceae, more specifically the yellow composites. Alpine hawkweed Hieracium alpinum nod their heads along the hillside footpath, Dandelion Taraxacum spp dot the edge of the horse paddocks, and again, just like at home, Autumn hawkbit Leontodon autumnalis cluster around the cracks in the pavement and the bus stop sign in front of the shop, their lemon-yellow ray florets making ankle high suns in a land soon to be plunged into its winter darkness.
Halfway up Mount Kirkjufell I stop, out of breath, and sit on the ledge. For the last few hours, the summer snow has been whipping round the tops of the hills, but has now reached the coast, falling here as rain, although feeling more like fat drops of ice. I bury further into the rock ledge and mud of the hollow I had chosen for a rest stop, but there is little shelter on the southern slope, for comfort or maybe to feel like I’m doing something, I pull my hat and hood forward over my eyes, zip everything shut, and lay under my bag to keep a bit of the rain and wind at bay. In the lee of the rock face, black basalt speckled with white streaks, I make friends with the small world before me. Amongst the sedges, mainly Black-alpine sedge Carex atrata, is a small field of Mountain avens Dryas octopetala, exploiting a niche of damper, richer soil where the water drains. Mountain avens has a slender pedicel of no more than 10cm, holding a comparatively large flower, usually of eight petals (as its binomial suggests) out of step with the rest of its Rosaceae family, where the norm is five, and is a clear white, glowing brightly in the shadow. The leaves are small, but chunky, glossy, with round toothed edges, and are instantly recognisable. It has a number of local common names, each one reserved for a different life stage including Holtasóley ‘Heath buttercup’, when flowering, and Hárbrúða ‘Hairy doll’ when in seed, and Rjúpnalauf ‘Ptarmigan leaf’, when in a vegetative state, as it forms part of the diet of the ptarmigan Lagopus muta during the winter. It is Iceland’s national flower, only chosen in 2004, and an interesting choice for a land with a diverse flora. It is no doubt a delightful and joyous little flower, one with a strong association with the Icelandic people, as it has been used, when times were tough, as a tea substitute, and an ersatz tobacco, and has an astringent, anti-inflammatory quality, making it a most useful plant in a winter kitchen or a medicine cupboard.
Mountain avens has another local name, þjófarót, or ‘Thief’s root’ which comes from an ancient folk tradition that the plant is imbued with magical properties, mainly the power to attract wealth. However, to enable the mystic potency of the plant, you must first (deep breath, strap in) steal money from a poor widow, during a church service, then bury the stolen coins beneath a patch of Mountain avens, and your money will double when retrieved. From this twisted, antique belief, comes another even grimmer custom, the location of an execution spot, as the gallows for thieves and petty criminals were traditionally located in places where there was an abundance of Mountain avens. A similar custom was once widespread in central and western Europe, although not with Mountain avens but Mandragora spp, the Mandrake, a plant well-known for its similarly magical properties, providing flying ointment for witches, money for those who know the correct spells, and it’s supposed growing location at the foot of the gibbet.
Squeezed in on the edge of this mini meadow, amongst the avens, grasses and sedges was a group of eyebright Euphrasia spp, another familiar sight in Britain, although that would usually be its close cousins E. nemorosa or E. arctica, whereas, up here on the windswept slopes of Kirkjufell, the Eyebright being E. frigida, the Upland or Cold eyebright, mainly a native of the Cairngorms and a handful of upland areas in the UK, but in its happy place here, a chilly hillside just a stone’s throw from the Arctic Circle.
After the rain petered out, and I counted the cost in dampness, and made the trudge down the hill, the old path a slipperiness of cold mud and broken fence posts. At the foot of the slope, I was made to look up sharply. Flying overhead were a skein of geese, arranged in aloose v passed in the gap between the cliffs and the mountain, honking their intention, heading west, maybe out to the open sea, maybe even heading south, to cross the Atlantic. These were Dark-bellied brent geese Branta bernicla bernicla, their small bodies, dark necks and characteristic, squeak of a call taking me back home. For a few seconds I think of the cockle crushed beach at old Leigh, the eel grass beds, Endeavour, Renown and the Crooked Billet, and that soon, that warbling, high pitched, almost un-goose like sound will echo again around the mouth of the Thames.
Words and Images by Christian Gunn
