Galway, Sunny-Side Up

Six young Irishmen in Galway pile on top of one another, swinging and grabbing at each other, red-faced and hyped up.  That sentence would mean a whole other thing after nightfall.  But on an afternoon in South Park, outside the pub-ccentric city center, it is just the scene of a rugby practice.  Galway by day. "Vibrant" is a word that gets used a lot to describe cities, but Galway really embodies the word most fully to me.  The vibration of string instruments in its streets, the energy of the student population, the ebb and flow of the water in its bay, the brightness of the green and blue backdrop - all a version of vibrancy, all the epitome of Galway.

It would be so easy for daytime Galway to feel like a hangover.  Most places that play as hard as it does just don't rise with the same vigor as they fall.  Sleepy mornings and empty beer bottles would seem fitting after evening trad sessions and nighttime brawls.  But that's just not how Galway rolls.  Bright and early, the pubs open, new kegs are rolled in on dollies by white-coated delivery men.  The jewel-toned pub exteriors with names like Foley's and Gallaghers and The Old Hen painted in gold look as brilliant in the sunlight as they do under streetlights.  Irish breakfasts and pots of tea are the order of the morning.  The smell of toast fills the air, calling you down through your hotel window.

Secondhand shops and record stores, crafts shops selling authentic woolen products from the nearby Aran islands, bakeries, cafes are all opening up.  This is daytime Galway, a plethora of charming places that close before sunset.  There's maybe a sliver of time when day Galway and night Galway coexist, like those evenings you can spot the moon before the sun has gone down.  But mostly, they're flipsides, and if your experience of the city is purely vampiric you may never know places like Sheridans Cheesemongers, Griffin's bakery or Goya's cafe exist.  At Goya's, savory pies in the window, like steak and kidney, lured us in; the carrot soup with buttered brown bread and chicken liver pate won us over (especially Merlin, who declared it the best pate of the trip).  The spot, tucked away on Kirwan's Lane, is one of many bright, wonderful cafes open only for lunch and afternoon tea, places that vanish before nightfall. 

During the day, that smell of toast, of pies, of scones may pull you down streets and have you sniffing out their sources around corners.   Perhaps the smell of fish and chips will lure you down to McDonagh's at the end of Quay Street.  And that's when you'll collide with the unmistakable whiff of salty sea air and meet Galway city's other half, its harbor.  Testament to the pleasures within the city, it's almost easy to forget Galway is set on a bay of the same name.  A perfect line up of old houses rise up from the eastern side of the central inlet. They are mostly white with some light blue and yellow and one painted red like a motivational poster about uniqueness. 

Galway's Bay can feel postcard-cheery one minute and mysterious the next, depending on the weather and the mood.  It's always that way with seasides, I guess.  There's the promise of the voyage and the homecoming, and also everything washed up and left behind.  Brilliantly green moss covers most everything.  The stones have a sense of age rivaled only by the ocean floor.  Arriving at the harbor in just a few steps from all the action of central Galway is a lot like hopping onto the silent car after a mad dash through the train station, then watching the world blur by in streaks of color.  A breather just as exhilarating as the rush.

To keep the train station thing going, the harbor is also where you find Galway's hookers.  (Ha!) Turns out, a "Galway hooker" is a type of boat different than the ones above; they're traditional racing boats with a semi-unfortunate name.  In a description we read, they were described as "small, tough and highly maneuverable," which only made me giggle more.  Anyway, if you google "Galway" and the search bar guesses your next word is "hooker," this is why.  Don't be alarmed. There's nothing fishy going on in Galway Bay.  Well, there is, actually.  Seafood, which it's chock full of.  There's a mix of farming and collecting these days, both methods producing enough fish and shellfish to export in huge numbers out to France, Spain and the UK with enough leftover to enjoy at home.

A place famous for its drinking options, Galway really doesn't get enough credit for its food.  It is absurdly easy to eat extremely well around the city, proof that the residents' great taste and high standards don't stop just at trad music.  Of course, the awesome local oysters are widely available.  (This is probably the only place in the world I'd ordered raw oysters at a dive bar).  But you also have a plethora of other local seafood and produce being crafted into some seriously great meals.  At Ard Bia at Nimmo's, in an old stone building with big windows looking out at the bay, we waited out a rainy spell over seafood chowder with mussels, smoked cod, sea trout and clams.  It was atmosphere in a bowl.

We walked along The Prom, the promenade between Galway's harbor and the suburb of Salt Hill.  There were joggers and people walking dogs.  A man taught his daughter how to cast a line, that rugby team practiced.  A road led out to a lighthouse with the Aran islands visible in the distance behind it.  We walked along until a sign told us further access was prohibited - and we wondered how many signs in how many other countries told us not to trespass, but we couldn't understand.  Some city's have momentum because of crowds or traffic or a beat that everyone drums to.  Galway has a different momentum, one that is self defined but still constant.  There are so many options and outlets, watering holes, strolls and speeds to choose from that you keep on going.  You bounce from one to the next.  Sometimes to a soundtrack of trad music, sometimes to the lapping of the sea.

The Ships and Shippers of Åland

On the western shore of Mariehamn, the capital of Åland island in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland, a Viking Lines ship idled patiently in the water.   Big and fast, Marianne waited to fill its cabins with excited passengers and whisk them off on an overnight booze cruise to Helsinki.  The gambling machines dinged and clinged in empty halls, the carpeting looked at itself in thousands of mirrored and super-buffed surfaces, bracing for another night of absorbing heavy, unsteady steps.  On the eastern shore, 'österhamn,' things were a little more low-key.  Karolina, a historic brig, was being worked on by this man.  She was built in 1874, saw a little bit of action between 1901 and 1905, then began her much longer stint as a stylish relic.  A piece of history.

Sjökvarteret or "the Maritime Quarter" as the neighborhood in österhamn is called, is part recreation and part functional homage.  This is where nearly 300 wooden ships were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Nowadays, there is a working blacksmith, some men actually repairing and building boats, picturesque storehouses and boat sheds in rows of weathered wood on stilts.  Newer beauties sit around, a swarm of nice yachts dock here in the summer.  Amazingly, this small, weathered stretch sits at the northern end of Scandinavia's largest harbor.  In the high season, people take boat tours in some of the antique ships being repaired this time of year.  In early October, the historic Albanus looked just as it would have at the start of Autumn in its heyday.  Crates of apples filled its deck, in from orchard-filled Geta in northern Åland.

People on Åland island have been traversing the Baltic in both directions for centuries.  To Stockholm they'd set sail with fish, meat and dairy from the farms that covered Åland.  They would return with goods like clothing and salt.  Then, began the big trips.  Boats grew larger, as did the crews that manned them, and shipping journeys took Ålanders around Cape Horn for Chilean nitrate and around the tip of South Africa to Australia for grain.  The Åland Maritime Museum tells the tale of this period through the stories of Mariehamn's locals.  There is the captain who is on his very last trip - he's promised his wife.  There are the men who have signed on because they want to travel or shirk their responsibilities on the family farm.  There was a gallery of ship portraits, the work of local artists as commissioned by local shipowners.  Our hotel room has a hard-bound "Who's Who in Åland," complete with photos.  So, you can see just how up close and personal their excellent maritime museum was.  

Perhaps the most influential person in the shipbuilding history of Mariehamn is Captain Gustaf Erikson, who took it upon himself to continue buying and repairing beautiful wooden windjammers as the rest of the world switched to steam power.  The fleet he accumulated right in these harbors competed competently with the shipping steamers right up until World War II.  Erikson was a man who understood the value of those sailing ships, the importance of tradition and even had a hunch that Mariehamn could still find an industry on the water even after their major shipping days were done.  "Many modern people long for peace and quiet for a couple of months in the bracing sea air," he suspected, starting the first business in the area to sail people across the Baltic simply for the experience, not the necessity.   The pleasure cruise.

The figurehead above is not Erikson, it's just the gentleman who used to be set onto the prow of the California.  Most other figureheads were women dressed in white Athenian or Victorian garb, hand held to heart (and their thoughtfully sculpted bosoms).  But Mr. California here's chin is not held as high, his gaze is less assured, his hand, a little lower, clutches at a jacket lapel like a man bracing himself. What an odd choice.  There were all sorts of curios on the Åland Maritime Museum.  Black and white photos taken by Peter Karney, a young Brit who volunteered aboard one of Mariehamn's ships on a journey around Cape Horn, offer extraordinary glimpses into life on the sea.  Men doing handstands for exercise or playing with their pet pigs.  A captain looking gruff.  The museum space itself has the feeling of a ship's interior and little stuffed mice are humorously stashed in corners for you to happen upon just like the rats on the windjammers of yore. 

Since the collections in the museum were provided by locals, there's some really great, personal stuff.  Souvenirs brought home from sailings around the world included a postcard from Seattle, some truly garish glass art from England, figurines from South Africa, a coconut.  There was even an authentic 18th century pirate flag with the iconic skull and crossbones, one of only two in the world.  Another room was dedicated to Viking Lines, an Åland company, and included excellent 1970s disco cruise photos and a newspaper clipping quoting an excited passenger.  "It's like a city on the water!"  A knot-tying station, with instructions, let you feel really inept at trying to recreate the rope wonders above. 

Everyone around here can probably tie at least a few of those knots.  Navigation is no longer part of elementary school education as it was in 1854, but you get the sense that not knowing how to sail around here would be a little like not knowing how to drive a car in California.  This bearded fellow brought a gorgeous sailboat into the wharf in Sjökvarteret.  He did so confidently - elegantly, really - and then lit a cigarette once he'd hopped on land.  As he stood and stared at the beauty, the man who'd been working Karolina came over to join him.  There were more puffs than words and then the two walked off together.

"Pears!" the bearded man called to us when we ran into the two men a little while later.  He was barely visible within the leaves of a short pear tree, jabbing at the branches above him with a stick&bucket contraption.  "Do you want one?" the other man asked and we all stood around waiting for just the right angle.  One, then a second small, hard pear was bagged and tossed over to us.  We thanked them, commented on the taste, chewed and then realized that small talk wasn't really going to happen.  Oh, those strong, silent seafaring types. 

Views of Stockholm by Boat

Stockholm is a watery place.  Agnafit in the sagas, its enduring image is Gamla Stan, a loop of color rising from the waves.  Walking from island to island, one comes up against the shore, turns and finds the sea again.  Better to take to the water, then, to really see the city and to move more freely.  Over two trips we spent a lot of time on boats, where the city spaces are broadest and Stockholm catches the best light.

On the ferry between Slussen and Skansen, we stood out in the wind and watched the buoys pass.  It's a little boat, with a small deck.  The locals - with shopping bags and strollers - sat inside, talking to each other.  On the way back to the old town, it was colder and the sky was grey.  We rested on hard wooden benches, looking out the window.  The Gröna Lund amusement park soared in a cluster of disused spires and spirals, closed for the day or the season.  Muted fall colors floated by in the mist.

There are enough trees and green hills in Stockholm to give some areas the feel of a village - copper steeples above low roofs, little quays jutting over cold water.  If you constrict your perspective, a view from shore can make the city feel almost rural.
We spent our last night in Stockholm on a hostel in the hold of a boat.  Our beds were small and uncomfortable, the ship rocked through the night, the room was as bare and cramped as a closet.  Still, it was fun.  From our cabin we could see passing feet and bicycle wheels on the dock.  We drank beer upstairs in the wooden bar, listening to a man and the waitress speak Russian.  A full moon was in the air and Stockholm's harbor was beautiful; the movement of the water, the quiet creaking, the smell of old ship and bleach - it all lent the evening a wonderful melancholy.  From the bar's portholes, we looked to the archipelago.  Thousands of islands spill from the city into the sea.  Some have cottages and trees.  Others are bare skerries, nothing but grey rock.

We left Stockholm and Sweden on a ferry to Finland.  The boat was huge and moved through the water as though on rails.  The view from inside was expansive - the boat's taller than most buildings in town.  Stockholm slipped away faster than we expected into the rainy morning.  Shoreline passed like scenery in a movie, smoothly, until we were looking at empty land, then - much later - only grey water.
People take the ferry for the day, getting off at the Åland Islands and taking the next boat back.  They drink and gamble on the way, lured by cheap beer and slot machines.  The sea is tax-free.  Old couples sit with glasses of wine and stare out at the waves.  Young men disembark with bags of alcohol.  Everyone is a little bleary eyed.  There's not much to see, but there's a slight feeling - once the boat has passed into open water - of the sea swelling under your legs and of the immensity of the ocean. 

A Seaworthy Museum In Gøteborg

The sound of the Maritiman museum in Gøteborg is half the experience.  Steel whines against steel, engines hum, wharfs creak, footsteps ring out in the gloom.  Everything is a little unsteady.  This is a floating mess of ladders and pipes, where the sound and the movement of the waves provides atmosphere.  After an hour or two, you feel like a sailor.  The museum has a way of completely enveloping the visitor - the fluorescent gleam on worn metal, the smoothness of ladder rungs, the smell of new paint and old mildew.
Crawling through the green belly of the submarine Nordkaparen, past hundreds of dials and knobs, is like maneuvering through a hard-shelled dreamscape.

The seventeen boats that make up Maritiman - thirteen floating, four resting on the wharf - are so closely moored that the various decks and smokestacks create a jumbled whole.  Gøteborg is close at hand; on deck, the city sounds of traffic and people are as clear as the noise of the water.  Seagulls wheel, bicyclists whizz by on the waterfront, the ticket office sells ice cream cones to chilly pedestrians.  It feels much like any normal, familiar urban dockside.
The museum boats are anything but normal, though.  Guns prickle atop the destroyer HMS Småland, fire hoses wreath the Flodsprutan II, primitive radar antennae juts up from the minelayer Kalmarsund.  There's a harbor crane, two cute little tugs, a few lifeboats, a massive cargo ship and a rare, 19th century Monitor named the Sölve. There's even a floating lighthouse, the No. 29 Fladen (the red tower can be seen in the left of the picture).  The No. 29 was, rather pitiably, replaced by an "anchored buoy" in 1969.

The exterior decks are fun and interesting - the maze of connective ramps and stairways is engaging by itself - but the museum is most thrilling down below.  This is where the reverberations - who knows from what vibration? - take over, and the way becomes confusing.  How far does the hallway go?  Is this a dead end?  Where did that staircase come from?  Have I passed this before?
Levels and directions are pointless after a while.  Partly, the strangeness is because of the movement of the ship and the swaying of the lights.  Partly, it's because of the low ceilings, the perpetual crouch, the tight spaces.  It's rare, aboard the warships, to be able to stand up straight and get a good look around.  But the disorientation is partly willful - I didn't care about getting lost.

The Småland was, according to an information plaque, the first destroyer in the world to be outfitted with sea-based missiles.  The plaque also mentions such diverse armaments as torpedos, 12cm cannons, anti aircraft guns, anti submarine rocket launchers, depth charges, 58 mines, chaff-launchers and flare rockets.
Yes, up in the fresh air, the ship is impressively armed.  But that aspect of it hardly resonates below. It was difficult to recognize what anything was - even a kitchen looked warped, too small and foreign.  I could hear a few other visitors, somewhere in the corridors around me, but I didn't see anyone until I found myself back in sunlight.

Hugging the side of the Småland, looking like a prowling shark, the submarine Nordkaparen is one of Maritiman's jewels.  Built in 1961 as a state of the art coastal-defense weapon, the ship was used for about twenty years, before being decommissioned and docked.  The tarp over the front and the plentiful rust don't inspire a lot of confidence in the Nordkaparen's seaworthiness, but it seemed safe enough in the harbor.
After clambering down a long ladder, one can imagine immediately that they are deep under the surface.  Sounds are transmitted with watery vagueness.  There are no windows.  Wires and tubes criss-cross around you.  It's as much Jules Verne as Tom Clancy.

It's difficult to believe that twenty seven men lived aboard the Nordkaparen.  There doesn't seem to be room for three people in the tight confines.  There are valves and gauges on every surface - all vividly low-tech. It's not what one imagines a submarine to be like, it's much scarier.  Imagine maneuvering this blind cylinder in the black deep, without the aid of computers or modern controls, with no visibility, feeling the way with radar.
Torpedos shouldn't feel surprising in this realm, but somehow they caught me off guard.  There were several of them, bright orange, protruding from their barrels.  Most of the bunks were arrayed around the weapons, presumably because that's where there was some space.

What really brings the museum to life are the textures and sounds.  Everything is right there to be touched, bumped against or snagged on.  Many decks are reached by cramped ladder, and so the interiors become full of handholds and things to lean into.  Deep down, in the engine room of the Småland, pipes and ducts twist through the space like treeroots in a cave.  The ships groan and clang against eachother.  Walking through, getting lost, one passes empty kitchens and bunk rooms and chambers full of dials. For the claustrophobic, the tight spaces and hard edges might be frightening.  For the inflexible, some of the submarine ports might be hard to navigate - even relatively limber folks have to essentially crawl through the holes.  After some time alone in these depths, the boats take on a surreal spookiness.  These ships aren't exactly meant for humans, they're just big machines - it's like spending time inside an engine.

A brighter, more lighthearted feeling permeates other boats - like the plucky Flodsprutan II, which has lived in Gøteborg harbor since 1931.  The little fire boat patrolled the waterfront until the '70's, and is still in working order.  Rows of gleaming nozzles and coiled hoses are hung against the walls, the kitchen looks recently used (seen above - the dishes are part of the display).  Nearby, two more modern navy boats - a minelayer and a patrol craft - are sleek and fast and comfortable.  The cheerful red of the lighthouse boat, No. 29 Fladen, hides a bright interior full of blue china and genteel uniforms.

Gøteborg hasn't opened itself up to the water.  The port is more functional than fancy.  Buildings along the seafront aren't as pretty as those further in, and the city isn't defined by the view from a ferry.  So, at the end of a visit to Maritiman, standing at the very top of the Minelayer Kalmarsund, with cranes and cruise ships in the distance, one can feel that they are docked in any port in any city.  That's part of the charm. Spending a few hours at the museum, you can really pretend that your life is at sea - or, at least, it excites the imagination enough to make all the strangeness feel natural.

The Telemark Canal

Canals are that forgotten collection of map lines.  For most, an expanse of land is crossed by road or rail, the earthly passage made along firm trails.  The road grid is expanding like fast vines.  By airplane, the points are connected in the abstract, reduced to points in time - flightpaths exist in thin air.  Canals on the other hand - those flat and blue marvels of antique engineering - are relics. They silt in, they're clogged with weeds, they lie disused.  Old buildings line their shores, their purposes as obscure as the mud along the bottom.  It's not really a sad thing.  Unlike a road or a stretch of disused rip-rap, a canal can revert so peacefully to nature.  It's only water.
The Telemark Canal runs sixty five smooth miles between Skien and Dalen, connecting a collection of long lakes and rivers.  The canal is noteworthy for its complex lock system - there are 18 wooden-sided chambers in all, scattered along the length, still in about the same shape as they were in 1861.  Boats still use it; in fact, it's a point of Norwegian pride.

When the Victoria approaches a lock, it's with a proud sashay - the boat glides into the narrow chambers so smoothly that it seems to be on rails.  The boat is beautifully kept, with worn and polished wood and bright green decks.  It's hard to believe that she's over a hundred years old, or that she's been in these Telemark waters since 1882.  Every day, in theory, the boat makes a languorous, ten hour journey - depending on the day, it might be from foothills to seashore or the opposite, from the coast up towards the mountains.  People get on and off with cameras, it's more a tourist operation than transport.

Touristy as it is, the ship's journey is made with all the perfect formality and pageantry that can be afforded a distinguished old dame.  Each lock is taken in stride, with salutes to the men on shore and patient sinking. Watching the ship descend the locks in Ulefoss - there are three chambers, and it takes about forty minutes - is like watching someone regal come slowly down a staircase, attended to on all sides by a busy retinue.  This mechanical process is made very graceful.
The locks are operated by hand, opened and shut by two young men.  First, they close the aft gates.  Then they open the downriver ports, letting all the water drain into the next chamber - this is a loud and frothy happening, accompanied by the slow settling of the boat into the chamber.  Finally, they open the forward gates and the Victoria moves ahead into the next chamber.

The Telemark canal was built in two stages, and - when it was completed in 1982 - was called the "eighth wonder of Europe."  Not only did the waterway service the southern inland, but it also linked east and west Norway, creating a safer and more reliable route between the coasts.  Free from maritime storms and waves, the journey was usually faster than the ocean route.
It's difficult to image now, with Norway's miles of smooth tarmac and whisper-quiet trains, but the canal was a major development in the nineteenth century.  It's not the most mountainous of Norway's regions, but the Telemark landscape is far from flat.  There are also dozens of lakes and rivers.  The water criss-crosses the terrain in long valleys, making overland travel difficult.  Being able to link together these bodies of water was important and arduous.  It took a crew of five hundred men almost five years to blast and dig through the rock, construct the locks and even the falls.

Ulefoss is the last downstream lock stairway before Lake Norsjø, where the going is easy for several miles. The first mate had his jacket off as he stood on the prow, guiding his ship through her descent.  It was raining a little, but the sun was out and it was warm.  He was friendly to us few landlubbers on shore, and even asked one of us to help him secure a line.
After the last gate was opened, the man put his jacket back on - complete with shining epaulets - and gave an exaggerated, stiff-backed salute to the two men who had worked the ratchets and levers.  Once the Victoria was out of sight, these younger men lit cigarettes, got in their cars and zoomed out of the parking lot.

In more peaceful Lunde, about ten minutes drive upriver, the single lock has a tranquil, reedy calm. Much of the Telemark's route is built up with factories, mills and towns.  In Lunde, the canal is nothing but a peaceful waterway.  The water is glass-clear, birds flit along the banks, wooden rowboats are tied up under trees.

Close at hand, with its bottom mired in muck and its steam pipe listing to one side, sits one of Norway's oldest construction machines, the frog-green "Mudder'n'."  The name, almost too predictably, means "muddy."  A steam dredge bought in 1890, the canal's snaggle-toothed workhorse was used for decades to keep the lock channels deep enough and to free up detritus washed in during floods.  It's been fixed up a little, but the deck is littered with leaves and the gears are rusted.  Compared with the canal boats, it has received very little love.

We found nothing in Lunde except a shuttered cafe and a parking lot.  In September, the canal traffic is starting to cool off.  The farms close to the water had tightly wrapped bales of hay and grain combines parked in the fields - a few late season roses bloomed in someone's garden.  We felt alone there, by the banks of the Telemark.  It was funny to imagine the canal's heyday, when it represented progress and new horizons.  We realized, looking at the map, that we'd already crossed over it a few times, without even realizing it.

Forty-Eight People

Pan in from a birdseye view of Iceland to its northwestern appendage, the Westfjords.  The inkblot lobster shaped collection of fjords reaches up and over toward Greenland.   Zoom closer to the eastern coast of the Westfjords, a coast so full of inlets and bay that its name (Strandir) literally translates to "coasts."  This is a land that was once chock full of sorcerers, witch hunts and spells cast.   It was also a haven for criminals, so remote that you could be sure to escape the authorities' clutches for good.  At the northern tip of this wild and woolly Strandir Coast is Árneshreppur.  For the most intrepid tourists, it is the very last bit of civilization before heading into uninhabited Hornstrandir for subarctic hiking.  Zoom in, finally, to this dock at dusk and down beside it, to a dead jellyfish.   Its translucence was so perfect that it acted like a gooey, rimless magnifying glass.  The stones below it were smooth, black and shining.  Árneshreppur is not just the end of the world, although the moniker wouldn't be too much of an overstatement.   It is a world unto itself.

That dock and this one both stuck out into Reykjarfjörður, the fjord into which Djúpavík is nestled.  As Eva and Ási's laundry billowed and snapped violently in one of the oft-occurring bouts of heavy wind, this line of drying, headless cod held strong.  "The young people don't like to eat it like that anymore," Eva said of the age-old preservation method.  Once the 15 - 20 day process is completed, the harðfiskur (wind-dried fish) is eaten in strips, dipped into butter.   Nor do the young people like to stay in Árneshreppur anymore.   Population decline is nearly an epidemic throughout the Westfjords, with a 20% average decline in the last 80 years.  The largest rate of decline has happened right here.  50% of the population has disappeared since the 1920s.  Kind rounding places the population of Árneshreppur at 50 people.  Accurate data says 48.  This is the least populous municipality in Iceland, the least densely populated country in Europe.

The whole "there are more sheep than people," thing is very, very literal here.   Approaching Árneshreppur from further down on the Strandir coast, at just about the last house we'd see for two hours before reaching Djúpavík, we saw sheep down by the water, nibbling at kelp.   There was something bizarre about the scene to me. My brain just couldn't marry the images, the atmospheres, the feelings that are usually attached to "oceanside" and "grazing sheep."   It was like two icons of isolation, the lone sheep in the mountainside and the waves that lap with no one around to hear them had met and decided to go it together for a while.  Our guidebook reports that its not uncommon to taste a hint of seaweed in the local lamb.  Oceangrassfed.

The residents of Árneshreppur are proud, resilient, welcoming.  Appropriately, the heart of their municipality is its northernmost point, the village of Norðurfjörður, less than 5km from where the road just... ends.  Its cafe is one of the northernmost in Iceland, its store (the Steingrimsfjordur Coop) is lovingly stocked with the expected canned and dried goods and the delightfully surprising ripe bananas.  Three women with identical, unflattering bowl cuts, stood and talked near the door. Most likely the work of the one 'hairdresser' for miles.  We walked into the Bank to get more cash and found a man sitting behind a desk among piles of papers and folders.  Just north of town, right near the last steps we could possibly take, was the geothermal swimming pool at Krossness.   This nearby spigot shot the scalding water out.  The spray and steam was cast into the cold air like a rippling flag marking the spot - the furthest north I have ever been in my life.

The landscape is just gob-smacking everywhere you look. This is a wilderness made of clean lines and somber hues.   We thought that the big, rusted ship on the shore in front of Djúpavík was perfectly picturesque.  The boat docked here in the 1940s, brought in as extra housing for workers in the Herring Meal Factory's heyday.   Eva saw the rusty ruin differently, as a blight on the scenery.  Its deterioration saddens her.  The corrosion is weighted in meaning.  Next to the factory is an old, unremarkable car similarly rusting away.  Its windows are covered in garbage bags.  Her neighbor refuses to remove it or store it away inside the factory with Árneshreppur's other dead cars.   "It is part of the landscape!" the neighbor argues.  They are rarely around to have to look at it.

The wider sections of Árneshreppur's shores are covered in driftwood, settling here after a journey all the way from Siberia.  As we marveled at the Siberian wood at our feet, at our place on the earth, one rainbow and then another appeared in the sky.   Sometimes our brains can do nothing but incredulously ask, "Where are we?"

A cleverly drawn map of Árneshreppur was given to us upon arrival at Djúpavík.   Each settlement up the coast was given a rectangle of promotional space on the back.  Their presence on the map itself was so accurate that if one little red house and two blue ones were drawn next to the name of one of the more populated villages we would find exactly one red house and two blues ones upon arrival.   There is Árnes, whose farmers make eiderdown pillows, blankets, etc, gathering the materials from the eiderduck community on Árnes island right offshore.  There is the old meat freezing plant turned hostel in Norðurfjörður.   There's the couple, Badda and Bjorn, who offer a very small scale summer camp experience for children 5 - 12 at their farm in Melar.   An immersion experience if there ever was one.  This old shed was in Gjögur just up from the coastal air landing strip.

It is impossible to get around in the winter, harder still to reach the rest of Iceland. The airstrip at Gjögur and the landing dock at Norðurfjörður become the only options.  When Ási and Eva moved to Djúpavík, there wasn't yet a road connecting Árneshreppur to the rest of the country.  So, they got a motorboat.  Amazingly, they were only people in the region to have one.  The lifelong residents of Árneshreppur were just used to moving slower, staying put, living off of the sea - fishing, hunting seals, using driftwood to build houses.   The people that remain here are content. Some site the fact that this part of the Westfjords has the lowest unemployment rate in Iceland as a sign of promise.   One could just as easily say 'there are only as many jobs as people.'

There is nothing easy about life in Árneshreppur aside from the simplicity of it all.   Eva believes her children have a self-sufficiency from growing up here, moving from Reykjavik at ages 4, 5 and 12.   She told us that they love it at Djúpavík and come back every summer.   It makes me feel like that corner of Árneshreppur is safe for at least another generation, it is protected by an attachment and a love.   Hornstrandir, that hikers' netherworld in the center of the Westfjords, was still inhabited as recently as the 1950s.   Once the last people left, Iceland put the area under national protection as a Nature Reserve.   An uninhabited wilderness.   Forty-eight people keep Árneshreppur from a similar fate.

Una, The One and Only

Like everything else in the Balkans, the Una river's name has a legend behind it - this one from Roman Times.  "The one and only," a foot soldier declared when spotting the river. He had never seen anything quite like it.  Even though there are 7 major rivers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and around 28 smaller ones, the Una is widely considered unique, a treasure, almost mythic. They say that it's a place of meditation and enlightenment.  We met it at the very end of the second rainstorm in two days. We'd just been thinking that the sudden, intense showers had made us feel our first real sense of "summer." Standing at the side of the Una, we had a realization, because I guess that's just what happens on this river. What had given us that familiar feeling of summer was all the green. The Northeast corner of Bosnia is a constant landscape of lush fields, and after weeks of Mediterranean climate, it felt familiar. It felt like summers throughout our lives.  And there it was, the Una River showing its powers of enlightenment right off the bat.

For most of its 132 mile length, the Una is surrounded by gorgeous, untouched nature.  It's as if people have known that if an eyesore was built by the Una's side, she'll punish them by reflecting their mistake back clearly and brightly.  The water is remarkably glassy, its reflections are a stunning study in symmetry above and below the horizon line.  It's also so so blue that when a duck glides over its surface, it's as if its tail is pulling down a zipper sewn into blue satin.  Down at the very bottom, the riverbed is smooth limestone.  Shelves of it can be seen raised up above the water in some spots, giving the river a unique and intriguing look.  It feels more like a mountain river than a valley river.  The dense forest rising up on each side, painted in the river's reflection, only adds to that feeling.  It is truly beguiling.

Fish can be seen darting around in such abundance that you feel like you could just throw a net or even a hand in and come up with a shiny, slinky fellow.  If it were only that easy.  This fishing house, set up on stilts, stands behind a roadside restaurant named "Stari Mlini," (Old Mill).  The restaurant's building, much newer, also stands in the river on stilts, between which mill wheels turn.  We'd gotten out of the car to look at it and were then distracted by wildflowers and these amazing blue dragonflies with velvety indigo wings.  Beyond them, we spotted the wooden relic out there alone.  The green river grasses have grown up at the same rate as the structure has broken down.  Even a river can sit still for a moment, this scene communicated to me.  My own little lesson from the Una, from which Bosniaks have been drawing inspiration and wisdom for centuries.

Young couples sit on the banks, staring in to see how good they look together.  Maybe they drop a pebble in to distort the reflection, so the rings of their two faces move in toward one another.  To see what their children would look like.  This young boy came to shore in his skiff, using a thick stick as a paddle.  His two friends stood on a bridge above him, poking fun at his makeshift oar.  This isn't to say that the locals' relationship with the Una is purely serene, contemplative, laid-back.  Rafting is exceedingly popular and big, heavylooking rafts were strung upside-down to the tops of vans that past by.  We saw one red tray carrying a sixpack of yellow helmets cruise by, but were a few days too late for the big spectacle that is the annual Una Regatta. 

Thousands of participants from here and abroad take to the water in rafts, canoes and kayaks, conquering the many waterfalls along the Una's course. It is a non-competitive "race" that takes 3-5 days. It's a celebration of the river, a bowing down to its powers and probably just a really great time. We went to Bihać to inquire about the event, and were welcomed by a sign that read "Bihać: A City in Love with the River."  There would be no point in specifying which one.  The river is the Una, here and throughout Northeast Bosnia and Herzegovina.  She loves this country as much as it loves her - which can only be assumed by the way she keeps bending toward it.  For most of the Una's length, the river runs right along the border of Croatia and Bosnia.  At three different points, though, it deviates from this clear path and curves in to the nation that adores it so much.  Bihać is situated at one of these points, a very pleasant, small city/large town with short, simple bridges arching over the river and picnic tables, parks and cafes edged up to the waterside.

Many say that the people of Bihać are the most ecologically minded Bosniaks in the country.  So, they don't just profess their love of the river, they really let it guide their decisions.  Which is wonderful.  Unlike other beautiful bodies of water we've visited recently, the underwater inhabitants of the Una are not currently at a risk of endangerment.  While fly-fishing is a popular recreational activity and fishing is touted as a unique tourist experience, the licensing system is responsible.  Unska pastrmka (Una river trout) are widely available on riverside menus, but larger species like carp and the prized grayling are left more to the fishermen themselves. Let them eat carp!  I'm happy with pastrmka. The trout of the Una happen to be uniformly plump, pink-fleshed and delicately flavored.  Trout is something that carries a huge dose of terroir and you can taste the purity of the Una.  No muddiness or earthiness, these trout taste like crystal blue water.

In Bosanska Krupa, we came across the young boy pictured earlier while walking across a wood-planked bridge, trying to get a nice photo of the three yellow, red-roofed houses set on stilts above mills.  Their placement is at the end of a mini peninsula, their surrounds are wholly water.  Across the way, a castle sits atop a hill.  Old guns, painted blue, point down directly at the quaint trio, an unfortunate coincidence.  On the other side of the hill is an amazing sight. A mosque, a Catholic church and an Orthodox church stand literally side by side, or at least across the street from one another.  Following the waters for a few days, visiting it at one spot or another, letting it speak to me like the locals told me to, I really felt that the wide expanse of the river right at this point had to do with that successful coexistence.   There's just something very magical about the Una.