
Þingeyri (Thingeyri) is a small town on the fjords of northwest Iceland. Over the centuries, the harsh climate and isolation from the world have forced its residents into behaviour patterns that have guaranteed survival. What remains of them?
Lalla’s hands have touched so many textures. Now they stretch out over a piece of canvas, concentrating. It’s just like in an old book – about the art of bookbinding – lying on the table: vice, brushes, glue, needles, worn wooden tools. One book helps rescue another.
At another table, Alda hits a countertop with a heather-coloured hank. It’s not like the ones I’ve seen in shops. After a while, she starts to slip stitches. Where’s this colour from? It’s wool from the local sheep, boiled in a decoction of blueberries gathered in the valley. The growing season is so short that vegetables for soup don’t really grow here, but it’s easy to find plant dyes outside your house: rhubarb roots, silver Parmelia lichens. And so pots pile up on the table and on the stove, stuffed to the brim. It’s no surprise that one day Alda’s husband almost mistook a colourful decoction for his dinner.
In times when you can buy almost anything and send it anywhere